Fortean Times, The

Life is so boring and predictable isn’t it? From cradle to grave life is just mundane event after mundane event. Childhood curiosity and imagination is seen crushed under sexual/hormone awakenings, money becomes our god. Science has the answers for everything and everything is under control. The News reports another conflict, another disaster a celebrity marriage (quickly followed by a messy divorce) Life just drags on with it’s daily grind. Is there no room for the out of place, the unexplainable, the bizarre and the outlandish? My answer of course there is. That’s why I say thanks to the writers and creators of the wonderful Fortean Times. A ...  Read the complete review

I have been subscribing to 'Fortean Times' magazine - the self-professed 'journal of strange phenomena' - gosh, since about 2001, now but sadly I been finding that the quality of the contents has really been declining in recent years. I did consider briefly the other possibility - that 'Fortean Times' has remained exactly the same and that I am - rather belatedly - growing up (by which I mean 'maturing in my outlook to the extent that I am no longer interested in tall tales of the supernatural, UFOs, etc.) - but having re-read through some of the stack of back issues I've accumulated over the years, no, I really think the magazine is in fact going down the ...  Read the complete review

I started reading this monthly magazine many years back - my mum used to buy it on a regular basis, and I had a couple of favourite sections of the magazine I found amusing . Nowadays, I read it from cover to cover each month. The word Fortean comes from the name of Charles Fort , an avid collector of strange news stories, particularly relating to the paranormal . Fort had a strong disregard for religion and science, branding them to narrow minded to allow for a lot of occurences. Fort was fascinated by tales of UFOS, aliens, ghosts and alien big cats , as well as alternative cultures and societies. The magazine is a mix of things - articles ...  Read the complete review

Charles Fort, than man from who the term 'Fortean' derives, was an obsessive American collector of strange tales and anomolies in the early 20th Century. His philosophy was to subscribe to no particular belief system, and to see both religion and science as rigid systems that ignored any information that didn't sit comfortably with their world views. This "damned data" was what Fort collected: tales of ghosts, strange lights, bizarre coincidences, falls of fish and frogs, and anything else reported in the press that was seemingly against nature. He was the first man to suggest UFOs may be piloted by beings from other worlds, and coined the word ...  Read the complete review

I've been with the Fortean Times since way back at issue 31. Over the years since then it has got more glossy, but it still never ceases to amaze me. This latest issue is no exception. Fortean Times is a monthly mag founded in 1973 to continue the work of Charles Fort, who, in the early part of the 20th Century was among the first to speculate that mysterious lights in the sky might be from outer space; coiner of the term "teleportation", and chronicler of all that these days are considered the realm of "The X Files". The magazine continues his tradition of reporting "damned" phenomena in an objective manner. The ...  Read the complete review