Shaver Mystery: I Endure Lemuria

A third of the way through 1947’s Most Sensational True Story Ever Told, I Remember Lemuria, wondering why I’m bothering, when the text finally hits its stride.

The flow of the text is interrupted by a structureless mass of footnotes and commentary from Palmer, explaining the made up words and the ridiculous made-up science of Shaver. Again, the language of science is mostly an invocation, a magic spell meant to help induce belief.

(Imagine a time, when simply gesturing at nonsense and shouting SCIENCE could inspire belief. Ah. The good old days.)

Some worldbuilding tidbits of the Shaver-verse:

1. Life is growth; not just intellectual or character growth, but growth growth. When not poisoned by disintegrative particles from a dying sun, people live forever and grow to be hundreds of feet tall.
2. The shaver-verse is basically atheist; our religion is distorted memories of ancient astronauts; Shaver is the original Erich von Däniken, of Chariots of the Gods fame. “There were giants in the earth in those days,” the old testament line, is trotted out to explain the growing forever idea.
3. Only it isn’t really atheist, there is a celebration of a life force (which has both male and female aspects) and a reverence for super-hot, as in sexually hot, giant elder gods. Our POV character after orchestrating an escape from the madness enveloping Earth is brought into the presence of an 80 foot tall elder goddess, which whom he instantly falls into uncontrollable love with.
4. The force of energy in Elders overwhelm young Ro, (human scale people) and turn them into mindless sycophants.

So after a horrific bit of business in which our hero Muon Mu, or something, witnesses rays murdering ancient Titans and Atlans (humans are Atlans; Titans are another race, giant, with animal features) he escapes off planet by pretending to be going for a simple joyride.

He knows his thoughts are being monitored. A group of humans and aliens and human animal hybrid, including his new girlfriend, whose cute tale and hooves are mentioned frequently, follow along with him, sensing that he somehow knows something is up and is handling it well by by not admitting anything weird is going on.

The invisible rays are striking people and Titans dead all around. Panic attracts the rays.

Masking his thoughts, his fear, Muon and Atla (his faun girlfriend) and some mars maids and big-heads accompany him on a joyride to the moon; they are pursued, of course, by a deros agent in a ship, but by using his belt and all his strength, combined with the strength of others, he can pull on the joystick of the spaceship and over-ride the speed controls built into the stick.

So they escape.

To some advanced sunless worlds (no suns, no disintegrating particles) a few light-days away (the speed of light, by the way, is bullshit. he doesn’t come and and say it’s a jewish conspiracy, it’s just wrong, because Einstein didn’t understand some made up words and friction with the Shaver version of Ether.)

Here they meet with vast ancient beings who make the 80 foot tall Goddess they’ve all fallen in love with look like Peter Dinklage. A plan is formed, to save what can be saved of Earth, and to quarantine our planet forever after.

But first Muon Mu must create a manuscript… hey, you’re reading a manuscript aren’t you! to save future man from the evil poison sun particles, which shorten our lives (we should be immortal) and which make us violent and crazy.

Our food and air and water basically need to be hugely purified, by centrifuges and electrically.

Then we can live forever.

Muon Mu and his Faun girlfriend are placed in Nutrient tanks for a week, where their minds and bodys grow, a century of married bliss is injected into them, and Mu is freed from his inescapable love of the 80 foot woman that took them to the God Council. The nutrient baths, the crystal eye-cups, the wires and tubes, are all really delightful, by the way.

The story moves at a breakneck pace. There’s very little description of anything. How does the architecture work, when some members of a race are 100 feet tall, and some are 6 feet tall? It’s never mentioned. Tall ceilings, basically.

But what drives it is a feverish velocity, a peculiar sensuality, and the aw-shucks messianic quality of Muon Mu, who was just a shitty art student with a bit of insight and intuition, bravery and pluck, who becomes, or will become, the savior of all mankind; us, in the future, when we learn to centrifuge our food and air and water, and live forever.

They dreamed big, back then, in those days, after the bomb was dropped, and the post war boom had begun.

They dreamed bigly.