The
history of Astounding Stories, which
began publication in 1930, was briefly described in the last post. The magazine underwent several changes over
the years, but under the capable editorship of John W. Campbell it became very
influential during the “Golden Age” of science fiction. (It is now Analog Science Fiction and Fact, a periodical that is still going
strong today.)
Weird Tales arrived earlier on the scene, the
original magazine running from 1923-1954.
There have been several attempts over the years to revive this
foundational publication, and an online version currently exists. Several of the authors discussed in The R’lyeh Tribune were published in
that magazine during the 1920s and 1930s.
Finally
there was Amazing Stories founded by the
multi-talented Hugo Gernsback, first published in the spring of 1926. Gernsback envisioned a magazine devoted to “scientifiction”,
one that endeavored to promote the appreciation of science and technology through
“amazing” and innovative works of fiction.
Along with Astounding Stories,
the magazine was an important contributor to the emerging field of science
fiction in the late 1930s through the early 1950s. As with Weird
Tales, numerous attempts were made to revive the magazine in recent decades
including an online version that appeared in 2012.
Collectively
these three pulp magazines and a few others were critical in establishing the
genres of weird fiction and science fiction in the early twentieth
century. Weird Tales, Amazing Stories
and Astounding Stories shared a
number of authors from time to time, and there was some overlap in subject
matter. However, all three helped
establish the careers of such well known fantasy writers as H.P. Lovecraft,
Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, (primarily in Weird Tales), as well as a younger generation of writers who would later
become successful science fiction authors:
Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Edmond Hamilton and many others.
In the
late 1930s there was controversy among fans and professional science fiction
writers related to editorial changes at Amazing
Stories. In 1938 the magazine began
to drift a considerable distance away from Gernsback’s ideals after Ziff-Davis
acquired the magazine and put Raymond A. Palmer in charge of it. Palmer was able to increase readership,
acquiring more subscribers at one point than Astounding Stories, but at considerable cost to the integrity and
renown of the magazine.
Palmer
is the subject of an affectionate, ‘warts and all’ biography by Fred Nadis, The Man From Mars, Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp
Journey (2013). The author’s intent
is to rehabilitate the much maligned editor’s reputation, as well as show his
contribution to a number of subgenres and to popular culture in general, circa
the 1940s and 1950s. At this time the heyday
of the pulps was beginning to fade, and economics forced some authors and
publishers to consider other avenues for their work.
One of these
avenues certainly led to a proliferation of half-baked theories about paranormal
phenomena, substantiated by crank science and reams of “evidence”. Palmer often consulted with various representatives
of the “lunatic fringe” and championed their causes. Part visionary, part carnival huckster,
Palmer was effective at developing symbiotic relationships with his gullible
readership, as well as with numerous crackpot contributors. He alternately offered support for their
delusional ideas or gentle criticism when they went too far out of bounds—which,
given their obsessions, occurred often.
Perhaps
most notoriously, Palmer co-authored and published Robert Shaver’s I Remember Lemuria, the first of several
pulp stories inaugurating the Shaver Mystery, (a.k.a. the Shaver Hoax).
Nadis provides a lot of interesting detail in his book about the formation
of this bizarre revelation and the interesting relationship the two men had.
Briefly,
the Shaver Mystery posits the existence of a malevolent subterranean society of
“dero” responsible for disasters and general mischief. This is not a new idea: H. P. Lovecraft was influenced by similar
notions as reflected in the settings he created for At the Mountains of Madness (1936), The Lurking Fear (1923), The
Horror at Red Hook (1927), and other stories.
Shaver’s
ideas also incorporated elements of then contemporary occultism, spiritualism,
Theosophy, and theories about “Hollow Earth” and governmental conspiracies. Paranoid in tone, the Shaver Mystery included
not a little of its creator’s struggles with mental illness. As with fad diets, so much of this material
appears to be displaced religiosity.
Indeed, it seems that a number of science fiction writers of the time, (Robert
Shaver, L. Ron Hubbard, and Philip K. Dick among others), later were inspired
to establish new quasi-religions based on bizarre personal revelations.
Science
fiction purists were critical of Palmer for supporting and enabling occultism,
irrationality, and subjectivity in Amazing
Stories, which he did for approximately a decade before founding several
other similar publications. Historically
his involvement in the field has been largely ignored in favor of the editorial
leadership of Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell and their successors, whose
ideals he seemed to have betrayed. Yet he
was able to make Amazing Stories
profitable, and clearly was in tune with the Zeitgeist of mid-twentieth century
America.
Nadis
argues convincingly that the field has forgotten Palmer’s critical role in the
development of flying saucer mythology (“ufology”). For example, he seems to have contributed the
notion that saucers originated in Earth’s upper atmosphere, and were operated
by “ultra-terrestrials”—paranormal but Earth
based beings—not aliens from space.
Palmer
helped develop and substantiate the “Hollow Earth” theory, that Earth is
essentially doughnut shaped, with entrances at the poles to unknown worlds and
civilizations. This theory had
enthusiastic followers as late as the mid-1960s, and seemed consistent with a
then popular theory of a vortex or whirlpool process accounting for how planets
and solar systems formed. Conceivably,
our own solar system consisted of large and small doughnuts orbiting the sun,
meandering through the black coffee of outer space.
Sadly,
none of these ideas receive the attention and enthusiasm today that they did
not deserve when first proposed. Nadis
also credits Palmer with creation of the paranormal subgenre of science
fiction, also known as “Psi-Fi”, which is still enjoyed by many today.
The Man From Mars, Ray Palmer’s
Amazing Pulp Journey is
an interesting and entertaining profile of one resourceful magazine editor. It is also a fascinating history of one of
the directions pulp fiction took after the 1940s. Nadis connects the science fiction field of
that time with later cultural phenomena: the “Red Scare” of the 1950s, the Cold
War, and various movements emerging in the early sixties to address civil
rights, the environment, and the war in Vietnam. No surprise—the ideas promulgated by Ray
Palmer and his associates are also continuous with the later emergence of New
Age beliefs in the 1960s and 1970s.
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