Palmer to let Mahaffey go, and he ran the magazine by himself from that point on. The following year Palmer switched the magazine's focus to flying saucers. To try to maintain the existing readership while attracting new readers, Palmer emphasized sf and flying saucers in alternate issues: for example, the June 1957 issue was titled FLYING SAUCERS from Other Worlds, and the July issue was Flying Saucers from OTHER WORLDS. He also hoped that each issue would be kept longer on newsstands if the distributors thought they were dealing with two magazines. The experiment did not last; from the July/August 1958 issue the title was shortened to Flying Saucers, and the magazine ceased to carry fiction. Palmer retired to Amherst, Wisconsin, and took over its printing. Bibliographic sources focus on the science fiction issues, and do not index the magazine after 1958, but it continued publication until 1976 as a non-fiction magazine. Contents and reception Palmer's interest in the Shaver Mystery did not abate when he left Amazing Stories, and the lead story for the first issue of Other Worlds was Shaver's "The Fall of Lemuria", still presented as truth in the guise of fiction. The cover illustration was by Malcolm Smith, a frequent artist for Amazing. Palmer declared in the first issue that he wanted to present science fiction from across the spectrum: hard-science stories of the kind that appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, and stories representative of the styles of the other leading magazines—Amazing, Planet Stories, and Thrilling Wonder Stories. Despite this many of the stories in the first issue were routine. Much of the first issue's contents were by Amazing regulars, and it initially appeared that the new magazine would not be very much different from Palmer's Amazing Stories, but within a few issues the quality improved noticeably. Unlike almost every other sf magazine on the market, Other Worlds was edited and published by the same person, which meant there were no constraints on Palmer's editorial policy. He attempted to find new and daring material, and in the early years of the magazine, he obtained some of the better stories being published. Mike Ashley, a historian of science fiction, cites Eric Frank Russell's "Dear Devil"; "Portrait of a Narcissus" by Raymond F. Jones; "Way in the Middle of the Air", one of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" stories; and two stories by A.E. van Vogt: "Enchanted Village", one