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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Monday, December 12, 2011

DALE'S VITAL STATISTICS

BTW, I had not mentioned it yet but the Blog Frontiers of Zoology has now gotten over 200,000 page views and 200 postings for the year: 208,130 page views and 206 postings to be exact. (47 Followers)

Frontiers of Anthropology has now gotten over 100,000 page views and 100 postings for the year, and has not been running as long as the other: 101,836 page views and 121 postings to be exact. (43 Followers)

And the baby sister Blog Cedar and Willow has 10,584 page views and 83 postings, and it has only been up a few months now. (3 Followers)

{Followers Function disabled by some Blogger bug when Cedar and Willow started: no Followers have been added to any blogs since-which is most peculiar}

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

News and stories from the remoter fringes of the CFZ blogosphere...

From CFZ Australia:
From CFZ Canada:

HAUNTED SKIES: Daily Telegraph 27.11.53


OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 2006 it was announced that the Chinese river dolphin was likely extinct. Although one dolphin was videotaped in 2007 there are so few individuals left the species would never be able to recover.



And now the news:


The science and heartbreak of zoo romance
Head Butts & Waggle Dances: How Honeybees Make Dec...
'Bionic' cat survives multi-storey fall
Hen harriers 'on verge of extinction'
Sabah's proboscis monkeys in crisis
Black widows found in Bristol re-homed


And here is what was partially responsible for the extinction, the three gorges dam. It is a marvel of engineering and of Chinese ingenuity and very impressive… But I’d rather see dolphins:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8vBOzfkcdQ

SAY HELLO TO 'FORTEAN FICTION'


Here is an early Christmas present from CFZ Press; for about seven years now we have been publishing quality cryptozoological books, using those jolly nice people at Lightning Source. By far the vast majority of what we have published is non-fiction, but we have done a couple of novels over the years. On the whole, however, we have steered clear of fiction, mainly because we wanted to establish ourselves as an authoritative non-fiction publishing house. Well, with over 90 titles out now, I think that we have done that quite satisfactorily.

The idea of CFZ Press was never to make money, which is a very good thing considering that we haven't, but to publish books that we felt should be put out, but which might or might not have any commercial appeal. For the past few years we have been turning down the fiction that we have been offered, even though it was fiction that was well within the subject realms with which we deal. Earlier this year, someone - and for the life of me I cannot remember who it was, but I know it wasn't me - suggested that as we already have a second imprint 'Fortean Words' which deals with non cryptozoological subjects, and which has now put out about 10 books including our highly acclaimed Haunted Skies series on British UFOs, why couldn't we start an imprint especially for Fortean fiction. "I know", whoever it was said, "we could even call it 'Fortean Fiction'."

"What a bloody good idea," said someone else (and in this case the someone was me), and we made plans to launch the new imprint as and when we had enough quality material to do it. Well guess what boys and girls, four quality slices of Fortean fiction will be available within the next week or so. May I present:

GREEN UNPLEASANT LAND by Richard Freeman
I have known Richard for over 15 years now, and for much of that time we were housemates. I've always admired his fiction, and now - for the first time - he is publishing some in book form. This elegantly macabre collection of 18 horror stories is a real tour de force. He writes: "This book represents my own kicking back at the poor excuse for horror we have had to endure for so long. But my second reason for writing it was to showcase some odd and overlooked pieces of British folklore. Too often horror is stuck in the rut of using the same subjects and monsters, when in folklore there is a wealth of concepts and creatures that are rarely tapped into. My favourite era of Dr Who was that of the third doctor, played by Jon Pertwee, and I think that one of the reasons I liked it so much was that for much of Pertwee’s tenure in the title role, The Doctor was confined to earth, mostly Britain. So that is what I have done here: these eighteen stories are all set in Britain, either in the present day, or within living memory. Herein you will find dragons and hellhounds, goblins and killer rodents, unicorns and basilisks. There is a vampire story, but the creature in it bears scant resemblance to the popular, and totally wrong, public perception of them. I hope this book will open your eyes to the potential of horror. It is more than just teenaged vampires hanging around schools.”

Each story is illustrated with superb pictures from Shaun Histed-Todd.
 
DARK NESS by Tabitca Cope

This book is the first of a trilogy, and as the title implies, it is set at Loch Ness - probably the most famous cryptozoological location in the world. However, the book is not just about monster hunting. It is what I can only call a ripping yarn, populated by likeable and intriguing characters. One suspects that the doughty heroine Laura Loomis has not a little of the author in her make-up. The author was, after all, one of the original Loch Ness chicks back in the Seventies when it was still politically allowable to refer the young ladies as 'chicks'. Laura and her motley band of academics and students find themselves immersed in an oddly satisfying adventure involving an ancient British secret, Merlin the wizard, a British secret society which one suspects - although one is never told - is a linear descendant of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, some elegantly nasty neo-Nazi villains, and a plot which would not be out of place in a novel by Jack Higgins. I - for one - cannot wait to see what happens in the next two instalments.


LEFT BEHIND by Harriet Wadham

Harriet is one of those horribly intelligent and accomplished young ladies who are beginning to populate various parts of the CFZ. At the age when I - for one - spent most of my time fishing, or playing with toy soldiers, she has written her first novel, and jolly good it is too. She has taken the super-hero genre, and populated it with characters that really seem alive. Their super-powers are almost a distraction from their everyday lives. She has created a book full of engaging and intelligently written characters, who behave like real people and not like the two-dimensional caricatures, which so often populate books in this genre. Harriet is most certainly a talent to watch, and I look forward to, when in 10 years time she has won some famous literary prize, being able to say that not only was I one of the first people to notice her burgeoning talent, but that we were the first publishing house to get one of her books onto the market.



SNAP by Steven Bredice
When I visited Canada as a teenager, I heard a lot of stories about giant snapping turtles. It has been a subject that has always fascinated me, and - indeed - for the vast majority of the last quarter century I have had a pet snapping turtle of my own. Luckily - both for me, and for my family and friends - none of the aquatic reptiles that I have owned approach the size or temperament of the central character in this remarkable novel. There have been books about giant and out-of-place animals going amok, and rending and tearing their way through the human populations of a specific area for many years. Most of them are irritatingly formulaic, and can be dismissed fairly easily.


This book takes the genre into exciting new realms, and I can confidently predict that it is going to be immensely popular. It is far more philosophical, and indeed deep, than most books of this genre and cries out for a sequel.



A NOTE FROM DALE

I was just notified that "Typhon" had left a message on my old CFZ blogs that had mentioned Griffins and Arimaspai, and wondered how I could say that Griffens were ostriches. There was a problem when those old CFZ blogs were set up in that I did not approve the comments myself, Jon did, and so it could take years before I became aware of any certain comment if I wasn't careful. In this case, it did take years and the blog entry has already been printed up in last year's CFZ yearbook.

However if "Typhon" would like to email me privately we could get together on the subject after this long delay, and hopefully get a new blog to come out of it. As a matter of faxct, I do not consider the Griffin to be one thing but an amalgam of several things (typical of me as you should know by now!)

DALE DRINNON: Yet another genetic study that demolishes Aryan Invasion Theory!


I am reposting a blog which was sent to me in my email this morning:
http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/12/yet-another-genetic-study-that.html

CFZ CANADA: Canadian mystery black big cats

Robin presents a fascinating article on Canadian mystery black big cats.

Check it out...