Minor Forteans—Majors in their chosen professions.
In the mid- to late-1940s, Tiffany Thayer, secretary of the Fortean Society, was in an organizing mood. He’d soon enough give up on it and repudiate most of his ideas, and many of those he tried to bring into the Society’s fold, but for a fe years he was a downright evangelical Fortean. Among his organizational attempts was naming a number of so-called Accepted Fellows of the Fortean Society, AFFSes, as he would call them. These were people who were not necessarily members of the Fortean Society, but who nonetheless embodied some certain set of Fortean values.
Nominally, at least, nominations and votes came from the membership at large—and there is some evidence of that being the case, in that Thayer was not always happy with those who were proposed for Fellowship—but it is hard to say that was always the case. In part because the process was not transparent. In part because so often the nominees reflected Thayer’s particular version of what counted as Forteanism. That was the case with these three Accepted Fellows of the Fortean Society: the connections between them and Charles Fort are either so obscure as to be invisible or parallel certain of Thayer’s obsessions.
In the mid- to late-1940s, Tiffany Thayer, secretary of the Fortean Society, was in an organizing mood. He’d soon enough give up on it and repudiate most of his ideas, and many of those he tried to bring into the Society’s fold, but for a fe years he was a downright evangelical Fortean. Among his organizational attempts was naming a number of so-called Accepted Fellows of the Fortean Society, AFFSes, as he would call them. These were people who were not necessarily members of the Fortean Society, but who nonetheless embodied some certain set of Fortean values.
Nominally, at least, nominations and votes came from the membership at large—and there is some evidence of that being the case, in that Thayer was not always happy with those who were proposed for Fellowship—but it is hard to say that was always the case. In part because the process was not transparent. In part because so often the nominees reflected Thayer’s particular version of what counted as Forteanism. That was the case with these three Accepted Fellows of the Fortean Society: the connections between them and Charles Fort are either so obscure as to be invisible or parallel certain of Thayer’s obsessions.