I Remember Lemuria

by Richard S. Shaver

I was working in the studio of Artan Gro when I heard a great laugh behind me. If ever there was derision in a laugh, there was derision in this one. I flung down my gaudy brushes and my palette and turned about in a rageto find the master himself, his red cave of a mouth wide open in his black beard. I cooled my temper with an effort; for great indeed is Artan Gro, master artist of Sub Atlan. "I am sorry, Mutan Mion," he gasped, "but I can't control my laughter. No one ever has conceived, much less executed, anything worse than what you have put upon canvas! What do you call it, 'Proteus in a Convulsive Nightmare'?" But Artan Gro could control himself, I was sure. It is one of the things I have learned of the really great in the arts; they make no pretenses. He was laughing because he wanted to tell me frankly what he thought of my ability as an artist. It is bad enough when your friends mock your work (and they had), but when the master is convulsed with laughter it is high time to wake up to the truth. "It is true, great Artan Gro," I said humbly. "I want to paint but I cannot. I haven't the ability." Artan Gro’s expression softened. He smiled, and as he smiled it was as though he had turned on the sunlight.

Genres: Science Fiction, Pulp, Fiction

107 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 8, 1945

About the author

Richard Sharpe Shaver (October 8, 1907 Berwick, Pennsylvania – c. November 1975 Summit, Arkansas) was an American writer and artist.

He achieved notoriety in the years following World War II as the author of controversial stories which were printed in science fiction magazines, (primarily Amazing Stories), wherein Shaver claimed that he had personal experience of a sinister, ancient civilization that lived in caverns under the earth. The controversy stemmed from the fact that Shaver and his editor/publisher Ray Palmer claimed Shaver's writings, while presented in the guise of fiction, were fundamentally true. Shaver's stories were promoted by Ray Palmer as "The Shaver Mystery".

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a thriller than the other Shaver mystery stories I've read. But despite the action and battle sequences it still gets frequently mired in Shaver's convoluted and often repetitive narrative where he was clearly as much or more interested in providing exposition as plot. There are also an overwhelming number of dense, bewildering and all-out nutty footnotes which I quickly learned were better skimmed or skipped. My sense is that editor Ray Palmer likely removed these passages from the main body while attempting to streamline the story, in addition to what I assume must have been his herculean efforts at filling in many of the glaring holes and plot jumps.

"I remember Lemuria" is Shaver's first published work (Amazing Stories, March 1945) and I'd consider it a good starting point for the exploration of the series of stories that came to be known collectively as the "Shaver mystery". Shaver claimed that all the knowledge contained therein came to him by virtue of being the "racial memory receptacle of a man named Mutan Mion, who lived many thousands of years ago in Sub Atlan, one of the great cities of ancient Lemuria!"

In it he provides what is essentially necessary historical backdrop as well as presenting many of the confusing array of alien, hybrid and other groups and the often overlapping sets of names and abbreviations he uses to refer to them. He also presents what is the essential principle for understanding the basis for all his stories, i.e. the idea that man (and all intelligent beings generally) have unlimited physical and mental growth potential (including immortality) but that exposure to radiation from older suns (such as Sol) corrupts this growth, causing mental and physical degeneration. Such degeneration results not only in ignorance and disease, but also the formation of evil tendencies. The thrust of the plot in "I remember Lemuria" revolves around the (now ancient) conflict on Mu between those who recognize the insidious unfolding of this situation on their world and wish to relocate their civilization (to another planet with a newer sun or to a sunless world) and the "deros" and their leader who have already been corrupted/maddened to the extent that they are unwilling or unable to accept this.

[Joe Kilmartin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. Just...

Wow.

Ok - there’s no way even in the most generous of definitions of the words that this could be considered a well WRITTEN or EDITED novelette. The prose is clunky and hard to follow, it does the opposite of flowing and sometimes one just shakes their head that the piece ever got sold at all. Meanwhile, editorially, this is where the piece REALLY falls apart. There are intrusive footnotes that muddy the waters rather than provide any clarity, and no understanding of how to take a finished submission and let it keep its author’s voice while still being amenable to a general audience.

HOWEVER.

The ideas are fun and it turns into a good little thriller near the end of it.

If anyone asks me, from here on in, what Richard Shaver’s stuff is like, I’ll say “Imagine a Post War HP Lovecraft with a penchant for offstage rough sex, torture, cannibalism, and the worship of women who ACTUALLY BELIEVES what he’s writing about is going on” - that’s pretty close. It gets 3 stars because, God Help Me, I actually had to read on to see how it ended and what crazy shit was going to happen next.

[BrokenEye, the True False Prophet · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun little sci fi adventure that holds a special place in conspiracy theory history because the author (who was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia) insisted it was a true historical record that he'd discovered and translated from a mysterious prehistoric alphabet, apparently in the cracks on random rocks he found.

In it, author avatar and crap artist Muton Mion chronicles the fall of the prehistoric globe-spanning mega-civilization of Mu (not Lemuria, as the title might suggest), which had access to casual interstellar travel and mind-boggling array of different "beam" and "ray" based technologies, and of course access to a mysterious solar energy called "exd" (like many terms in the story, this name is never explained) which has turned them into immortal, enlightened beings who just keep growing larger and purer and more powerful psychically rather than older and weaker. But Muton discovers a sinister conspiracy in the highest echelons of Mu's government to cover up the fact that earth's sun is dying, corrupting the exd it produces and allowing evil and insanity to take root among the seemingly enlightened populace. Enlisting the aid of the people from the ice planet of Nor (which is far enough from its own sun that corrupted exd will apparently never become a problem), Muton embarks on a campaign to rescue all of the as-yet-uncorrupted people of his doomed world and find a new home among the stars, leaving the ruins of Mu to (somehow) crumble to the point that modern archeologists will have absolutely no way of knowing that they ever existed at all. But Richard S. Shaver knows. He, at least, remembers Lemur―uh... I mean... Mu.

The characterization is kinda weak, and the science is patently absurd, but the pacing and tension are well executed and the cosmology is fascinating.

[Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this is no great work of pulp literature, it’s got weirdness in spades. All the moreso since Shaver believed this to a real account of his past life, and spent his life researching and finding “evidence” of it.

[Forked Radish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good sh*t!—As a stoner would say. Shaver was a random word generating psychopath. But he was still a better author than many, which says a lot about the profession. A final gripe: where were the lemurs?

[Edward Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mutan Mion, a mediocre artist, finds love, adventure, and stimulation of every kind in the cavern cities of Mu.

Vintage pulp space opera with a twist. A bit stilted, but wildly imaginative, and short enough not to wear out its welcome.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

solid, old old school science fiction. starts out really strong, fades a bit and then recovers pretty well. no epiphanies, no great philosophy or hidden meanings. fairly quick read, and fun for a summer hammock.