Saturday, May 23, 2009

Animals & Men issue 46 is complete

Finally, issue 46 of Animals & Men is completed, and will be on sale, and mailed out to subscribers in the next few weeks. We apologise about the delay, but after years of faffing around we have finally bitten the bullet and changed formats.

After sticking to basically the same format since we started in 1994, and having been completely the same format since 2003, we have changed completely. This new format of Animals & Men has been in the pipeline for a long time, but for various reasons we have always decided to maintain the status quo.

However, after we failed dismally to retrieve any semblance of a relationship with the people who have been leasing us printers for the past decade, after their service got worse and worse, and they became the sort of capitalists that you sincerely hope are going to go belly-up during the current recession. We never wanted to run a print shop anyway. It was not one of my better ideas, and we all let out a resounding huzzah as the hairy handed sons of toil removed the bloody thing out of the CFZ front gates, and we steadfastly refused to take delivery of the excessively expensive replacement that they tried to land us with.

There were a few weeks of unpleasantness during which they tried to insist that we pay the remainder of the lease (in complete contravention of the agreement that we had made at the beginning, they have finally just cancelled it all, and we are free of them.

So, we have decided that rather than get another photocopier and continue with the increasingly tedious business of making, collating, and messing about with the bloody things at home, we have bitten the bullet, and decided to turn the magazine into a proper journal and have it printed professionally by Lightning Source who do all our other books.

The changes in the postal system a few years ago also completely banjaxed our pricing system, and we have been waiting until the next format change to rejig our prices and subscriptions, so this seems to be as good a time as any.

For the past six years, Animals & Men has been 60pp in length. As of this issue we go up to 96pp (not counting the cover). OK, the last fifteen pages are the current CFZ Book List, and a four page blurb about the CFZ for all the thousands of you readers that I hope will start buying the magazine now it is available on Amazon. There is also a full colour pdf version available much cheaper as a download from the increasingly popular CFZ bloggo. So, finally, we have left our roots in the DIY Fanzine culture of the 1980s, and joined the 21st Century.
About bloody time.

The contents page of this issue reads:

4. Subscriptions
5. Editorial
7. Faculty of the CFZ
10. Weird Weekend 2009
11. Newsfile: New and Rediscovered
17. Newsfile: New and Rediscovered
in brief
22. Newsfile: Hoaxes
25. Newsfile Xtra: Tsuchinoko - An undiscovered pit viper?
27. Newsfile Xtra: The Beast of the Bay
31. Obituary: John Michell
32. Aquatic Monsters Log Book
(CFZ Aquatic Monster Study Group)
by Oll Lewis
37. Mystery Cat Diary
(CFZ Mystery Cat Study Group):
Mystery Cats of Michigan
by Raven Meindel
with an introduction
by Nick Redfern
39. Mystery Cat Diary
(CFZ Mystery Cat Study Group):
Cougars in Illinois
by Derek Gebner
40. Letter from America:
Cryptosquad USA
by Nick Redfern
42. Bigfoot Notebook
(CFZ BHM Study Group)
by Paul Vella
46. Unknown animals in the Pet Trade
by Max Blake
51. Mystery Animals of Flemish
Folklore Part One
by Neil Arnold
55. Another Mystery Cat in Hong Kong by Jon Downes and Richard Muirhead
60. The Moa you Know
by Oll Lewis
62. Moas for Sale
66. A whale of a tale
70. CFZ News
72. CFZ People
74. Letters to the Editor
76. Bookshelf
80. The Sycophant
82. Who we are and what we do
86. Books from CFZ Press

SUBSCRIPTIONS

For a 4-issue (one year) subscription:

£16 UK £18 EC
£30 US, Canada, Oz, NZ (airmail)
£35 Rest of World.

METHODS OF PAYMENT

  • Subscription rates INCLUDE postage.
  • Payment can be made in UK cash, Euro-cheque, or a cheque drawn on a UK bank. Cheques payable to `CFZ Trust`
  • Britain is one of the few countries in the world where US dollars do not circulate. If making payment in US$ then please add $14 to cover the currency exchange fee.
  • Payment by credit/debit card through our Paypal account (jon@eclipse.co.uk).
  • The CFZ Trust is registered as a non profit making organisation with HM Stamp Office. The trustees are J.Downes; R. Freeman & G.Inglis. Charitable status is pending

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