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    The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers

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    Professor Solomon
    The document discusses Ray Palmer, the editor of Amazing Stories magazine in the 1940s and 1950s. He published a series of stories by Richard Shaver about underground dwarves called Deros that traveled in flying disks. This became very popular and increased circulation of the magazine. Later, Palmer promoted the idea that flying saucers came from outer space, helping to fuel interest in UFOs during that era.

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    The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers

    Uploaded by

    Professor Solomon
    333 views4 pages
    The document discusses Ray Palmer, the editor of Amazing Stories magazine in the 1940s and 1950s. He published a series of stories by Richard Shaver about underground dwarves called Deros that traveled in flying disks. This became very popular and increased circulation of the magazine. Later, Palmer promoted the idea that flying saucers came from outer space, helping to fuel interest in UFOs during that era.

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    Magazine editor Ray Palmer (1910-1977) has been called "the man who invented flying saucers."

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    The document discusses Ray Palmer, the editor of Amazing Stories magazine in the 1940s and 1950s. He published a series of stories by Richard Shaver about underground dwarves called Deros that traveled in flying disks. This became very popular and increased circulation of the magazine. Later, Palmer promoted the idea that flying saucers came from outer space, helping to fuel interest in UFOs during that era.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    333 views4 pages

    The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers

    Uploaded by

    Professor Solomon
    The document discusses Ray Palmer, the editor of Amazing Stories magazine in the 1940s and 1950s. He published a series of stories by Richard Shaver about underground dwarves called Deros that traveled in flying disks. This became very popular and increased circulation of the magazine. Later, Palmer promoted the idea that flying saucers came from outer space, helping to fuel interest in UFOs during that era.

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    The Man Who Invented

    Flying Saucers
    by Professor Solomon
    http://www.professorsolomon.com
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    The Man Who Invented Flying
    Saucers
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    flying saucers. Who was Palmer? And how could
    he have been responsible for UFOs?
    Palmer was the editor of Amazing Stories, a popular
    science-fiction magazine. From 1945 to 1947 he ran a series
    in Amazing that became known as the Shaver Mystery (or
    to many, the Shaver Hoax). Author Richard Shaver wrote
    about a subterranean world inhabited by Deros. Travel-
    ing about in ying disks, these demonic creatures were
    responsibleby means of secret raysfor most of the ills
    of Mankind. Shaver claimed to have actually visited the
    caves, and insisted his stories were factual.
    And Palmer (who edited and rewrote the stories) pre-
    sented them as such. The most sensational true story ever
    told, he announced. He also printed letters from readers
    who claimed to have had contacts with the Deros, or to
    have spotted their ships in the sky. We all know something
    strange is going on, editorialized Palmer. It has happened
    to thousands of us. The circulation of Amazing Stories sky-
    rocketed, until the publisherworried that it had gotten
    out of handquashed the series.
    Years later, Palmers assistant editor told how the series
    had originated: Early in the 40s, a letter came to us from
    Dick Shaver purporting to reveal the truth about a race of
    freaks, called Deros, living under the surface of the earth.
    Ray Palmer read it, handed it to me for comment. I read a
    third of it, tossed it in the waste basket. Ray, who loved to
    show his editors a trick or two about the business, shed it
    out of the basket, ran it in Amazingand a ood of mail
    poured in from readers who insisted every word of it was
    true because theyd been plagued by Deros for years.
    (Quoted in Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp
    :
    Magazines by Ron Goulart.)
    For those who consider Palmer to be the man who
    invented ying saucers (as ufologist John Keel has dubbed
    him), the Shaver episode speaks for itself. It was the succs
    de circulation of a magazine editor who has been described
    (by skeptic Martin Gardner) as a shy, good-natured, gentle,
    energetic little man with the personality of a professional
    con artist, whose primary motive was simply to create
    uproars that would sell magazines.
    But Palmer didnt stop with the Deros and their flying
    disks. He went on to found and edit Fate magazine, which
    srivi soioxox
    ,
    reported on UFOs and other mysteries. And inFate he pro-
    moted a new theory: that flying saucers came from Outer
    Space. The second issue featured an article by Kenneth
    Arnold, titled Are Space Visitors Here? (Arnold was the
    pilot whose UFO sighting in June 1947 inspired the term
    flying saucer, and prompted a wave of similar reports.)
    Palmer also coauthored a book with Arnold; founded a
    press that specialized in UFO publications; and (in the
    opinion of some) mischievously transformed the alien
    spaceships of science ction into the flying saucer phenom-
    enon. A hunchbacked dwarf (due to a childhood accident)
    with a wicked sense of humor, Ray Palmer has been accused
    (by Daniel Cohen inMyths of the Space Age) of having pro-
    grammed the imagination of an entire generation of flying
    saucer enthusiastsa programming that spilled over to
    the general public.
    It is fascinating to look through issues of Amazing Stories
    edited by Palmer, and examine the illustrations. There are
    disk-shaped spaceships and bug-eyed aliensfrom the
    decade before the first sightings of flying saucers. Was the
    man prophet...or progenitor?

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