The origins of weird America.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Briefly Noted - The Man from Mars - Brief article - Book review

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Ray Palmer helped found science fiction fandom, edited Amazing Stories from 1938 to 1950 and co-founded Fate, America's longest-lasting chronicler of weird mysteries (1948-2009). In The Man from Mars (Tarcher/Penguin), historian Fred Nadis tells Palmer's outrageous life story and parses how his obsessions "shaped the sensibility of an underground community." Palmer, Nadis argues, was the father to much modern mythology with his promotion of the late-1940s UFO craze and the work of Richard Shaver, who claimed to have discovered evidence of ancient civilizations in underground...