The Man Who Invented

Flying Saucers
by Professor Solomon
http://www.professorsolomon.com

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  
 The Man Who Invented Flying
Saucers

R      “   

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 flying disks, these demonic creatures were
responsible—by means of secret rays—for 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 publisher—worried that it had gotten
out of hand—quashed the series.
Years later, Palmer’s 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, fished it
out of the basket, ran it in Amazing—and a flood of mail
poured in from readers who insisted every word of it was
true because they’d been plagued by Deros for years.”
(Quoted in Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp

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Magazines by Ron Goulart.)

For those who consider Palmer to be “the man who
invented flying saucers” (as ufologist John Keel has dubbed
him), the Shaver episode speaks for itself. It was the succès
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 didn’t stop with the Deros and their flying
disks. He went on to found and edit Fate magazine, which

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reported on UFOs and other mysteries. And in Fate 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 fiction 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 in Myths of the Space Age) of having “pro-
grammed the imagination” of “an entire generation of flying
saucer enthusiasts”—a 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 aliens—from the
decade before the first sightings of flying saucers. Was the
man prophet...or progenitor?