The Shaver Mystery Book Six!

It's a good thing that this sixth volume of The Shaver Mystery was not the first I read, or likely I'd have not been so fascinated with the concept. This is easily the most lackluster of the entire series to date. 

"The Dream Makers" by Richard S. Shaver appears in a 1958 issue of Fantastic. This is some years past the height of the Shaver Mystery heyday, but still very much in the living memory of readers of that time. Sadly this novel isn't likely to rekindle the flame. The hero of our story is "Richard Shaver" and we spend at least the first half of the story following him around in the days of his callow youth when he was hearing voices sometimes but paying relatively little attention. It's a rather dreary story of getting by and so I'm inclined to think much of it is based on some truth. In the latter parts of the story suddenly Shaver is transformed via his dreams into a Nordic hero battling the Midgard Serpent and a bunch of shadowy villains who want to destroy the people of the caves yet again. He gets the girl as always but she's a rather poorly described dame at best. Not Shaver's best stuff by any means. 

(Richard S. Shaver and Raymond Palmer)

"A Defense" by Shaver was commissioned by the editor of Fantastic and he plods through his notions which he asserts are facts about the underground civilizations which thrive beneath us and who regularly used ancient tech to fire rays of all kinds into our heads to make us act out, often in violent ways. It's no more believable in this essay than before, but Shaver adopts a tone of little caring at this point of convincing anyone. 

"The Facts Behind The Mystery" by Raymond A. Palmer is a very good essay detailing just how he came into possession of Shaver's manuscripts and how those were first translated into wild but fascinating yarns for Amazing Stories. The immediate sales success of the Shaver Mystery tales is what made the stuff last long enough to cause a sensation. 

"The Land of Kui" is a unusually short Shaver story which tells how the legendary land of Kui was ultimately destroyed because of the insane behavior of a mad despot. The story is told with an aura of myth and is not bad, but has little in the way of real involvement for the reader. I oo like the cover art, though I'm not sure what it has to do with the story. 

The volume closes out with yet another look at "Mantong", the peculiar alphabet which presumably allows the reader to divine meaning in a host of languages and points to an earlier progenitor. It's a cool conceit, but not very exciting. 

All in all the dullest volume in the series to date. Whatever one might thing of Shaver's work, I wouldn't have thought to label it "dull" until now. We'll see if thing pick up in the next tome. 

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