Richard Sharpe Shaver
Richard Sharpe Shaver | |
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Born | October 8, 1907 |
Died | November 5, 1975 Summit, Arkansas, U.S. |
Richard Sharpe Shaver (October 8, 1907 – November 5, 1975) was an American writer and artist who achieved notoriety in the years following World War II as the author of controversial stories that were printed in science fiction magazines (primarily Amazing Stories). In Shaver's story, he claimed that he had had personal experience of a sinister ancient civilization that harbored fantastic technology in caverns under the earth. The controversy stemmed from the claim by Shaver, and his editor and publisher Ray Palmer, that Shaver's writings, while presented in the guise of fiction, were fundamentally true. Shaver's stories were promoted by Ray Palmer as "The Shaver Mystery".
During the last decades of his life, Shaver devoted himself to "rock books"—stones that he believed had been created by the advanced ancient races and embedded with legible pictures and texts. He produced paintings allegedly based on the rocks' images and photographed the rock books extensively, as well as writing about them. Posthumously, Shaver has gained a reputation as an artist and his paintings and photos have been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere.
The Shaver Mystery
During 1943, Shaver wrote a letter to Amazing Stories magazine. He claimed to have discovered an ancient language he called "Mantong", a sort of
According to Palmer (in his autobiography The Secret World), Palmer wrote back to Shaver, asking how he had learned of Mantong. Shaver responded with an approximately 10,000-word document entitled "A Warning to Future Man". Shaver claimed to have worked in a factory where, in 1932, odd things began to occur. As Bruce Lanier Wright notes, Shaver "began to notice that one of the welding guns on his job site, 'by some freak of its coil's field atunements', was allowing him to hear the thoughts of the men working around him. More frighteningly, he then received the telepathic record of a torture session conducted by malign entities in caverns deep within the earth". According to Michael Barkun, Shaver offered inconsistent accounts of how he first learned of the hidden cavern world, but that the assembly line story was the "most common version".[1]
Shaver wrote of extremely advanced prehistoric races who had built cavern cities inside the Earth before abandoning Earth for another planet due to damaging radiation from the Sun. Those ancients also abandoned some of their own offspring here, a minority of whom remained noble and human "Teros", while most degenerated over time into a population of mentally impaired sadists known as "Deros"—short for "detrimental robots". Shaver's "robots" were not mechanical constructs, but were robot-like due to their savage behavior.
These Deros still lived in the cave cities, according to Shaver, kidnapping surface-dwelling people by the thousands for meat or torture. With the sophisticated "
Palmer edited and rewrote the manuscript, increasing the total word count to a novella length of 31,000. Palmer insisted that he did not alter the main elements of Shaver's story, but that he only added an exciting plot so the story would not read "like a dull recitation".
Palmer claimed that Amazing Stories magazine had a great increase of circulation because of the Shaver Mystery, and the magazine emphasized the Shaver Mystery for several years. Barkun notes that, by any measure, the Shaver Mystery was successful in increasing sales of Amazing Stories. There was disagreement as to the precise increase in circulation, but Barkun notes that reliable sources reflect an increase in monthly circulation from about 135,000 to 185,000.[1]
From 1945 to 1948, Barkun notes that about 75% of the issues of Amazing Stories featured Shaver Mystery content, sometimes to the near-exclusion of any other topic. Historian Mike Dash declares that "Shaver's tales were amongst the wildest ever spun, even in the pages of the pulp science fiction magazines of the period".
Many
During 1948, Amazing Stories ceased all publication of Shaver's stories. Palmer would later claim the magazine was pressured by sinister outside forces to make the change; science fiction fans would credit their boycott and letter-writing campaigns for the change. The magazine's owners said later that the Shaver Mystery had simply run its course and sales were decreasing.
The Shaver Mystery Clubs had surprising longevity: Representatives of a club discussed the Shaver Mystery on
Even after the pulp magazines lost popularity, Palmer continued promoting the Shaver Mystery to a diminishing audience via the periodical The Hidden World. Lanier describes the magazine as "Shaver in the raw" with little of Palmer's editing. Shaver and his wife produced the Shaver Mystery Magazine irregularly for some years.
Rock books
During the 1960s and 1970s, now living in obscurity, Shaver searched for physical evidence of the bygone prehistoric races. He claimed to find it in certain rocks, which he believed were "rock books" that had been created by the great ancients and embedded with legible pictures and texts. For years he wrote about the rock books, photographed them and made paintings of the images he found in them to demonstrate their historic importance. He even ran a "rock book" lending library through the mail, sending a slice of polished agate with a detailed description of what writings, drawings and photographs he claimed were archived by Atlanteans inside the stone using special laser-like devices.
Shaver never succeeded in generating much attention for his later findings during his lifetime, but there have been exhibits of Shaver's art and photographs in the years since his death. Artist Brian Tucker created an exhibition about Shaver's life and work in 1989 at
Influence and references to the Shaver Mystery
After its initial effect on the Amazing Stories readership, the Shaver Mystery continued to influence
Shaver in science fiction, fantasy and horror
As noted above, writer
The 2004 Japanese horror movie Marebito, directed by Takashi Shimizu, also references Shaver's work and the Deros. The movie references Shaver's books directly, as well as showing Deros at several times during the film.
Richard Shaver and the Deros are mentioned on a plaque in the video game
Both Shaver and his work, as well as Amazing Stories, are amongst the esoteric and unusual ideas referred to in the Philip K. Dick novel Confessions of a Crap Artist.
In the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which was heavily influenced by pulp and weird fiction in its development, there exists a race of evil subterranean dwarves called the derro, which were first described in the AD&D First Edition of Monster Manual II. These derro make raids on the surface to kidnap humans for use as slaves and food, and some among them, called Savants, possess magical and psychic powers which they can use to influence people's minds. They are said to have a main stronghold deep underground where they plot the overthrow of humanity.[citation needed]
The novel Tamper, by Bill Ectric, takes its name from Shaver's description of the Deros' ability to tamper with the minds of humans with invisible rays. In the book, a boy obsessed with the "Shaver Mystery" begins to hear strange noises in his parents' basement which may or may not be real.
Shaver and UFOs
In the summer of 1947,
However, UFO researcher
Other influences
The
The artist Jermaine Rogers has often used his version of the Deros in his many posters used to advertise rock music concerts. Rogers has approached the subject of the Deros with an ambiguity that some have taken as proof that he truly believes in these beings. Starting in 1994, Rogers' Dero has appeared in dozens of his posters and art prints and in 2004 it became a designer vinyl toy line.[citation needed]
Some aspects of the QAnon conspiracy theory have also been compared to Shaver’s ideas, particularly the theme of sadomasochistic abusive acts taking place in subterranean tunnels with the perpetrators also manipulating events on the surface world.[8]
Gallery
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Shaver's first published work, the novella "I Remember Lemuria", was the cover story in the March 1945 Amazing Stories
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Shaver's novella "Thought Records of Lemuria", his second published story, took the cover of the June 1945 Amazing Stories
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Shaver's run of Amazing cover stories continued in September 1945 with "Cave City of Hel"
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"Quest of Brail" closed out 1945's Amazing Stories, with every issue featuring a Shaver cover painted by Robert Gibson Jones
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Shaver Mystery stories continued to dominate Amazing's covers in 1946
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Some of Shaver's stories were written in collaboration with Philadelphia radio personality Bob McKenna
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The June 1947 issue of Amazing Stories featured the "Shaver Mystery"
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Shaver once wrote under the eccentric pseudonym "The Red Dwarf"
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Shaver also wrote more conventional stories for adventure pulps like Mammoth Adventures
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Shaver's stories continued to appear in Amazing after Howard Browne replaced Ray Palmer as editor
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Even after his work fell out of favor with Amazing readers, Ray Palmer continued to publish Shaver in other genre magazines
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A special issue of Fantastic devoted to the "Shaver Mystery" was published in 1958
Bibliography
Short stories
- "I Remember Lemuria", Amazing Stories (March 1945)
- "Thought Records of Lemuria", Amazing Stories (June 1945)
- "Cave City of Hel", Amazing Stories (September 1945)
- "Quest of Brail", Amazing Stories (December 1945)
- "Invasion of the Micro-Men", Amazing Stories (February 1946)
- "The Masked World", Amazing Stories (May 1946)
- "Cult of the Witch-Queen", Amazing Stories (July 1946)
- "The Sea People", Amazing Stories (August 1946)
- "Earth Slaves to Space", Amazing Stories (September 1946)
- "The Return of Sathanas", Amazing Stories (November 1946)
- "The Land of Kui", Amazing Stories (December 1946)
- "Joe Dannon Pioneer", Amazing Stories (March 1947)
- "Loot of Babylon", Mammoth Adventure (May 1947)
- "The Tale of the Red Dwarf Who Writes with his Tail", Fantastic Adventures (May 1947)
- "Formula from The Underworld", Amazing Stories (June 1947)
- "Zigor Mephisto's Collection of Mentalia", Amazing Stories (June 1947)
- "Witch's Daughter", Amazing Stories (June 1947)
- "The Red Legion", Amazing Stories (June 1947)
- "Mer-Witch of Ether 18", Amazing Stories (August 1947)
- "Gods of Venus", Amazing Stories (March 1948)
- "When the Moon Bounced", Amazing Stories (May 1949)
- "The Fall of Lemuria", Other Worlds (November 1949)
- "We Dance for the Dom!", Amazing Stories (January 1950)
- "The Sun-Smiths", Other Worlds (July 1952)
- "Beyond the Barrier", Other Worlds (November 1952–February 1953)
- "The Dream Makers", Fantastic (July 1958)
Nonfiction
- The Secret World (with Ray Palmer) (1975)
See also
- "On the Origin of the 'Influencing Machine' in Schizophrenia", an influential 1919 paper
- Agartha, a legendary kingdom that is said to be located in the Earth's core popular with 19th- and 20th-century occultists theosophists.
- Bionics
- "The Mound" by H. P. Lovecraft from a short description by Zealia Bishop – underground civilization fiction set in the southwestern U.S., part of the Cthulhu Mythos
- The Phantom Empire – film serial with a similar theme that was perhaps an inspiration on Richard Sharpe Shaver's work
- Stanislav Szukalskideveloped strange theories about Earth being ruled by a race called the Sons of Yeti.
- Deadline (science fiction story), another wartime atomic fiction
- Dark City (1998 film) features humans as captives of a race of mind-controlling strangers.
- Us (2019 film) directed by Jordan Peele depicts a race of subterranean machine-like humans designed to copy their counterparts on the surface.
Footnotes
References
- ISBN 1-57544-069-5.
- Barkun, Michael, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America; University of California Press Berkeley, Los Angeles, 2003; ISBN 0-520-23805-2
- ISBN 1-57859-029-9
- ISBN 0-87951-724-7
- ISBN 0-446-89489-3
- Foti, Claudio, Lo Strano Caso di Richard Sharpe Shaver, Weirdbooks, 2018; ISBN 978-88-99507-60-2
- Keel, John, "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers" ; Fortean Times, 1983.
- Klochko, Deborah and Turner, John, eds., "Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge," San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004.
- Mott, Wm. Michael, This Tragic Earth: The Art and World of Richard Sharpe Shaver, Grave Distractions Publications, 2011; http://www.gravedistractions.com/this-tragic-earth.php Archived 2017-03-25 at the Wayback Machine
- Mott, Wm. Michael, The Deep Dwellers from Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures, Expanded Third Edition, Grave Distractions Publications, 2011,http://www.gravedistractions.com/caverns-caldrons-and-concealed-creatures.php
- Roth, Christopher F., "Ufology as Anthropology: Race, Extraterrestrials, and the Occult." In E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outerspaces, ed. by Debbora Battaglia. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.
- Skinner, Doug, What's This? A Shaver Revival?, Fate, June 2005
- Toronto, Richard, The Shaver Mystery. Fate, March 1998
- Tucker, Brian, "Shaver Declared a Master Surrealist!," Shavertron (online publication), 2003(?).
- Wright, Bruce Lanier, Fear Down Below: The Curious History of the Shaver Mystery. Retrieved on 3 April 2006.
External links
- Works by Richard Sharpe Shaver at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Richard Sharpe Shaver at Internet Archive
- Works by Richard Sharpe Shaver at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Shavertron magazine
- Blog dedicated to the memory of Richard Shaver
- Richard S. Shaver at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Positively True Story of Kenneth Arnold - Part Four at Saturday Night Uforia