The Shaver Mysteries - Monstergirls in 1945

DungeonMaster

DungeonMaster

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Apr 16, 2016
Now I was researching pulp literature and came across this pulp story written by Richard Sharpe Shaver, a schizophrenic factory worker who if he was born today would certainly have a thread here. He believed he wasn't writing science fiction. As far as he was concerned, there really were degenerate sadistic midgets blasting death rays at us from the inside of the planet.

What I find interesting about this man is that he created his own language, and his own system of pseudoscience that involves a wave partical known as EXD that stands for Ex Disintegrance, which is pretty much radiation but with an extra flair of mysticism. EXD is "energy ash" that comes about from decaying matter, and it can be used for all sorts of things. Antigravity propulsion, instant healing, and hybridizing yourself with aliens in order to create them monstergirls. And boy, does he love his monstergirls and giantesses.

"The image of a tremendous six-armed Sybyl female filled the screen and the electrically augmented body appeal of the mighty life within her seized the youth in me and wrung it as no embrace from lesser female ever had."

"'You are right,' she boomed back, her six arms engaged in complex wand mysterious movements, picking up and laying down instruments and tools in bewildering rapidity, her attention elsewhere yet enough remaining on me to hold me bound in an attraction as strong as a towing cable."

"The grip of the woman life in her left my mind and she was gone from my vision. As I turned from the telescreen my mind insisted on visualizing that six-armed embrace and its probable effect upon a man in love. I shivered in spite of the warmth, but not from fear. The blood of the Titans was alive, I thought; strangely and wonderfully alive!"
Click to expand...
"I stepped into a rollat at the curb, inspected the directory, then inserted a coin and dialed the number of the building that housed the Hall of Symbols. I leaned back while the automatic drive of the rollat directed the car through the speeding traffic, its electric eye more efficient than my own.

"Yes, much more efficient than my own at the moment, which were wandering over the figure of a variform female on the walk whose upper part was the perfect torso of a woman and whose lower part was a sinuously gliding thirty feet of brilliantly mottled snake. You could never have escaped her embrace of your own will once she had wrapped those life-generating coils around you!"
Click to expand...
"My rapt study of the paintings was interrupted by the sound of a pair of hooves that clicked daintily to a stop beside me. I glanced at the newcomer, who had stopped to stare up at the paintings also in that curious way that people have when they see another craning his neck—and my glance became a stare.

What was the use of aspiring to be an artist, my reason said, if those great masters who had placed that mighty picture book on the vaulting walls above were so easily outdone by the life force itself!

She was but a girl, younger than myself, but what a girl! Her body was encased in a transparent glitter; her skin a rosy pale purple; her legs, mottled with white, ended in a pair of cloven hooves. And as my brain struggled to grasp her colorful young perfection—she wagged her tail!

It was all too much. Speculating about the life-generating force possible in the variform creatures was one thing; but having it materialize beside you was another thing entirely. Such a beautiful tail it was. Of the softest, most beautiful fur."
Click to expand...

Shaver probably didn't go out much, because he believed the sun was a massive jungle planet, just like the old idea of what Venus was. Eventually the forests all got buried and became coal seams over time which caught fire, which is how the planet became a sun. This produced EXD, which is why the people of ancient civilizations were blessed with immortality. However, since the fire has burned through all the coal, it has to burn through the core of the sun, which consists of heavy metals. This doesn't emit EXD, but instead Detrimental Energy, otherwise known as de, which fucks you up real good and is responsible for death, disease, and every flaw in the human character. His whole story revolves around getting the fuck away from the sun.

His story is a real fuckin' trip.

I've come to associate this sort of shit with modern internet culture for so long that this looks straight up alien to me. Sure, furries originated in the eighties, monstergirls became what they are in the new tens, but holy god almighty, this Shaver is some kind of unintentional Nostradamus.

Also, Shaver "discovered" a language called Mantong, which is said to reveal hidden meanings.

1612780354683.png


And what's more, a lot of people actually believed him. From what I've heard, he had a huge fanbase. His work influenced a whole lot of his readers to go explore caves to find Atlantean relics, forming entire "Shaver Mystery" clubs popping up all across the United States that I can't find today. It's likely they all died out and their members are now dead or senile. . Information about them is pretty scant online, which is a shame because I wanna find out what his fanbase did and made.

I'm thinking of getting this book seeing as it appears to be the most comprehensive guide to the works and life of Richard Sharpe Shaver. Anything that long must have something interesting in it.
 
  • Winner
  • Informative
  • Thunk-Provoking
Reactions: Gutpuke, FuckMeGentlyWithAChainsaw, glass_houses and 7 others
Wow, I didn’t expect to see somebody posting about this guy here!

If I recall, the editor of the magazine who published Shaver’s story (Amazing Stories?) liked it so much that he kept publishing stuff about it in just about every issue until readers started writing in to tell him to knock it off.

DungeonMaster said:
And what's more, a lot of people actually believed him. From what I've heard, he had a huge fanbase. His work influenced a whole lot of his readers to go explore caves to find Atlantean relics, forming entire "Shaver Mystery" clubs popping up all across the United States that I can't find today. It's likely they all died out and their members are now dead or senile. . Information about them is pretty scant online, which is a shame because I wanna find out what his fanbase did and made.
Click to expand...
What I think is crazy is that for how well known the Shaver story was in sci-fi circles back then (regardless of whether you loved or hated it), it’s like barely anybody in modern times knows it existed. Just another bit of lost history and culture.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
  • Informative
Reactions: Michael Wade, Toolbox, UnsufficentBoobage and 1 other person
Sperghetti said:
What I think is crazy is that for how well known the Shaver story was in sci-fi circles back then (regardless of whether you loved or hated it), it’s like barely anybody in modern times knows it existed. Just another bit of lost history and culture.
Click to expand...
This happened to an entire lot of things, sadly (I say, trying to find an issue of Collier's national weekly from april 1st 1939, and few others, to scan Fu Manchu illustrations from), and, if you think of it, we were actually robbed out of solid 9/10 of all media and phenomena connected, JUST because it was not considered high-brow enough.
We have Shakespeare, but what about all the slightly worse writers who were unlucky to be his contemporaries?
Pisses me off.
 
  • Feels
  • Like
Reactions: Michael Wade, glass_houses and Jimboree
Wait, this is the origin of the Derro of D&D fame? Subterranean dwarves bent on enslavement and cruelty, possibly cannibals. If it's true, surprising survival.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back