Half A Century Of Fakers?

I've never bought, or even read, the Fortean Times. I use the (completely unaffiliated) London Fortean Society to get my fix of Forteana. But having attended last night's LFS talk, 50 Years of the Fortean Times, with that periodical's news editor Ian Simmons at The Bell in Whitechapel, I'm starting to think that maybe I should. I'm missing out on stuff.

Good stuff too. Talking partridges in Uganda, Bigfoot piloting a UFO, Spring-heeled Jack, Edinburgh fairy coffins, women who vomit up frogs and lizards, feral bishops, and Zimbabwean poltergeists that remove people's trousers when they're asleep. Of course, some of these may not actually exist but it is the Fortean way to neither be too gullible nor too sceptical. With a smile, a Fortean simply examines the evidence and comes to their own, sometimes speculative, sometimes cheeky, conclusions.

It is, ultimately, supposed to be fun. Even if the Forteans these day take things a bit more seriously than Charles Fort (the man who began the 'movement') did. Beginning, with a theatrical flourish, Simmons told the story of the Fortean Times (which turned fifty in November 2023) from the very beginning. From before the beginning in fact.

Charles Fort (1874-1932), as a young man, was an adventurer, a short story writer, and a journalist and he was a man who refused to adhere to dogma. His 1909 novel The Outcast Manufacturers was not a success - by any metric - but when he started to take an interest in the likes of UFOs and seamonsters he found a richer seam to mine.

1919's The Book Of The Damned saw Fort attempting to classify anomalistic phenomena and it was followed by other (slightly) more successful books like New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). Perhaps I should try and read them one day. But, apparently, they make for tough reading by today's standards.

At the time, however, Fort's writing was admired by the likes of H. L. Mencken and Fort's friend (and drinking buddy) Theodore Dreiser. It was Dreiser who formed the first Fortean society, in 1931, and early members included Dorothy Parker, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Buckminster Fuller. He of the geodesic dome fame.

While neither Fort nor Dreiser were cranks, just curious, the editor of the first Fortean publication, Tiffany Thayer - that's a male Tiffany by the way, was. The magazine, Doubt, did include some of what we may now recognise as Forteana but it was also used as an excuse for Thayer to air his 'eccentric' political views and to suggest nuclear bombs didn't exist and were a government hoax. 

Thayer also wrote romantic fiction which seems to have been universally panned. Dorothy Parker once saying of his writing that "his power lies in his ability to make sex so thoroughly, graphically, and aggressively unattractive that one is fairly shaken to ponder how little one has been missing".

She wasn't the only one who wasn't a fan. Thayer himself easily made enemies and once expelled the entire San Francisco chapter of the Forteans. Doubt carried on until 1959 when it died with Thayer and then fourteen years later Bob Rickard (who showed up at the talk - late, he'd got lost on the way - and later posed for photos, answered some questions, and received a huge round of applause) started what would soon become today's Fortean Times. 

In 1961 Paul and Ronald Willis rebooted the International Fortean Organistion and they put out a magazine called INFO and about the same time Rickard, then at Birmingham School of Art, himself launched a sci-fi journal called Speculation which included features on Michael Moorcock and lots of other people I haven't heard of.

In 1969, Rickard saw an ad for INFO in the countercultural magazine Oz and that inspired him to get in touch with Paul and Ronald Willis. In 1973, they launched the first ever issue of The News (essentially the first ever Fortean Times, the initial title was inspired by William Morris's News From Nowhere). The first copy featured toads falling from the sky, feral children, mass hysteria, kestrel attacks, and somebody who somehow managed to swallow a fork.

Everything was pretty much in place from the start and Simmons gave us a run through the magazine's history which took in quite a colourful bunch of characters:- William Burroughs, Bill Drummond, David Icke, Uri Geller, Paul Giamatti, Alan Moore, Derek Jarman, Colin Wilson, Jerry Hall, Jamie Hewlett, Play Away's Brian Cant, Ken Campbell, John Michell, Stewart Home, the author John Higgs, and the comedian Andrew O'Neill.

The Fortean Times was, and still is, "the point where science and surrealism meet" and it was with the sixteenth issue that it changed its name from The News to the more descriptive Fortean Times. In the early nineties, John Brown Publishing, flush from the extraordinary success of launching the hilariously vulgar Geordie comic Viz nationally, bought up several titles and Fortean Times was one of them.

In 2001, John Brown sold Fortean Times to I Feel Good which was run by the former Loaded editor James Brown and the magazine started expanding into features about film, gaming, television, and music. When I Feel Gold folded the FT went to Dennis Publishing (where my mate Gareth used to work, he might still do actually - not spoke to him for a while) and then on to Diamond Publishing where it remains now.

Still priding itself on finding the world's weirdest news and still priding itself on being a print magazine. Simmons ended by saying he sees no reason why the Fortean Times should not last another fifty years. It's not as if weird stories ever stop coming through. If anything, there seems more weird shit out there than ever.

I've titled this blog, with tongue in cheek - and a nod to Belle and Sebastian, Half A Century Of Fakers, but these people aren't fakers. They're very serious about this stuff but that doesn't mean they believe in UFOs, aliens or bigfoot. They're having fun (while also trying not to belittle those who do believe) and they're providing fun for many others.

I certainly had fun last night and for that I'd like to thank Ian Simmons, Bob Rickard, and the Fortean Times as well as David V. Barrett for hosting, and Jade, Paula, Tim, and Michael for keeping me company. Disappointingly though, I had to take the Overground home as Bigfoot failed to pick me up in his UFO.