Friday, April 25, 2003

Forget Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country, with its insidiously camoflauged ads for credulous books and watered-down commentary.* Fortean Times is my kind of paranormal site: astute, funny and well-designed. (By the way, this isn't a paid ad for "Fortean Times." I'm sincerely tired of Strieber's good-looking but vacuous assault on the "unknown." There are truly excellent alternatives out there, some of which I've catalogued.)

Speaking of "Fortean Times," both my editor Patrick Huyghe (author of "The Field Guide to UFOs" and "The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials") and postmodern ufologist co-conspirator Colin Bennett ("Looking for Orthon," "Politics of the Imagination") attended the annual (?) Fortean UnConvention in England. According to an email I got from Colin, my name came up, so presumably Patrick likes what I've sent him so far. Patrick edited Colin's "Looking for Orthon," about flying saucer contactee George Adamski, which is how we got in touch in the first place: I wrote a review of Bennett's book (published by Paraview Press, of which Patrick is Editor-in-Chief).

The imprint taking on "After the Martian Apocalypse" is a chimera consisting of Paraview (which you may not of heard of, although their literary agency is responsible for Jewel's poetry book...) and Simon and Schuster's Pocket Books.

So there you have it. I have an indirect link with Jewel. I wish it could be with someone I like. Maybe Fiona Apple or Natalie Merchant.

*In Strieber's defense, he did include a link to my Mars site on his own...

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