Palmer assigned artists to make sketches of objects described by readers and disc-shaped flying machines appeared on the covers of his magazine long before June 1947. So we can note that a considerable number of people – millions – were exposed to the flying saucer concept before the national news media was even aware of it. Anyone who glanced at the magazines on a newsstand and caught a glimpse of the saucers-adorned Amazing Stories cover had the image implanted in his subconscious.
In the course of the two years between March 1945 and June 1947, millions of Americans had seen at least one issue of Amazing Stories and were aware of the Shaver Mystery with all of its bewildering implications. Many of these people were out studying the empty skies in the hopes that they, like other Amazing Stories readers, might glimpse something wondrous. World War II was over and some new excitement was needed. Raymond Palmer was supplying it – much to the alarm of Lt. Lyon and Fred Crisman.
Aside from Palmer’s readers, two other groups were ready to serve as cadre for the believers. About 1,500 members of Tiffany Thayer’s Fortean Society knew that weird aerial objects had been sighted throughout history and some of them were convinced that this planet was under surveillance by beings from another world. Tiffany Thayer was rigidly opposed to Franklin Roosevelt and loudly proclaimed that almost everything was a government conspiracy, so his Forteans were fully prepared to find new conspiracies hidden in the forthcoming UFO mystery.
They would become instant experts, willing to educate the press and public when the time came. The second groups were spiritualists and students of the occult, headed by Dr. Meade Layne, who had been chatting with the space people at seances through trance mediums and Ouija boards. They knew the space ships were coming and hardly surprised when “ghost rockets” were reported over Europe in 1946.5 Combined, these three groups represented a formidable segment of the population.
On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold made his famous sighting of a group of “flying saucers” over Mt. Rainier, and in Chicago, Ray Palmer watched in astonishment as the newspaper clippings poured in from every state. The things that he had been fabricating for his magazine were suddenly coming true!
For two weeks, the newspapers were filled with UFO reports. Then they tapered off and the Forteans howled “Censorship!” and “Conspiracy!” But dozens of magazine writers were busy compiling articles on this new subject and their pieces would appear steadily during the next year. One man, who had earned his living writing stories for the pulp magazines in the 930s, saw the situation as a chance to break into the “slicks” (better quality magazines printed on glossy or “slick” paper).
Although he was 44 years old at the time of Pearl Harbor, he served as a Captain in the Marines until he was in a plane accident. Discharged as a Major (it was the practice to promote officers one grade when they retired), he was trying to resume his writing career when Ralph Daigh, an editor at True magazine, assigned him to investigate the flying saucer enigma. Thus, at the age of 50, Donald E. Keyhoe entered Never-Never-Land. His article, “Flying Saucers Are Real,” would cause a sensation, and Keyhoe would become an instant UFO personality.
That same year, Palmer decided to put out an all-flying saucer issue of Amazing Stories. Instead, the publisher demanded that he drop the whole subject after, according to Palmer, two men in Air Force uniforms visited him. Palmer decided to publish a magazine of his own. Enlisting the aid of Curtis Fuller, editor of a flying magazine, and a few other friends, he put out the first issue of Fate in the spring of 1948. A digest-sized magazine printed on the cheapest paper, Fate was as poorly edited as Amazing Stories and had no impact on the reading public. But it was the only newsstand periodical that carried UFO reports in every issue. The Amazing Stories readership supported the early issues wholeheartedly.
In the fall of 1948, the first flying saucer convention was held at the Labor Temple on 14th Street in New York City. Attended by about thirty people, most of whom were clutching the latest issue of Fate, the meeting quickly dissolved into a shouting match.6 Although the flying saucer mystery was only a year old, the side issues of government conspiracy and censorship already dominated the situation because of their strong emotional appeal. The U.S. Air Force had been sullenly silent throughout 1948 while, unbeknownst to the UFO advocates, the boys at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio were making a sincere effort to untangle the mystery.
When the Air Force investigation failed to turn up any tangible evidence (even though the investigators accepted the extraterrestrial theory) General Hoyt Vandenburg, Chief of the Air Force and former head of the CIA, ordered a negative report to release to the public. The result was Project Grudge, hundreds of pages of irrelevant nonsense that was unveiled around the time True magazine printed Keyhoe’s pro-UFO article. Keyhoe took this personally, even though his article was largely a rehash of Fort’s book, and Ralph Daigh had decided to go with the extraterrestrial hypothesis because it seemed to be the most commercially acceptable theory (that is, it would sell magazines).
Palmer’s relationship with Ziff-Davis was strained now that he was publishing his own magazine. “when I took over from Palmer, in 1949,” Howard Browne said, “I put an abrupt end to the Shaver Mystery – writing off over 7,000 dollars worth of scripts.”
Moving to Amherst, Wisconsin, Palmer set up his own printing plant and eventually he printed many of those Shaver stories in his Hidden Worlds series. As it turned out, postwar inflation and the advent of television was killing the pulp magazine market anyway. In the fall of 1949, hundreds of pulps suddenly ceased publication, putting thousands of writers and editors out of work. Amazing Stories has often changed hands since but is still being published, and is still paying its writers a penny a word.7
For some reason known only to himself, Palmer chose not to use his name in Fate. Instead, a fictitious “Robert N. Webster” was listed as the editor for many years. Palmer established another magazine, Search, to compete with Fate. The search became a catch-all for inane letters are occult articles that failed to meet Fate’s low standards.
Although there was a brief revival of public and press interest in flying saucers following the great wave of the summer of 1952, the subject largely remained in the hands of cultists, cranks, teenagers, and housewives who reproduced newspaper clippings in little mimeographed journals and looked up to Palmer as their fearless leader.