RICHARD SHAVER by PROFESSOR SOLOMON

RICHARD SHAVER by PROFESSOR SOLOMON FROM VISITORS TO THE INNER EARTH BY PROFESSOR SOLOMON. Richard Shaver The Shaver Mystery (or Shaver Hoax, as it became known to its detractors) began with a letter to the editor. Years later, Ray Palmer would recall the letter: By December, 1943, I had become editor-in-chief of a large string of pulp paper magazines published by the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company of Chicago, Illinois. One of these magazines was the original science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, first published in 1926. .One day a letter arrived giving the details of an “ancient alphabet” that “should not be lost to the world.” It was opened by my managing editor, Howard Browne, who tossed it into the wastebasket with the comment: “The world is sure full of crackpots!” Even through the intervening wall I heard his remark, and the word “crackpot” drew me like a magnet. I retrieved the letter from the wastebasket. As he read it, Ray Palmer’s eyes lit up. He published the letter in the next issue of Amazing Stories. The response delighted him (and discomforted Browne). Hundreds of letters poured in, from readers fascinated by that “ancient alphabet.” Palmer contacted now the sender of the letter—one Richard Shaver— and requested further information. Eventually, there arrived from Shaver a second communication: a manuscript 10,000 words long. The story it told was indeed amazing. And the Shaver Mystery—which Palmer would bill as “the most sensational true story ever told”—was born. The pulp magazines published by Ziff-Davis were filled with popular fiction. Each was dedicated to a particular genre, such as science fiction or detective tales. The covers were garish; the price was low; the stories were actionpacked. “Pulp” referred to the type of paper on which they were printed: pulped wood instead of rag-cotton. Except for their covers (four-color, on slick paper), the pulps were inexpensive to produce. The first pulp magazine was published by Frank Munsey (1854–1925). A former telegraph operator, Munsey had begun his publishing career by acquiring a magazine called Golden Argosy. It featured uplifting stories for children, by authors such as Horatio Alger. With entrepreneurial zest, he shortened the title to Argosy; switched to lively fiction for adults; sought to entertain rather than uplift; and—to lower the price of his magazine and thus increase sales—began using woodpulp paper. (Such paper deteriorated rapidly, but so what?) With its tales of action and adventure, Argosy sold well—half a million copies per issue at its height. Another of his publications, All-Story, became popular, too. And Frank Munsey grew rich, as a purveyor of lowbrow, magazine fiction.* But at the turn of the century a rival pulpster arose. Street & Smith had been a publisher of dime novels. Now it imitated Munsey, with pulp periodicals that were devoted to general fiction. Its Popular Magazine was the first of the pulps to have a color cover. And in 1915, Street & Smith came up with another innovation. It began to publish magazines that specialized in a particular genre of fiction. Among these were Detective Story, Western Story, and Sea Stories. Not to be outdone, Munsey followed suit with Detective Fiction Weekly. Other publishers joined in; and the new species proliferated. Newsstands blossomed with its garish covers. Every taste was catered to. There were pulps dedicated to sports stories, aviation stories, love stories, “spicy” stories. There was even Weird Tales, which specialized in fantasy. But surprisingly (given their subsequent popularity), there were not yet any science-fiction magazines. Indeed, the term had yet to be invented. Munsey had published an occasional “scientific romance.” (Under the Moons of Mars, for instance, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, had been serialized in All-Story.) But as a magazine genre, science fiction did not exist. It was awaiting its founder. * He also published Munsey’s, a general-interest magazine; owned seventeen newspapers over his lifetime; and wrote five novels. Hugo Gernsback (1884–1967) arrived in the U.S. in 1904. An electrical engineer, he had come to market a drycell battery that he had invented. Two of these batteries were packed in his trunk, along with his tailor-made suits and expensive shirts.* What had drawn Gernsback to America from his native Luxembourg? In his autobiography he explains: Hugo now 19 years old and full of confidence in himself and in the future of wireless and electricity, desired most of all to spread his wings in a country where ambition was not circumscribed and thwarted by rock-ribbed conservatism and age-old custom. Hugo stood stubborn and bull-headed in making this decision.† Gernsback wound up settling in New York, as the proprietor of a radio-supply house. In the years that followed, he would sell radio supplies (importing them from Europe); patent scores of inventions; and publish magazines. The magazines had their origin in the catalog for his supply house. Radio was still the province of tinkerers; and this catalog (billed as “Everything for the Experimenter”) was a source of components for them. Also, Gernsback had designed a home-radio set, which he marketed via the catalog.** ________________________________________________ * Described as “a lean, dapper man,” Gernsback came from a genteel background and was an elegant dresser. (He would be one of the few New Yorkers to wear a monocle.) The son of a prosperous vintner, he was also a connoisseur of wine. † The manuscript of this autobiography was discovered only recently, amid the stored remains of Gernsback Publications. Oddly, it is told in the third person. ** The radio set was called the Telimco Wireless Telegraph. It consisted of two units: a transmitter with a spark coil; and a receiver with a bell. You could transmit a signal that would ring the bell—up to a mile away! It was a wonder of the age. Issued regularly, the catalog was 64-pages long and profusely illustrated. To educate his customers in the basics of radio, Gernsback included articles. And then, in 1908, he went a step further. He published the first issue of a magazine, called Modern Electrics.* Modern Electrics was written and edited by Gernsback. It was intended to stimulate interest in radio, and thereby boost sales for his supply house. He hoped, too, that the magazine itself might be profitable. Included in it were articles on all aspects of radio—in particular, how-to articles. The magazine found a readership. And it marked the beginning of his career as a publisher. Between 1908 and 1952, Hugo Gernsback would publish some fifty different magazines. They were edited, initially, in the offices of the Experimenter Publishing Co., and later, of Gernsback Publications. Most of them were technology titles, such as Radio News, Practical Electrics, and The Electrical Experimenter. But there was also Scientific Detective Monthly, Pirate Stories, Sexology. And then there were his science-fiction magazines. Gernsback came to science fiction via his technology magazines. In 1911 he published— amidst the articles in Modern Electrics—a scientific romance. Filled with speculation on the future of technology, it was written by Gernsback himself. Such speculation had been common in his editorials. But now speculativefiction—written by Gernsback and others—began to appear regularly in his radio and electrical magazines. Predictions about the future became a Gernsback specialty. He envisioned, for example, an “electronic doctor”—conveyor belts that took patients past a series of diagnostic machines—and domed cities in orbit. He published stories that forecast advances in science and technology. And he put forward ideas for inventions—inventions that he would sometimes go on to invent.* * The magazine is still being published today—after mergers with other magazines and changes of name—as Popular Science Monthly. For more than a decade, Gernsback included scientific fiction in his magazines. And then he had an idea. Why not publish a magazine that consisted solely of such fiction? A magazine of “scientifiction,” as he would call it. The first issue of Amazing Stories appeared in March 1926. (Gernsback had tested the idea first with an issue of Science and Invention that consisted mostly of scientific fiction.) With its cheap paper and lurid cover, the magazine ________________________________________________ * Hugo Gernsback was an accomplished inventor. He is credited with having built the first walkie-talkie. And as a broadcast pioneer (the founder of an early radio station), he was involved in the creation of television. Among his inventions were the Osophone (an innovative hearing-aid), and the Isolator. The Isolator was a thinking cap. A helmet with its own air supply, it blocked out distractions that interfered with thinking. Gernsback was photographed using one in his office. resembled the other pulps that had sprouted on the newsstands. Yet it targeted a special readership: “radio bugs” and others with an interest in science and technology. (As things turned out, it attracted readers with a taste for fantastic adventure.) An editorial announced that Amazing Stories would offer “charming romances intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.” The stories in the first issue were all reprints, and included tales by H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe. But subsequent issues increasingly contained original material. The editor was T. O’Connor Sloane, an elderly chemist who had previously edited one of the technology titles. Amazing Stories was a success; and its circulation soon surpassed 100,000. But in 1929 Gernsback was sued by his printer and paper supplier (possibly at the instigation of Bernarr Macfadden, a rival publisher), and forced into bankruptcy. Placed into receivership, Amazing and the other magazines continued to be published. The staff remained intact, except for Gernsback, who was ousted as director.

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