THE MAN FROM MARS

The rollicking true story of Ray Palmer, the legendary writer and editor who ruled over sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural pulp journals in the mid-twentieth century. Armed with only his typewriter, the dwarfish Palmer changed the universe as we know it—jumpstarting the flying saucer craze; frightening hundreds of thousands of people with “true” stories of evil denizens of inner earth; and reporting on cover-ups involving extraterrestrials, the paranormal, and secret government agencies decades before The X-Files.

Meet Ray Palmer. A Hustler, a trickster, and a visionary. The hunchbacked Palmer, who stood just over four feet tall, was nevertheless an indomitable force, the ruler of his own bizarre sector of the universe. As editor for the ground-breaking sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories and creator of publications like Other Worlds, Imagination, Fate, Mystic, Search, Flying Saucers, Hidden World, Space Age, and Forum, Palmer pushed the limits and broke new ground in science fiction publishing in the 1940s and 50s—and was reviled for it by purists who called him “the man who killed science fiction.” In this first-ever biography devoted to the figure who molded modern geek culture, pulp scholar Fred Nadis paints a vivid portrait of Palmer—a brilliant, charming, and wildly willful iconoclast who helped ignite the UFO craze, popularized the theory of a hollow Earth, and championed the occult and paranormal in the pulp press. Palmer overcame serious physical handicaps tobecome a notable editor during the “golden age” of pulp magazines. He rebelled in his own inimitable way against the bland suburban vision of the American Dream, concocted new literary genres, and pioneered our current conspiracy culture decades before The X-Files claimed that the truth was out there. Unlike fellow pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard, Palmer wasn’t creating a new religion, and didn’t want followers: He simply wanted people with whom he could argue. Palmer (1910-1977) is the spiritual godfather of every person who owns a Battlestar Galactica t-shirt, has immersed himself in a Dungeons and Dragons game, or lost hours of his life arguing Kirk vs. Picard. THE MAN FROM MARS shows us how one man’s vision of sci-fi’s potential created the modern geek. Fred Nadis has been a visiting associate professor of American studies at Doshisha University in Japan, as well as a freelance journalist, publishing articles in the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines. He has a Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Texas at Austin.