Raymond A. Palmer is a double-edged sword that many Science Fiction purists would like to forget. On the one hand he was one of two men who created the very first fanzine in 1930, The Comet. As an editor, he provided magazine space for writers who did not want to kowtow to John W. Campbell and his idea of Science Fiction. Palmer was the editor who brought Edgar Rice Burroughs back to Fantastic Adventures in 1940. Most of ERB’s later collections/novels first appeared in a Palmer magazine. Palmer is remembered by First Fandomers as a quirky, enthusiastic and giving member of SF.
But there is the other side of Palmer too. The Shaver Mysteries, weird ideas about creatures dwelling under the earth and influencing humanity, written by Richard S. Shaver and presented as fact. Using the Shaver Mystery to drive sales, Palmer brought Amazing Stories to its height. If that weren’t enough, Palmer left Ziff-Davis in 1949 and started his own magazines with little success. One of these was Other Worlds, which ended up as Flying Saucers From Other Worlds by 1958, and ran as a non-fiction Ufology mag until 1976. Palmer has been called “The Man Who Created UFOs” for all his promotion of the idea after 1947.
Ray Palmer was an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan. What could be more appealing to the four-foot tall man with the humpback? To imagine himself as the apex of masculine health that is Tarzan. And in 1955 he got a big idea. A really BIG idea. Ray Palmer wanted to appoint the successor to the mantle of the author of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars and so many other famous characters. He declared this is the November 1955 issue of Other World in a piece called “Tarzan Never Dies”…
If you’d like to read the rest, please check out Monster 3:From the Pages of Dark Worlds Quarterly