Science Fiction: Saucers Before Saucers

Most early science fiction space stories involved earth voyagers traveling into space, but H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds upended things by bringing the aliens to earth. The book had many imitators, but few of these resembled the later reports of flying saucers. Yet there were a few notable exceptions, and we will highlight two of them.

Ray Palmer and his work.

 

Raymond A. Palmer was the editor of science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and it can be said he was in the UFO business well before the first flying saucer was seen. He became infamous for publishing Richard Shaver’s pre-saucer tales of ancient aliens living beneath the earth as nonfiction, "The Shaver Mystery" starting in 1945. However, even before that, he promoted the Charles Fort-derived notion of extraterrestrial spaceships visiting earth as reality.

Amazing Stories, July 1939

Below are two UFO-like stories set during World War II that Palmer presented three years before the coming of the saucers.

Intruders from the Stars 

Amazing Stories Jan. 1944, presented a pulpy space romance that’s included here due to the depiction of the threat of the extraterrestrial spaceship’s superior technological performance.

“Intruders from the Stars” by Ross Rocklynne tells of the arrival of an ancient race who came to conquer the earth with their giant cylindrical spaceship with disc-like weapons. Their invasion stopped “Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini.,” and due to a romantic plot twist, everything turns out well. Intrepid reporter, Bill van Astor-Smythe says that thanks to the aliens, “We’ve got a ship that no one on Earth can stand up against. ... The war’s over!”

 

The next story is far closer to flying saucer lore, but also plays on the military theme.

 

Star Base X

 

Amazing Stories Sept. 1944, had a patriotic gimmick: “Every story in this issue by a soldier.” Ray Palmer said in this editorial, “Pvt. Robert Moore Williams is in the air force, but has just come from 99 days in camp hospital with pneumonia. There's a guy with guts! His manuscript came in just the same!” Robert Moore Williams' story was the cover feature, “Star Base X.”

The story opens aboard a US Army plane with a small crew carrying supplies to a remote base in the Antarctic. There’s suspicion a Nazi spy may be aboard, but it’s not what they think. There is an impostor aboard, and he causes their plane to crash in the Arctic wilderness, and he escapes the plane leaving behind tracks in the snow that look like hoofprints.

Searching for the escaped spy, the group of soldiers discover a secret underground base in a cave carved out of hill which contains a hangar for a huge glittering teardrop-shaped space ship (which they later learn is outfitted with advanced weapons and technology).

There are eight aliens inside, Aherned, hooved goat-like humanoids, described as looking like “Pan without the horns... no bigger than a boy of twelve.” They also have telepathy and hypnotic mental powers., which is how their agent Eldron had impersonated a crewman. The aliens abduct the meddling humans and hold them in an imaginary cage projected by their minds. We learn that the aliens use Earth as a base to facilitate their communication and travel between stars. The engineer Carson offers to work with the aliens in return for their technology, “We would welcome you, help you, provide you with supplies... I don't mind telling you how much a ship like that would mean to the human race.”

The aliens reject the suggestion of such a treaty, and Eldron says their existence must remain secret, as they are sure man would eventually use space ships for war against them. The Aherned intend to kill the humans to silence them, but before their mental powers can subdue them all, one pulls a pistol and shoots Eldron. This starts a firefight with the aliens, who return fire with their laser-like beam weapons, killing one man by burning a hole in his heart. The resistance takes the aliens by surprise, and they are forced to evacuate, taking flight in their spaceship.

As the Aherned ship departs, Carson thinks he can reverse engineer the aliens’ technology. “There are tools in that hangar, spare parts, enough equipment to… find out how that ship worked.” Unfortunately, the aliens bomb the hangar, leaving only charred wreckage. Later, a search team rescues the survivors, but Carson is still determined, and says, “Some day I’ll know how that thing operated. We’ll be building ships like that someday, now that we know they can be built.”

Fiction or Prophecy?

In Amazing Stories October 1946, Palmer’s cover story was The Green Man, a novel by psychic Harold Sherman. It was a prophetic tale that introduced Numar, a peaceful messiah-like messenger in a spaceship from another planet. It was very much like a prototype for the Contactee stories of Space Brothers coming here as celestial saviors. We’ll examine the legacy of The Green Man in future STTF article.

Ray Palmer is said to have believed the reason flying saucers were here was, “to make us think.” Part of our thought should focus on how science fiction influenced our beliefs about aliens and UFOs.

The Disclosure of Richard Shaver's Saucer Secrets

In 1966, the newspaper comic, Our Space Age, featured a series of six episodes of "Shaver Saucer Secrets" based on the writings of UFO pioneer Richard. S. Shaver. Before presenting the episodes, here's some background on Shaver and his position on extraterrestrials.

 

"The Shaver Mystery" debuted in 1945, two years before the report of flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold. In April 1947, Richard Shaver's mythos was the sole focus of editor Ray Palmer's June 1947 issue of the science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. The Shaver Mystery was presented as nonfiction, and the premise was that we humans are the offspring of Titans, god-like ancient aliens, who are the reality behind all our myths and legends. After the Titans abandoned Earth, some of those they left behind were transformed into nasty little degenerate "deros." We came to call their space ships UFOs, and from their cavernous secret underground bases, their dero offspring are responsible for abductions, mutilations and many of mankind's other woes. Ray Palmer's editorial explained:

With the aid of such machines as the telaug [telepathic augmentor] and disintegrating rays, plus various instruments such as the "stim" which enhanced physical and emotional pleasures, these dero took to tormenting surface people and thereby being the basis for all of our legends of cavern wights, little people, demons, ghosts and — during the war — gremlins. They cause many unexplained accidents, such as those train wrecks, plane crashes, cerebral hemmorhages, etc. which are otherwise unexplainable.

Further, Mr. Shaver declared that the Titans, living far away in space, or other people like them, still visit earth in space ships, kidnap people, raid the caves for valuable equipment, and, in general, supply the basis for all the weird stories that are so numerous (see Charles Fort's books) of space ships, beings in the sky, etc.

 

So, well before the first flying saucer sighting in 1947, Richard Shaver was introducing concepts that would later become part of UFO legend and lore.

Shaver, the Father of Disclosure

Richard Shaver's article for the June 1947 issue of Amazing Stories, "Proofs," was a response to the critics of his writings. In his introduction to his essay, he talked about the problems of being an experiencer or witness and the dangers of disclosing the truth:

My strength is dedicated to informing you of the key and the way to the kind of life that produced the beauty and wisdom of those immortal beings of the past, beings whose actual existence has been proved a thousand times to those who, like myself, have had actual experience in the caverns. For we have seen and touched and used those antique mechanisms and we know whereof we speak. But until today, those who knew have feared to broadcast their knowledge, for in olden times it would have meant being burnt at the stake, and today most certainly the insane asylum.

Shaver's Titans were giants, and had been mentioned in the the Bible, and in myths around the world. But for those who needed even more evidence, he delivered it in "Proofs."  Long before Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Devil's Tower had a connection with extraterrestrial life. An ancient connection.

 

YOU ask for proofs of the giganticism of the far past — and you can find Devil's Tower (Wyoming) in any Atlas. It is a national monument ! If it isn't a gigantic petrified stump larger than any redwood ever hoped to be, I will eat my hat! The stump alone is taller than the Empire State building! What size were men when trees grew that size?

 

THEY were the men who are spoken of as the Aesir, under Ygdrasil's branches, planning a battle against the Frost Giants! And they had telaug beams (Odin's Eye), and they had "magical" underground dwarfs, and icy underworld realms of magic — and we have only the Devil's Tower to prove it today. But it was a long time ago; when the sun itself was more beneficial and less aging. BUT, BROTHER, HOW CAN YOU ASK FOR PROOF WHEN YOU HAVE A DEVIL'S TOWER?

Devil's Tower proves the Shaver Mystery, and therefore, all the extraterrestrial space travel and beings within. Richard Shaver knew that wasn't enough. He fought against skeptical unbelievers, railed against official denials, and he can be said to be a founding father calling for Disclosure. He said:

MANY things could be obtained of infinite value from these people in the caverns, if all of our civilization was aware and trying to salvage even a bit of the mighty wisdom the Elder race left behind them in their miracles of machine art. BUT it can't be done as long as "officialdumb" frowns upon all such efforts as "superstition," "black art," or "crackpots." It is a vital and unseen side of our life WHICH MUST BE OPENED TO THE PUBLIC GAZE! 

“The fact is that any honest investigation of super-normal manifestation always and invariably turns up mighty important data; which data is shelved by fearful, ignorant and bigoted people who are quite sure that the school books are right, and that they cannot go contrary to opinion or they will lose their ‘position.’  ...SOMEONE, SOMETIME, HAS TO CONQUER THAT BLIND DENIAL OF FACT AND COME OUT IN THE OPEN WITH THE TRUTH...”

There's much more to Shaver's argument in "Proofs," and it's timeless, as valid today as when he wrote it.

Amazing Stories, June 1947

The Shaver Mystery and Our Space Age

Richard Shaver's stories and concepts continued to be discussed over the decades, and to this day, continues to be influential. In 1960, science fiction writer (and ufologist) Otto Binder launched a daily illustrated space exploration feature syndicated in newspapers by Bell-McClure. Our Space Age was illustrated by Carl Pfeufer, and in 1966, their focus shifted exclusively to UFOs. In six August 1966 episodes, the series was devoted to Richard S. Shaver's tales of subterranean ancient extraterrestrial astronauts, and the threat the aliens pose.

Aug 22, 1966

Aug 23, 1966

Aug. 24, 1966

Aug. 25, 1966

Aug. 26, 1966

Aug. 27, 1966

The telaug of the dero could affect our minds, so who knows what misinformation they were making Shaver believe... or what they are making us believe now!

For more information on the Richard Shaver story, see Richard Toronto's site, Shavertron.

Kenneth Arnold's 1952 UFO Book Promotion

Kenneth Arnold was back in the news in September 1952, due the release of his new book, The Coming of the Saucers, which was co-authored by his friend and publisher, Raymond A. Palmer. The story "Flying Saucer-y" was prepared by King Features Syndicate, and carried in many newspapers as a full-page story.

Here's a shot of the page, followed by larger views of the pictures and text.

The article also featured 11 photographs from the book, both about Arnold's experiences and other UFO and Fortean events he found genuine.

Radar ghosts or "angels."

Here's the two columns of text from the article.

There were a few photographs from a rising star on the saucer scene, "Professor George Adamski," from pages 190-191 of the Arnold-Palmer book.

Also included were photos of  mysterious objects in the sky and a puzzling bridge fire.

Here's the advertisement for the book from Ray Palmer's  Sept. 1952 Fantastic Adventures magazine:

The Coming of the Saucers by Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer is hosted online as a PDF at the British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society.

The Coming of the Saucers