Fortean Times
Fortean Times is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. Previously published by John Brown Publishing (from 1991 to 2001), I Feel Good Publishing (2001 to 2005), Dennis Publishing (2005 to 2021), and Exponent (2021), as of December 2021 it is published by Diamond Publishing, part of Metropolis International. In December 2018, its print circulation was just over 14,800 copies per month. This now appears to include digital sales. The magazine's tagline is "The World of Strange Phenomena". History Origin The roots of the magazine that was to become Fortean Times can be traced back to Bob Rickard's discovering the works of Charles Fort through the secondhand method of reading science-fiction stories: "John Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (as Analog was then titled), for example," writes Rickard "encouraged many authors to expand Fort's data and comments into imaginative stories." In the mid-1960s, while Rickard was studying product design at Birmingham Art College, he met several like-minded science-fiction fans, particularly crediting fellow student Peter Weston's fan-produced Speculation magazine as helping him to "[learn] the art of putting together a fanzine," some years before he created his own. Attending a science-fiction convention in 1968, Rickard obtained Ace paperback copies of all four of Fort's books from a stall run by Derek Stokes (later to run Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed, and take a role in the day-to-day running of The Fortean Times). After reading an advertisement in the underground magazine Oz (in 1969) for the International Fortean Organization (INFO), an American group "founded in 1966... by Paul and Ronald Willis," who had acquired material from the original Fortean Society (started in 1931, but in limbo since the 1959 death of its founder Tiffany Thayer), Rickard began to correspond with the brothers, particularly Paul. Rickard was instrumental in encouraging the Willises to publish their own Fortean journal – the INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown began intermittent publication in spring, 1967 – and sent them many British newspaper clippings, although few came to print. Rickard later discovered that the production was fraught behind-the-scenes, as Ronald Willis had been seriously ill, Paul thus finding it difficult to "keep up with things" on his own. Ultimately, the Willises were instrumental in inspiring Rickard to create his own periodical. Ron Willis succumbed to a brain tumour in March 1975. Bearing a date of November 1973, the first issue of Rickard's self-produced and self-published The News was available directly from him. The News (1973–1976) The magazine which was to continue Fort's work documenting the unexplained was founded by Robert JM "Bob" Rickard in 1973 as his self-published, bimonthly, mail-order "hobbyish newsletter" miscellany The News — "A Miscellany of Fortean Curiosities". The title is said to be "a contraction taken from Samuel Butler's The News from Nowhere", (although Rickard may be conflating/confusing Butler's Erewhon and William Morris' News from Nowhere). The News had fairly regular bimonthly publication for 15 issues between November 1973 and April 1976. Debuting at 35p (£1.80/$4.50