May 15 2008
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Underground Magazines, Underground Civilizations
Throughout the 1990s, countless small press magazines (or “zines”) peppered newsstands all over the country. Along with two friends, we joined the fray with a journal called The Excluded Middle. Zine makers were a pretty tight group, and I sometimes learned about subjects in which I had no previous interest by networking with other publishers. We all waited for the latest issue of Factsheet Five (a zine that reviewed zines) to see if we’d been mentioned.
One of the publications in Factsheet that caught my interest, if only for the title, was Shavertron, which at first sounded like some sort of device used by evil barbers. Editor Richard Toronto carried on the “underground dwellers” traditions of Richard Shaver, publishing stories about spelunkers searching for subterranean cities, mysteries of Mt. Shasta, and theories that JFK was killed by evildoers from beneath the Earth. To my complete delight, Fate magazine publisher Ray Palmer’s tradition of offering stories that might be true was carried on. Apparently, Shavertron ceased publication in 1992, but issues of the zine continued to float around for years, and re-emerged online in 2002.
From the Shavertron site:
The original Shavertron was a fanzine devoted to the Shaver Mystery and the life and times of Richard Sharpe Shaver and his editor, Ray Palmer. This leaves the playing field wide open since the Shaver Mystery is rife with ufos, a race of evil weirdos living inside the earth, mind control, a high-tech Elder Race pre-dating our history, abductions, conspiracies and, of course, the sci-fi pulp zine scene of the late 1940s. The “mystery” began in a 1945 issue of AMAZING STORIES magazine with an article titled “A Warning to Future Man.” Editor Ray Palmer and writer Richard Shaver collaborated from there to bring Shaver’s unusual cosmology into the world of sci-fi pulp zine literature.
The Shaver Mystery gasped its last breath when Shaver and Palmer died within two years of each other in the mid-1970s. We stopped publishing Shavertron in 1992 since most Shaver Mystery readers were gone (mostly dead) with few leftovers to take their place.
Writers like Jim Pobst, Brian Tucker, Doug Skinner, Tal, Timothy Greene (Mr. UFO) Beckley , Mary Martin (The Hollow Hassle), Branton, Bill Bliss and Gene Steinberg did what they could to keep the Mystery going.
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May 15th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Well, apart from Shaver, let’s not forget the book “The Coming Race” with the Vril and all its wonderfully weird uses. That book inffluenced a lot of german secret societies, and ultimely the inner circle of the Nazi party.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Shaver was a raver,
But the Deros were my heros
May 15th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Seriously though, I was discussing Jim Fetzer and Werner von Braun today with a buddy of mine. It was in lieu of Scott’s aforementioned “Road to 911″ masterpiece and how COG (underground master race secret military government) was already in the works way before the actual fortunate opportunity which most call a tragedy.
Anyway we had been rejoicing the beauty of Norah Jones and Sheila Chandra and so I pointed out that unfortunately Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld would be f-ing them underground as part of COG. To which my friend responded:
Yes and making reptilian kids.
Here’s where I get to mention my own Factsheet Five masterpiece, the radical RAW format zine:
Paddlefish First!