Get Hold Of The Man From Mars: Ray Palmers Amazing Pulp Journey Formulated By Fred Nadis Available Through Digital Format

fascinating tour of one science fiction pioneers adventurous publishing career, the namesake of DC superhero The Atom, Ray Palmer.


Palmers wild and varied interests are themselves a talking point and by the time Fred Nadis gets into them, his writing improves and his own interest peaks, including a lifechanging association with an even wilder personality, Richard Shaver.
Palmer, who was crippled as a child and spent some of his formative development strapped immobile sort of like the fictional Lisbeth Salander, also an eccentric, began a quest to figure out why the world presented such unexpected developments, that led him, among other pursuits, to being an early champion of the UFO phenomenon.


Nadis is driven to distraction trying to keep up with Palmer, He entirely loses sight of whatever real impact Palmer had in the golden age of modern science fiction, as editor of pulp magazines.
Did Palmer publish any major stories Nadis drops names he sometimes barely seems to know he keeps referencing Otto Binder, a recognizable name in comic book lore, in relation to his brother, but is far more interested in Shaver than, say, Julius Schwartz another comic book figure and one many fans would know instantly.


Palmer emerges as a type very similar to Stan Lee theres the comic book link again, which Palmer himself, at least as far as Nadis is aware, seems to have never crossed into except to inspire the secret identity of the Atom, famous and infamous as a shameless selfpromoter, who built up Marvel as a house of fandom in part thanks to his endless series of “soapbox” editorials.
Where did he get such an idea Or where did the letters columns that graced the back pages of comic books for decades find their origins From the works of men like Ray Palmer.


Palmer has become all but forgotten in popular lore, His legacy easily, without him, slipped into the hands of others who pursued similar paths, many of them at the fringes of society, what today would include the ranks of the flatearthers its very easy to assume that if he were alive today, Palmer would be among them.
His greatest calling card was his earliest, the science fiction pulps, and like Palmer himself, Nadis cast off those shackles eagerly, alas.


This book, and Palmers legacy, would be better with more emphasis on that, This book, though, remains valuable as insight into subcultures exotic, fleeting, alarming, fascinating, and always, always otherworldly, Which was kind of the point, When I first heard about Ray Palmer I mistook him for the "The Atom", This book covers all about Palmers interesting life including his connection with the superhero, I also did not expect to learn about who the original inspiration for Clark Kent was but it was included.
I enjoyed the setting of what the's science fiction reading crowd was like, Lesenotizen noch nicht die

War Hugo Gernsback als Herausgeber der AMAZING STORIES der "Father of Science Fiction" Gernsback hätte noch von Scientification gesprochen, so wurde Ray Palmerin der Nachfolge zum "Son of SF", nachdem er sich als PulpAutor und vor allem als Begründer des "organized fandom" verdient gemacht hatte.

Palmer,geboren, wurde alsJähriger von einem Lkw erfaßt und war für den Rest seines Lebens verkrüppelt.
Später wettete er, der an Selbstheilungskräfte glaubte, mit einem Arzt um, dass er entgegen dessen Prognose nicht sterben würde, und gewann.
Seine Mutter starb, als erwar, sein Vater sprach reichlich dem Alkohol zu,
Trotz seiner schwersten gesundheitlichen Beeinträchtigungen arbeitete Palmer auch als Handwerker, bis er sich ganz auf seine Herausgeber und Schriftstellertätigkeit beschränkte und das Evangelium der SF predigte.

Er wuchs in Milwaukee auf, wo "The number of the pulp magazines published there could be counted on the fingers of one sardine" Robert Bloch, machte aber bei den Fictioneers die Bekanntschaft von Bloch, Weinbaum und Ralph Milne Farley.
Letzterem verdankte er es, Herausgeber der AMAZING STORIES zu werden, deren Auflage immer weiter gesunken war,
Palmer vertrat einen ganz andere Ansatz als Gernsback, dem das wissenschaftliche Element der SF wichtig gewesen war, und konkurrierte nicht mit John W.
Campbell, der mit ASTOUNDING mehr auf anspruchsvolle Stories setzte, Palmer kam von den Pulps und hatte auch "scarlet" stories geschrieben, Stories also, die erotischpornographisch waren,
Um die Auflage der AS wieder in die Höhe zu treiben, riet er seinen Autoren: "When a story stops moving, that is the exact spot where the writer should drop a corpse through the roof".
Der Verzicht auf schriftstellerischen Anspruch und die ausschließliche Fixierung auf Action verärgerte viele der ernsthafteren SF Fans, aber AS wurde wieder eines der größten Magazine.

Palmer, der unter vielen Pseudonymen schrieb und Spaß an fiktiven Biographien hatte, ließ sich auf dem JuliCover derer Ausgabe von H.
W. McCauley als Bösewicht darstellen:



"Palmer and Shaver were ahead of the curve ond cultural paranoia and conspiracy theorizing.
Wartime America had had its share of panics, including concerns about children being kidnapped or molested, and of course the threat of a JapaneseAmerican fifth column intent on undermining the war effort.
The explosion of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki did nothing to soothe the publics nerves, The ensuing Cold War, however, ushered in a golden age of paranoia as sthe United States and Soviet Union splintered the world into zones of influence.
Reports of Soviet espionage were on the rise as were concerns with loyalty in the United States and possible Communis infiltration of institutions.
In, while Rap was prepping the allShaver issue, the House of UnAmerican Activities Committees hearings questioned the loyalty of the screenwriters and directors known as the Hollywood Ten.
Similar inquisitions were carried out not only on the federal but the state level and let to shattered careers and boycotts.
Soon came additional panics over rock nroll and the link between juvenile delinquency and comic books, As pulp author Hauser had pointed out, who wouldnt want to crawl back into the "Mother" at a time like this"
Und die unterirdischen Höhlen, von denen Shaver besessen war, waren sie nicht auch eine Metapher für den Mutterleib

Sehr spannend fand ich das Kapitel über Kenneth Arnolds UFOSichtung, die den Mythos UFO begründet hat, vor allem über die Ereignisse, die sich der Sichtung anschlossen.
Diese hätten das Zeug zu einem klassischen MysteryThriller,
Eine sehr akribische Studie über den Bericht von Kenneth Arnold hat übrigens Martin Shough ins Web gestellt:
sitelink nicap. org/reports/arnolda Before there was Qanon there was the Shaver Mystery! This just isn't holding my interest, I could lie to myself, or I could just stop reading, A fantastic exploration into a forgotten corner of American pop culture and history that shows how the friendship between a physically unconventional classic pulp huckster in the Stan Lee mode and a mentally ill man trying to process his illness and hospitalisation lead to everything from Hollow Earth to UFO culture to the men in black to outsider art.
It doesnt shy away from either mans faults, or flirtation with the extreme right another very relevant trend in the age of Alex Jones and Qanon, but paints a sympathetic picture both of them, the times theyre in, and the broader pulp and spiritual movement.


And yes, that is the Ray Palmer that DC Comics Atom is named after, While not a pageturner, this is a fascinating look into the editor of Ray Palmer's career and his influence in early science fiction and fantasy.
There's also a valid argument that if not for Mr Palmer, we would not have experienced the UFO craze of thess.

It took me quite some time to finish this book, Most chapters took two days

to complete and I'd often go several days between starting the next chapter, The information should be of interest to anyone who enjoys reading pulpera stories, but there is much to absorb, so I doubt most will finish the book within a week or two.
Great subject matter, but the treatment is uneven, I knew a fair amount about Palmer, Shaver, and company before reading this but definitely found some wonders new to me.
. . such as the idea that Palmer and Shaver may have wished to create Shaverite Utopian communities, The image of Palmer's son and Shaver working the backwoods of Wisconsin to collect rock books is like a Norman Rockwell painting from an alternate universe.
I was also unaware of Palmer's latter day rightwing fixations, which sound remarkably like the preaching of some of our more prominent modern pols.
The flaws in the book include odd repetitions of facts, sometimes within a few pages of each other, which a good editor should have caught and some careless errors examples include "Atom Link" for "Adam Link," the identification of the comic book Journey into Mystery as being about mysteries in the Shaverian sense, etc.
A few errors of that sort add up fast and reduce the overall credibility of the other research, Again, a good editor would have made all the difference, Still a worthy book about a fascinating subject and a fair entry in the history of alternate world views in an age of conformity.
This science fiction pioneer who stood four feet tall and had a hunchback later became one of the leaders of thes flying saucer movement and a great conspiracy theorist.
Also, he told people he was from Mars,

Read the sitelinkfull review on sitelinkGeekyLibrary, One substantial complaint about the book is its occasional tendency to present Palmers accounts of his adventures as though theyre true, chiming in only later to concede that this notorious promoter of dubious tales may have exaggerated or invented a detail or two.
But these are minor defects in a deeply interesting book, The Man From Mars is smart and engrossing, and it expands our understanding of the nuts and carnival barkers who have done so much to cultivate Americas homegrown mythology.


Read the full review here: sitelink theamericanconservative. co Great and engaging bio on Ray Palmer, former editor of Amazing Stories, Fate, and a multitude of other pubs.


The midpoint of this book almost lost me as it became as much a bio of Richard Shaver as it was of Palmer suitable given their intertwined publishing ventures amp interests, but it got back on track and kept me reading.


A bit meandering toward the end, but so was Palmer, so it's fitting, Still, the man's impact on science fiction amp publsihing should not be underestimated even if it has been maligned for quite some time.


I'm embarrassed that I originally only knew Palmer's name as the secret identity of the Silver Age Atom.
I now stand corrected.

If you want a book about a fascinating and sometimes conflicting man, give this a look, If you're a sucker for books about writers amp publishing amp editors, this should also get on your toread pile.
It was OK. Palmer is a difficult subject to write about exactly because he has so many contradictions, He can be dismissed a hoaxster or a true believerbut that requires throwing out too much evidence, Nadis reaches this conclusion in the last couple of pages of the book, which are by far the best.


The rest fo the book never rises above summarizing the admittedly vast research Nadis did, But there's the rub, again, A lot of the book depends on Palmer's accounts, but we can't always trust his accounts, All the childhood stuff is tainted by Palmer's weird reconstructions of his history and interviewing his children doesn't really get around this problem.
More generally, the book is poorly sourced, which makes it frustrating at times,

There's also the problem of contextualization, Nadis only does this in the most general ways The Great Depression was hard, the postWar years paranoid, the sixties the Age of Aquarius and he reifies a lot of the subjects.
Science fiction is a 'thing' mostly it is what was being published in Astounding and Palmer's career is judged by how well he approached this standardpoorly when he was editing amazing and publishing the Shaver Mystery stuff, much better when he was publishing progay stories in Other Worlds.
But clearly science fiction was more heterogenous than this history suggests it privileges the 'fans' too much and the audience not enough.


Nadis reports the story that while Palmer was pushing the Shaver Mystery, Amazing's circulation reached,, First offI have yet to see good sourcing for this and Nadis does not offer any, Second, if it was selling that well, then it did reach an audience, even if selfidentified fans hated it.


Any biography of Palmer is going to hav to challenge our conventional notions of what biography can be, and also the lines between fact and fiction.
Nadis has given this a start, but this should be far from the last word, .