Book Review by Bill Ectric
Richard Toronto is tuned in to what makes the “Shaver Mystery” so enthralling. It’s not the “mystery” itself; it’s the people behind it. What a movie War Over Lemuria would make! Imagine the figment-laced A Beautiful Mind (2001), in which Russell Crow portrayed the brilliant but schizophrenic mathematician, John Nash. Add some inner-circle editorial and publishing industry intrigue reminiscent of The Last Days of the New Yorker by Gigi Mahon or George Clooney’s biopic on Edward R. Murrow, Good Night and Good Luck. Now project this mosaic of media messaging through a prism of Ed Wood enthusiasm in the face of austerity, because this is not The New Yorker or CBS news – this is the story of a weird, almost forgotten episode in the history of pulp magazines, science fiction fans, public and private controversy, and, some would say, betrayal.
As early as 1797, when Bedlam patient James Tilly Matthews described the mental torments inflicted on him by the so-called “Air Loom,” doctors have studied victims of paranoid delusions, but post-World War II advances in science and communication galvanized the lunatic fringe with the widespread awareness of atomic energy, orbiting satellites, New Age harmonic convergence, and conspiracy theories. It was the perfect time for Shaver’s pseudoscience and Palmer’s mind-over-matter mysticism to collide.
Richard Toronto is the first to point out that Palmer embellished his life story almost compulsively; and that Shaver sometimes described things that probably weren’t there at all, even if he thought they were. All the better. What makes War Over Lemuria so fun to read are the complex personalities, the secretly interconnected publishing ventures, run-ins with the FBI, the boisterous controversy among science fiction fans, and, finally, the fact that it happened at all.
Toronto has researched the Palmer/Shaver collaboration for years. He corresponded with Richard Shaver himself, and has interviewed family members, friends, coworkers, and associates of both Shaver and Palmer. War Over Lemuria is everything I had hoped for and more.
The Astral Pages 