When you think of science fiction the word controversy doesn’t normally come to mind, but today’s author stirred up more than his share of controversy in the 1940s.

Born Richard Sharpe Shaver in Berwick Pennsylvania in 1907 he claimed to have worked in a factory in 1932 when a welding gun, ‘by some freak of its coil's field atunements’ was allowing him to hear the thoughts of the men working around him. If that’s not weird enough he also said he telepathically received record of a torture session conducted in caverns deep within the earth. When retelling the story of how he first learned of this cavern world, Shaver's stories didn’t remain consistent.

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Shaver said he quit his job and became a hobo. He was hospitalized briefly for psychiatric problems in 1934, but there does not appear to have been a clear diagnosis. For almost 10 years after that we don’t know what happened to him or where he lived. Then in 1943 he wrote a letter to Amazing Stories magazine claiming to have discovered an ancient language. When the editor wrote back to him, Shaver wrote that extremely advanced prehistoric races had built cavern cities inside the Earth before leaving the Earth for another planet, but leaving some of their offspring behind. The editor of the magazine, Ray Palmer, took Shavers 10,000 word response about these cavern dwellers, rewrote the manuscript and “I Remember Lemuria!” was published in the March 1945 edition of Amazing Stories.

The issue sold out and elicited quite a response. The magazine editor, Ray Palmer, said that tens of thousands of letters were sent to Amazing Stories saying that Shavers story was true. How popular was Richard S. Shaver? Well the “Shaver Mystery” as his work was known, appeared in the June 1947 issue of Amazing and the entire magazine featured his stories and only his stories.

Shaver had his share of critics who were quick to point out that the author was suffering from several of the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

Today’s science fiction short story was written after the “Shaver Mystery” stories had ended and contains no references to alien cave dwellers or their offspring. From Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy in April 1953, Paradise Planet by Richard S. Shaver…

Next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast Alice saw the Beachcomber as a glorious hunk of man; Maxwell saw him as a super being from the future. Tragically, he was both!... That’s next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.

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