WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

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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Wednesday, October 09, 2019

THE NEW VOLUME OF COLLECTED EDITIONS IS NOW AVAILABLE

Together with my glamorous assistant, the ever lovely Wally the Comedy Rhinoceros, I am proud to announce that you can now buy copies of the long awaited collected editions of Animals + Men at a special low price...




Yes, boys and girls, the lovely Wally has insisted that we knock two quid off the retail price, and slash the postage costs for people who order the magazine from this link.

Cor Blimey Guv'nor, we must be bonkers! What the Blinking Flip are we thinking? And yes, although the price is in UK Pounds Sterling (GBP) the offer remains the same all across the world. Those of you who live on other planets will have to contact Wally direct.

And just in case you need more details of this premium product...

Page Count: 322
Spine Width: 0.67310  in
Weight: 1.001  lbs

ISBN/SKU:9781909488601
ISBN Complete:978-1-909488-60-1

Although Animals +Men had been available in hard copy for twenty years by then, we made the decision to publish it for free as an online flip-book, as well as publishing it, perfect bound, in the more traditional format. This was a great success, but sales of the traditional format continued to fall and – eventually – it got to the stage that it was no longer even partially viable to publish individual issues in hard copy.

Although the business ethic of CFZ Press (if you can actually call it that) was never profit orientated, it had been designed around the more traditional publishing models, and as these speedily began to change, our profit margin (such as it was) vanished like a sandcastle at high tide. So, we had to drastically rethink what we were doing and how we were doing it. And so, reluctantly, the decision was made to eschew publishing individual issues in hard copy, and to publish omnibus collections in book form.

Coming imminently, a little later than we had hoped, is the first of these collections. I hope that you enjoy it, and find it interesting.

I am particularly proud of what I have achieved in the last twenty-five years of Animals & Men. It is not only – as far as I am aware – the longest standing cryptozoological publication in the English speaking world, but it espouses a model of cryptozoology that places it well within the remit of the natural sciences, rather than as some peculiar branch of paranormal research. This is something that I, and the other leading lights of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, feel is utterly important, because – in our opinion – the internecine squabbles which take place across the internet about such hot topics as to whether ‘bigfoot has a cloaking device’ or whether ‘alien big cats are actually extraterrestrial in origin’ are completely counter-productive, and do nothing except to drag what little good name cryptozoology still has through the gutter. Cryptozoology is not, or at least should not be, the study of ghosts, phantoms, or semi-decomposed dead raccoons, and – from the beginning – the CFZ has done its best to foster an environment where cryptids are seen as real animals, and studied on that basis.

But, of course, we are not the Centre for Mystery Zoology. We are the Centre for Fortean Zoology.

From the beginning, I have always been interested in the stranger and non-animate phenomena that pepper our cultural psyche. Indeed, much though I have spent the last twenty-five years trying to impress upon people that cryptozoology should be seen as a very real branch of the natural sciences, the book for which I am best known is – of course – my exhaustive look at the Cornish Owlman. It is this dichotomy; Flesh and Blood Cryptid vs. Zooform Phenomena that has fuelled the way that the Centre for Fortean Zoology has thought and acted over the past quarter century. And, I believe, it is reflected successfully in the contents of this long overdue book.


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