FT280

[paulsamotis]

My FT has just dropped through the letterbox, but what's this? TWO copies? And each one stops at page 36? Some mistake surely?
I want the rest of my mag!!

 

[ramonmercado]

My FT has just dropped through the letterbox, but what's this? TWO copies? And each one stops at page 36? Some mistake surely?
I want the rest of my mag!!

Following the riots all mags are subject to censorship. You get two copies to make up for the missing pages.

 

[Mal_Adjusted]

For those with missing pages and haven't seen the mag yet here's a brief glimpse at some of the contents.

Along with all the usual stuff there's:

Sea serpent
ice disc and a forest in a cave pix
GPS jamming
weird insertions
that thing in the Baltic
diving rods at hauntings
William Corliss obit
MoD's UFO files
Who wrote Shakespeare's stuff
Victorian Eureka machine
Texas Blue Dogs (good name for a band?)
Fortean stuff in old testament / Tanakh
Earth Mysteries pt1
musicians who died age 27

I notice FT is still carrying ad for Athena Books (publishers of vanity PoD titles) According to recent Private Eye Athena has gone into liquidation - can anyone confirm that?)

 

[47Forteans]

My FT has just dropped through the letterbox, but what's this? TWO copies? And each one stops at page 36? Some mistake surely?
I want the rest of my mag!!

Well, Fortean Times is noted for its weirdness!

 

[escargot]

My FT has just dropped through the letterbox, but what's this? TWO copies? And each one stops at page 36? Some mistake surely?
I want the rest of my mag!!

Oooh! Page 37 - what's this? Never saw anything like it in my LIFE. :shock:

 

[GNC]

That story about finding the two 35lb bags of sick in the space of a week, must have gone down like a two 35lb bags of cold sick. To coin a phrase.

The Shakespeare article was intriguing, I never knew how shaky the historical evidence for, er, Shakey was. This new film sounds a bit rubbish, though.

The ghostly cowboy looks like a trick of perspective, you can see the ear of his horse on the right hand side as you look at the photo. Could simply be that they never noticed Clint looming up behind them.

"Hotel Arse", what clientele could they possibly cater for?

 

[titch]

So nobody will admit to committing Shakespeare? if i was responsible i would play it down as well.

Did i read it wrong or did a man buy a basking shark for a private aquarium? would that be possible? have i finally lost it? seems very far fetched.

 

[GNC]

Did i read it wrong or did a man buy a basking shark for a private aquarium? would that be possible? have i finally lost it? seems very far fetched.

I wondered about that too! Does he have his own private sea? I don't think even ocean parks have their own basking sharks.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Mine turned up, yesterday.

The William Corliss obit. was interesting, if sad. I must check out more about the Sourcebook Project. Hunt Emerson's new strip looks promising.

 

[Analogue Boy]

I've been thinking that maybe I'll stop buying the FT for the past few months now as some of the feature articles have been overlong and tedious and not really gripping in a Fortean way. However, I purchased a copy last night.

As I started flicking through it, I had this rather odd feeling of Deja Vu as I recognised these stories from a while back. Then I looked at the dates. All but 2 of the EXTRA EXTRA! headline dates come from March 2011. One is even from December 2010. The Titanic 2 sideline was from June's Metro. Indeed, most of the other stories are from around May or June.

I'm pretty sure that the Co-op Walking Dead and Orit Fox's snake-killing breast has already been covered...or at least is a little past its use by date.

I know that FT is fond of recycling old news and it's a bit much to ask that spooky phenomena turn up throughout the year on demand but equally, I don't think March could have been sooooo spooky, we still haven't caught up with all the snippets.

I look forward to reading more on June's weirdness in the Xmas issue.

 

[GNC]

'Twas ever thus with the FT, wasn't it? If anything, they've gotten quicker off the mark with the big stories in recent years.

 

[47Forteans]

There have been the odd article where I've thought, "Hang on, this was printed in an earlier issue" in regards to a story, but I still think that for any of their faults, FT is still a damn good magazine! Beats the glossy woman's mags without question!

 

[liveinabin]

I think some of the problem is that we are now used to instant media and pictures like the CoOp Walking Dead poster will have done the rounds on twitter and facebook long before FT gets a chance to print it.

I have to say that I was not too impressed with this months issue either. It just didn't have that je ne sais quoi that make FT interesting.

 

[Analogue Boy]

I think some of the problem is that we are now used to instant media and pictures like the CoOp Walking Dead poster will have done the rounds on twitter and facebook long before FT gets a chance to print it.

I have to say that I was not too impressed with this months issue either. It just didn't have that je ne sais quoi that make FT interesting.

Very true and the subjects covered in the mag have usually been done and dusted here well before they reach print. I'm currently balancing the thought that while a good issue of the FT is a wonderful and unique magazine in the publishing world, £4.25 is becoming a little steep for regurgitated snippets from six months ago that have already spread across the world.

 

[lopaka]

After taking FT for ~15 years now, and the point about the difficulties in producing a monthly print magazine in the era of instant, constant media is not to be underestimated, it seems like I've 'always' gone through periods where I thought the mag was definitely on its way downhill, followed by times when I think it's firing on all cylinders, then back again. Honestly, without going through all my back issues, I've no idea whether to chalk that up to wherever I was in my life at the time versus the *objective* [!] quality of the issue(s).

That said, I'm rather liking this month's effort so far---Shakespeare authorship was quite interesting, Texas blue dogs was an entertaining read and provided some good research, the William Corliss obit was most excellent. I think it's always going to have a hit-and-miss quality----such is the nature of the beast. But I do know that if it went away completely, heaven forbid, I'd really miss it.

 

[47Forteans]

When it comes to the quality of FT, you can't please all of the people all of the time! There's bound to be people who will say "It was a well written issue" and others who will say "It was badly done, the mag's on its way out", and people who will say "It was its usual self".

 

[titch]

Back to basking sharks, a man buys a basking shark, arranges a way to deliver mega loads of plankton into his huge tank, the shark dies and he accepts a spider in exchange.... didn't he feel a tad ripped off?

 

[GNC]

Back to basking sharks, a man buys a basking shark, arranges a way to deliver mega loads of plankton into his huge tank, the shark dies and he accepts a spider in exchange.... didn't he feel a tad ripped off?

It's OK, it was a giant, man-eating spider big enough to fit the tank.

 

[liveinabin]

When it comes to the quality of FT, you can't please all of the people all of the time! There's bound to be people who will say "It was a well written issue" and others who will say "It was badly done, the mag's on its way out", and people who will say "It was its usual self".

Exactly. UFO stuff bores me to tears but some people love it.
Now I would like an issue of ghost stories and investigations but that would bore others.

Forteana is a very broad church.

 

[47Forteans]

When it comes to the quality of FT, you can't please all of the people all of the time! There's bound to be people who will say "It was a well written issue" and others who will say "It was badly done, the mag's on its way out", and people who will say "It was its usual self".

Exactly. UFO stuff bores me to tears but some people love it.
Now I would like an issue of ghost stories and investigations but that would bore others.

Forteana is a very broad church.

The appeal of FT is that it is such a wide reaching mag that there are bound to be what each reader thinks is duller than dishwater, while being thought of as brilliant by others...


Hmmm, just repeated myself there! But the point still stands. I could never read Nexus, or Woman's Weekly, because they don't have enough Forteana in them to keep me interested...

 

[Analogue Boy]

Forteana is a very broad church.

But not if it's the same Forteana over and over again. That's just dogma.

 

[randomcapitals]

Any other Australians having trouble receiving Fortean Times? This is the second month in a row mine's failed to arrive.
Government conspiracy? Alien abduction? Or just crap service from Australia Post?
What say you?

 

[Anome]

Probably got routed to Austria by mistake again.

Oddly enough, since I switched to the Zinio subscription, I've had no problems.

By which I mean, because I couldn't find out from anyone how many issues I had left on my subscription (due to the subsinfo website being broken) I switched early, and I've received the last couple of (paper) issues shortly after they appeared in the Zinio app.

So it's not an Australia-wide problem, then.

 

[randomcapitals]

Thanks Anome, looks like its just me then.
Have to look into immigrating to Austria to ensure regular delivery.

 

[47Forteans]

Well, for the second month running, my copy of FT has been rather late in arriving in Australia. I just put it down to bad service in all the postal services everywhere!

 

[chockfullahate]

Just picked up this issue in tesco, and it has pages between 36 and 46 missing, pissed off to say the least.

 

[Analogue Boy]

Just picked up this issue in tesco, and it has pages between 36 and 46 missing, pissed off to say the least.

Lucky you. I just picked up a plastic container of milk from Tescos that leaked spectacularly over my trousers. I complained and they said 'sorry, we'll deal with it right away' and immediately ran off to sort out the unfortunate and hemorrhaging dairy product.

And here was me thinking they didn't give a shit about the dairy industry.

 

[owenwhiteoak]

Replacement copies

Just picked up this issue in tesco, and it has pages between 36 and 46 missing, pissed off to say the least.

My apologies for this - as far as I know this one and Paulsamfreya at start of thread are the only faulty copies. I PM'd Paulsamfreya at the time but failed to notice that the PM for some reason was never sent - it's still sitting in my Outbox .

Any subscribers with this type of problem should go to www.subsinfo.co.uk to request a replacement. Any problems, email me. Chockfullahate – please email me at [email protected] and I will send a new one.

Again, sorry about this - inevitably there will be the occasional faulty copy coming off the press, which the printer's quality control should spot.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Problems with the pages after 36 may be a Fortean phenomenon in themselves, since P.36 is clearly headed "The Rest is Silence!" :shock:

I hate to rub it in but the pages some have missed include a fascinating Barry Baldwin piece on the Eureka Machine that automatically wrote Latin verses. It left me wanting a lot more detail but this piece of weird Victoriana was quite new to me.

The Shakespeare claimants article seemed to have nothing new to add to an old debate - a case of film tie-initis, I fear. The only people I've ever met who wanted to discuss the issue at any length proved wholly ignorant of the plays and poems themselves. Human interest story, I suppose.

 

[47Forteans]

Any other Australian still waiting for their copy to arrive? My copy hasn't arrived yet.