The so-called "Shaver Mystery" captivated readers of Amazing Stories between 1945 and 1949, when the science fiction magazine's editor, Raymond Palmer, published a series of novels by Richard Shaver about a lost race of sadistic inhabitants of the hollow earth whose high technology and ancient commerce with space aliens secretly controlled human destiny. Shaver had claimed the stories to be based in fact, and Palmer stoked the fires to goose sales.
