Abstract
Richard Shaver caused a stir in the science fiction world of the 1940s with a series of stories that blurred the boundaries between fiction, pseudoscience and paranoia. The Shaver Mystery, as it became known, told of an ancient race of degenerate humans living in underground caves, and controlling world affairs through disruptive rays and other advanced technology. Although Shaver is largely forgotten today, his legacy lives on both in the world of conspiracy theories—many of which echo his themes of secret masters and mind control—and in the paranoid fiction of writers like Philip K. Dick.
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May, A. (2017). High-Tech Paranoia. In: Pseudoscience and Science Fiction. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42605-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42605-1_3
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