Donn Brazier shows just how imbricated science fiction fandom and Forteanism could be in the 1940s.
Brazier was born Donald Pail Brazier 4 October 1917 to William and Bessie Brazier of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. William, from Minnesota, was a teacher at a public school; Bessie, from Iowa, had no occupation, at least according to the 1920 census. They were married earlier that year, when William was 23 and Bessie was 19. William was not drafted into the Great War. By 1930, the family expanded, Berton having been born around 1921 and Orpha around 1926. William now listed his job as vocational teacher.
Donn, as he became known, found science fiction relatively young: he had a letter printed in Amazing Stories April 1931 issue, when he was only thirteen. He would later have letters in Weird Tales, Unknown, and Astounding. Around the time of his 20th birthday, while he was in college, he became more actively involved with the burgeoning fandom, associated with Claire Beck and Robert Lowndes in the publication of “The Science Fiction Critic” (which would inspire James Blish to do rigorous, literary criticisms of science fiction).
In 1940, Donn was still living at home finishing his college career, and bridging the worlds of fandom and Forteanism. Paul Klingbiel, of West Bend, Wisconsin, one of Brazier’s friends, was trying to list all those things science did not know. He wrote,
“The answer suddenly emerged in complete detail. I whooped with joy! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Had I not collected a few quotations from books I had read, and did not those quotations, in the final analysis, show what science did not know? Obviously the thing to do was to was to expand this idea. What I needed was not a passive recognition of thought-provoking material, but an active search for such material. Since there was no one book I had found that could tell me what science did not yet know, I would attempt to make such a book myself.
“One year later I proudly pointed to 25 typewritten pages of quotations, all of which told what science did not know about as yet. This collection, which I titled “Think It Over”, Volume 1, settled the question completely to my satisfaction. There was still much that science did not know; in fact, it sometimes appeared as though science had only begun. I had not been born too late!”
As he became more involved with his search, Klingbiel thought that science might not know anything at all: “Science may demonstrate, it is true, that absolute truth and reality do exist, but science itself is not that reality and that truth.”
Along these lines, Klingbiel and Brazier decided to form “The Frontier Society,” which would focus on issues of science and philosophy; but the society was also wedded to science fiction, as announcements for the society were sent to science fiction magazines (appearing in Wonder and Amazing, but refused by Astounding). Thirteen members joined. In July of 1940, the first issue (of seven) appeared. (Brazier would be editor for four.) The lead issue announced:
“The Frontier Society...is composed...of science-fiction and fantasy fans who are interested in science and philosophy, and who have the desire to probe the unknown frontiers of these fields in so far as they are able... The frontiers of science are changing at an accelerated rate. We feel that the time is ripe for a group of fans to devote their energies to the better understanding of this eternal change.
“The Frontier Society is that group, and Frontier is the bulletin dedicated to the dissemination of the society’s research into this eternal change in science and philosophy.
“This, then, is our relation to science; and we are not ‘just another fan club.’ We believe we are a unique effort in the science-fiction world; and there is no tried and true path which we must follow. We have a clear, exciting field ahead of us. We travel through virgin territory.
“Watch us!”
In true Fortean style, the cover was printed with orange jello.
Through 1942, the Frontier Society—and Brazier—would tack back and forth between fandom and Forteanism. Only in issue three, dated November 1940, did he suggest the main Fortean method, clipping weird stories from newspapers:
“Whenever I see an interesting newspaper item, I try to remember to cut it out. In the last few weeks you may have read about the fateful beard, the man who slept nine years with a mummy, the comet that will be visible in November and December, the conjunction of the moon, Jupiter, and Saturn. It seems to me that a department composed of interesting news with a connection to s-f, science, or fantasy might be very well-liked. I want to know if any reader saves such clippings, or would like to start right now, and report to FRONTIER?”
The request went out to eighteen members. Other fanzines, though, were interested in swapping issues with him, rather than paying the subscription price—a standard fan practice—but Brazier was thinking otherwise, afraid that by swapping he would lose potential subscribers (what with the issues being passed around other science fiction clubs). As well, when Ralph Milne Farley invited the Frontier Society to join the Milwaukee Fictioneers (which had been home to Raymond A. Palmer and Fredric Brown), Brazier made it clear that the Frontier Society was not a science fiction Club. And, indeed, Klingbiel wrote a two issue review of Oswald Spengler, making clear that the Society was still interested in philosophy.
But, as Harry Warner notes, other bits of the ‘zine were pure fan. There were discussions of H.P. Lovecraft and quizzes on his writing. Clifford Simak explained how he wrote science fiction. There were short stories. And the ubiquitous Forest Ackerman published on the coming age of Esperanto. At the same time, Brazier was appearing in Fantasite, the a Minneapolis-based ‘zine, and was the 11th member of the National Fantasy Fan Federation (out of 64). He was also close with the Los Angeles fan Arthur Louis Joquel, the two of them supposedly inventing the abbreviation FMZ for fan magazine. (Joquel published a ‘zine by this name in the early 1940s.)
Mundane matters interfered with the search for the anomalous. Brazier, who was then a teacher, as his father had been, enlisted in the AS Army Air Corps as a private on 6 August 1941. He attended officer’s school, and came out a lieutenant, beginning his service in June 1942. (Articles of his continued to appear in Fantasite.) Harry Warner has it that brazier subsequently dropped out of fandom completely; he also has Brazier as “one of the most intently serious fans in history.” Written in 1959, both estimations are wrong—or at least limited: during the war he showed, to Tiffany Thayer at least, a sense of humor; and Brazier came back to fandom (and Forteanism) after he left the service (as a major).
Likely, Brazier had come across Fort in the 1930s—if only with the serialization of Lo! in Astounding—I have not come across explicit connections between the two names—Brazier and Fort—before 1943. That was the year that Thayer listed Brazier among science fiction fans who were also Forteans. (Jack Speer’s fan encyclopedia called Frontier a Fortean organization, but that came out in 1944.) In 1945, while in the Marianas, Brazier had a letter published in Doubt. He started out complaining about the circular reasoning that infected evolutionary theorizing: evolutionists, he said, claimed that embryonic development repeated evolutionary history—famously epitomized as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Which was fine enough, he admitted, except that they then went on to claim that the recapitulation was evidence of evolution, embryonic development thus evidence for and proof of evolution. This was a reference to Thayer’s call on some Fortean to debunk conventional evolutionary theories in Doubt 12.
At least in the printed letter, Brazier then shifted to another Fortean favorite, also referenced by Thayer in an earlier issue of Doubt, the so-called Lonc Constant. Thayer had reported how a father and son team (both Frank Lonc) had inspected any number of natural phenomena, from bodily measurements to the weights of elements and the distance between astronomical bodies, and found that the rations always revealed the same constant: 1.618.
Brazier did his own measurements, and found otherwise.. In a wickedly funny reductio absurdum, he measured the bodies of various pin-up models strung up around his military encampment, and found that they did not follow Lonc’s constant at all, but rather more closely hewed to the so-called Golden Ratio. He then became more serious, quoting a number of different technical sources which discussed the varying measurements of atomic weights—a typical Fortean maneuver, showing the inconsistencies of measurement, to pull the rug out from underneath Lonc, undermining the data that supported his reasoning.
After Doubt 13 appeared in the winter of 1945, Brazier recommended the magazine to Walter Dunkelberger, a fan putting out an important ‘zine in Fargo, North Dakota. Number 242 of Fanews (25 November) carried the notice:
“Donn Brazier reports that DOUBT, Fortean Society mag, carries items of stf interest. Some notes by Art Joquel II; Derleth and Arkham House; Some new law of physics that questions Newton’s third law; (this was discovered by a 4 1/2 year old); A note about Cahill’s Butterfly map (method of laying out the world on paper and still keeping it in correct proportions) being copied by orthodox map mares without giving Cahill credit and an article by Lt. B.F. Pinkerton questioning whether the atomic bomb actually splits atoms or is just a high explosive. The Fortean Society address is Box 192, Grand Central Annex, New York City (17).”
Brazier also wrote a column for that issue of Fanews.
After the war, Brazier returned to Milwaukee, getting a job as scientific assistant at the Milwaukee Public Museum, where he helped modernize the museum’s educational outreach. In the late 1940s, about 42,000 public and parochial students visited as part of an educational program. Brazier helped replace the lantern-slide lectures with movies and also started allowing the kids to touch some of the exhibited items. Tired of watching the museum discard extra material, in 1951 he started a trading post at the museum, where kids could bring in something of theirs and swap it for a museum extra. Brazier hoped that kids could then start on a new hobby—collecting rocks or stamps. Non-educational toys, comic books, and weapons were not allowed as barter—except int he case that one kid brought a live grenade from home, and the museum exchanged it for something less explosive. Brazier would stay with museums all his professional life, moving to St. Louis in 1959 where he joined what was then-called the Museum of Science and Natural History (later rechristened The St. Louis Science Center).
Brazier also returned to fandom and Forteanism—those other kinds of collecting hobbys. In May 1946, he put out the ‘zine Googol under the aegis of the Vanguard Amateur Press Association. (VAPA was associated with the New York science fiction group The Futurians, and particularly Robert Lowndes and the Blishes, Jim and Virginia Kidd.) Later in that spring or summer, he published the ‘zine Embers on a (mostly weekly) basis, continuing at least through February 1947. (There were no less than 33 issues.) In addition, he continued to be mentioned by Fanews. The year 1946 also saw Brazier joining with fans Philip Schuman (who had edited the fifth issue of Frontier), Bob Stein, Robert Bloch, and others to form the Neoterics, the name taken from Theodore Sturgeon’s 1941 story “The Microcosmic God.”
The two ‘zines produced by Brazier in this post-war outburst both continued his fascination with fandom and Forteanism (or, as he saw it, the conjunctions between science and philosophy). In the former category, Gogol, for example, took on James Blish’s ideas about jazz music. And Embers discussed perennial fandom subjects Esperanto, ‘zine publications, Lovecraft, and gossip. The publication schedule of Arkham House. There was the usual back and forth between fans through letters. Brazier also displayed an affection for James Branch Cabell.
The latter category—the category of Forteanism—cropped up in Googol and never really disappeared, even as it was also never the dominant subject. In Googol, Brazier reviewed Samuel Roth’s “The Peep-Hole of the Present,” a bad mixture of Einstein, Eddington, and Fort—which the Saturday Review suggested may be one of the worst books ever written—finding ideas worthy of mulling and calling particular attention to Roth’s use of Fort. Embers was even more devoted to Forteana.
Embers started almost like a Doubt that was more geared toward discussion. Brazier did not title articles, but numbered paragraph, making it easy for correspondents to refer to subjects (“in regards to #8. . . ” or “As mentioned in #27 . . .”). Many of these were straight Fortean topics: falling frogs, vegetation and Mars, mysteries of the Northern lights, the pyramids, idols that could not be photographed. Tesla. Some of Brazier’s humor peeked out here, too. He commented on the so-called Vortex houses in Santa Cruz and Oregon—really just optical illusions, which he understood—that it was odd how the earth’s strangest spot kept moving. Klingbiel sent in lots of material. So did another Fortean, George Wetzel, who, inter alia, recommended Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled: “I think you’ll find a gold mine of outré facts and assumptions in this book.” There were stories of rocketships above Mt. Shasta, thought by some to be the last refuge of the Lemurians—or home to the Shaver Mystery deros. In issue 5 (27 July 1946), Brazier pointed readers toward Thayer’s Doubt (in this case, number 15):
“Doubt is chuck full of interesting and thought provoking items, a great many of them sent in by Eric F. Russell, the ‘Sinister Barrier’ man. The cover shows some mysterious footprints: what made them? I think I’ll take it down to the museum and let the zoologists ponder over the tracks. There are some interesting sallies about the recent radar contact with the moon. A definition of STUDY is given as ‘the process of finding out which questions have no answers.’ Korzybski comes in for some over due praise, for Thayer (editor of DOUBT) admits that previously he had said that ‘an essentially simple subject was being perverted, obfuscated and purposely made difficult, for the chief reason of providing an income for Korzybski.’ E. Hoffman Price even contributes several columns on the subject of translators ad their errors.”
K. Martin Carlson, a fan and contributor, said, “I think it is a swell idea to come out with strange facts and ideas. Many of the fen do not hear of these things.”
Not all fen, though, were happy with the Fortean material preferring their science fiction unalloyed with mystery-mongering and speculative philosophy. D. B. Thompson thought that the material on pyramids was no better than the Shaver mystery—hogwash presented as fact. Harry Warner (who by 1959 must have forgotten he corresponded with Ember) agreed. Jack Speer said, I don’t think the energy spent in digging up and publishing odd fragments of all sorts does much good, and the time were better spent in systematic study and research. However, as Ember takes on a more general character, it has quite a bit of materials that interests me.” He thought the Vortex houses were hoaxes and doubted that winds were strong enough to lift frogs. He also thought that Thayer’s definition of study was inadequate. Brazier responded, “This is a hobby, old man, not my ‘life’s work.’”
And, indeed, Forteanism was not Brazier’s life work. Nor was fandom. Apparently, museumship crowded out his hobby during the middle part of the century. He seems to have stopped all fan and Fortean activity by 1948. A 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has him selling off his entire collection of science fiction magazines. He did eventually return to fan activity in the 1970s, apparently one of the first to use a photocopier to reproduce his ‘zine, but by that point Forteanism seems to have dropped out of his repertoire: it was no longer a hobby, no longer something worth collecting. But the mixture of Forteanism and fan activity in the 1940s created some interesting combinations.
The intertwining of fan interests and Fortean interests can be seen in a story that started in the second issue of Ember. Klingbiel had read the travel diary “Altai-Himalaya,” which mentioned the abominable snowman and, he thought, might be the source of H.P. Lovecraft’s “Mi-Go”: so both a Fortean topic and a fannish one. In the next issue, K. Marton Carlson endorsed this direction for Ember—see above quote—and suggested that Raymond A. Palmer might be interested in the connection, as the story of the snowmen might, in some way, be connected to the Shaver mystery. Right around the same time—the summer of 1946—the 15th number of Doubt appeared, and it had a strange trackway on its cover. These were the “Devil’s Hoofmarks,” and they were recorded by Eric Frank Russell on a snow-covered hill in Belgium. He followed them, but couldn’t find their maker, and locals could not explain them. Pure Forteana, then, Russell concluded. Although, he mused, they “weren’t as dramatic as Gould’s” and he couldn’t photograph them “as Smythe did those prints of the Abominable Snowmen in the Himalayas.” Brazier mentioned this issue of Doubt in the 27th July number of Embers (#5), but didn't connect it to his own earlier reporters until 24 August (Embers #10). Who is this Gould?, Brazier asked, and is Smythe the same guy who wrote “Altai-Himalaya”? The 6 October issue (Ember #16) had a letter from Al.L. Joquel. He had checked Fort’s book for mention of the footprints and found nothing, but he had discovered Gould’s identity: it was Rupert Gould, who had published a couple of pre-Fort books on anomalous events. And so a question about Lovecraft’s sources had turned up a new book to feed interest in philosophy, science, and science’s limits.
Such investigations could also be more topical. Early on in Embers, there was some consideration of the baleful effects of atomic fallout, the subject itself somewhat Fortean, in that the consequences of exposure were unknown and pointed to science’s overreach. This discussion, though, was soon shuffled off to one of Joquel’s publications, as he was making atomic consequences one of his main subjects. Rockets, though, remained a covered subject in Embers, for their obvious science fiction connections, their role in current science—especially space travel—and also because they pressed up against one of Fort’s main cosmological claims: that the planets were close, new lands rather than new worlds.
Robert L. Farnsworth was the correspondent chiefly interested in rockets. He was a fan from Chicago, head of the U.S. Rocket Society, publisher of its Rockets and champion of rockets as a new path to empire. Brazier mentioned Farnsworth as early as the fourth issue of Embers, included him on the priority mailing list for the ‘zine, and ran advertisements for his society and its publications. Farnsworth could come across as self-promoting—he sent an autographed headshot of himself to Brazier—and Jack Speer, for one, did not like his ‘flag-waving’ patriotism. But when Farnsworth and Brazier met, Farnsworth impressed Brazier as having important government contacts. Even so, Brazier ran an article by the astronomer R.S. Richardson which suggested—in great technical detail—that Farnsworth’s science was shoddy. So was the idea of rocket ships to the moon a Fortean fantasy? Or would it blast through the Fortean fantasy of a tiny solar system?
Brazier was born Donald Pail Brazier 4 October 1917 to William and Bessie Brazier of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. William, from Minnesota, was a teacher at a public school; Bessie, from Iowa, had no occupation, at least according to the 1920 census. They were married earlier that year, when William was 23 and Bessie was 19. William was not drafted into the Great War. By 1930, the family expanded, Berton having been born around 1921 and Orpha around 1926. William now listed his job as vocational teacher.
Donn, as he became known, found science fiction relatively young: he had a letter printed in Amazing Stories April 1931 issue, when he was only thirteen. He would later have letters in Weird Tales, Unknown, and Astounding. Around the time of his 20th birthday, while he was in college, he became more actively involved with the burgeoning fandom, associated with Claire Beck and Robert Lowndes in the publication of “The Science Fiction Critic” (which would inspire James Blish to do rigorous, literary criticisms of science fiction).
In 1940, Donn was still living at home finishing his college career, and bridging the worlds of fandom and Forteanism. Paul Klingbiel, of West Bend, Wisconsin, one of Brazier’s friends, was trying to list all those things science did not know. He wrote,
“The answer suddenly emerged in complete detail. I whooped with joy! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Had I not collected a few quotations from books I had read, and did not those quotations, in the final analysis, show what science did not know? Obviously the thing to do was to was to expand this idea. What I needed was not a passive recognition of thought-provoking material, but an active search for such material. Since there was no one book I had found that could tell me what science did not yet know, I would attempt to make such a book myself.
“One year later I proudly pointed to 25 typewritten pages of quotations, all of which told what science did not know about as yet. This collection, which I titled “Think It Over”, Volume 1, settled the question completely to my satisfaction. There was still much that science did not know; in fact, it sometimes appeared as though science had only begun. I had not been born too late!”
As he became more involved with his search, Klingbiel thought that science might not know anything at all: “Science may demonstrate, it is true, that absolute truth and reality do exist, but science itself is not that reality and that truth.”
Along these lines, Klingbiel and Brazier decided to form “The Frontier Society,” which would focus on issues of science and philosophy; but the society was also wedded to science fiction, as announcements for the society were sent to science fiction magazines (appearing in Wonder and Amazing, but refused by Astounding). Thirteen members joined. In July of 1940, the first issue (of seven) appeared. (Brazier would be editor for four.) The lead issue announced:
“The Frontier Society...is composed...of science-fiction and fantasy fans who are interested in science and philosophy, and who have the desire to probe the unknown frontiers of these fields in so far as they are able... The frontiers of science are changing at an accelerated rate. We feel that the time is ripe for a group of fans to devote their energies to the better understanding of this eternal change.
“The Frontier Society is that group, and Frontier is the bulletin dedicated to the dissemination of the society’s research into this eternal change in science and philosophy.
“This, then, is our relation to science; and we are not ‘just another fan club.’ We believe we are a unique effort in the science-fiction world; and there is no tried and true path which we must follow. We have a clear, exciting field ahead of us. We travel through virgin territory.
“Watch us!”
In true Fortean style, the cover was printed with orange jello.
Through 1942, the Frontier Society—and Brazier—would tack back and forth between fandom and Forteanism. Only in issue three, dated November 1940, did he suggest the main Fortean method, clipping weird stories from newspapers:
“Whenever I see an interesting newspaper item, I try to remember to cut it out. In the last few weeks you may have read about the fateful beard, the man who slept nine years with a mummy, the comet that will be visible in November and December, the conjunction of the moon, Jupiter, and Saturn. It seems to me that a department composed of interesting news with a connection to s-f, science, or fantasy might be very well-liked. I want to know if any reader saves such clippings, or would like to start right now, and report to FRONTIER?”
The request went out to eighteen members. Other fanzines, though, were interested in swapping issues with him, rather than paying the subscription price—a standard fan practice—but Brazier was thinking otherwise, afraid that by swapping he would lose potential subscribers (what with the issues being passed around other science fiction clubs). As well, when Ralph Milne Farley invited the Frontier Society to join the Milwaukee Fictioneers (which had been home to Raymond A. Palmer and Fredric Brown), Brazier made it clear that the Frontier Society was not a science fiction Club. And, indeed, Klingbiel wrote a two issue review of Oswald Spengler, making clear that the Society was still interested in philosophy.
But, as Harry Warner notes, other bits of the ‘zine were pure fan. There were discussions of H.P. Lovecraft and quizzes on his writing. Clifford Simak explained how he wrote science fiction. There were short stories. And the ubiquitous Forest Ackerman published on the coming age of Esperanto. At the same time, Brazier was appearing in Fantasite, the a Minneapolis-based ‘zine, and was the 11th member of the National Fantasy Fan Federation (out of 64). He was also close with the Los Angeles fan Arthur Louis Joquel, the two of them supposedly inventing the abbreviation FMZ for fan magazine. (Joquel published a ‘zine by this name in the early 1940s.)
Mundane matters interfered with the search for the anomalous. Brazier, who was then a teacher, as his father had been, enlisted in the AS Army Air Corps as a private on 6 August 1941. He attended officer’s school, and came out a lieutenant, beginning his service in June 1942. (Articles of his continued to appear in Fantasite.) Harry Warner has it that brazier subsequently dropped out of fandom completely; he also has Brazier as “one of the most intently serious fans in history.” Written in 1959, both estimations are wrong—or at least limited: during the war he showed, to Tiffany Thayer at least, a sense of humor; and Brazier came back to fandom (and Forteanism) after he left the service (as a major).
Likely, Brazier had come across Fort in the 1930s—if only with the serialization of Lo! in Astounding—I have not come across explicit connections between the two names—Brazier and Fort—before 1943. That was the year that Thayer listed Brazier among science fiction fans who were also Forteans. (Jack Speer’s fan encyclopedia called Frontier a Fortean organization, but that came out in 1944.) In 1945, while in the Marianas, Brazier had a letter published in Doubt. He started out complaining about the circular reasoning that infected evolutionary theorizing: evolutionists, he said, claimed that embryonic development repeated evolutionary history—famously epitomized as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Which was fine enough, he admitted, except that they then went on to claim that the recapitulation was evidence of evolution, embryonic development thus evidence for and proof of evolution. This was a reference to Thayer’s call on some Fortean to debunk conventional evolutionary theories in Doubt 12.
At least in the printed letter, Brazier then shifted to another Fortean favorite, also referenced by Thayer in an earlier issue of Doubt, the so-called Lonc Constant. Thayer had reported how a father and son team (both Frank Lonc) had inspected any number of natural phenomena, from bodily measurements to the weights of elements and the distance between astronomical bodies, and found that the rations always revealed the same constant: 1.618.
Brazier did his own measurements, and found otherwise.. In a wickedly funny reductio absurdum, he measured the bodies of various pin-up models strung up around his military encampment, and found that they did not follow Lonc’s constant at all, but rather more closely hewed to the so-called Golden Ratio. He then became more serious, quoting a number of different technical sources which discussed the varying measurements of atomic weights—a typical Fortean maneuver, showing the inconsistencies of measurement, to pull the rug out from underneath Lonc, undermining the data that supported his reasoning.
After Doubt 13 appeared in the winter of 1945, Brazier recommended the magazine to Walter Dunkelberger, a fan putting out an important ‘zine in Fargo, North Dakota. Number 242 of Fanews (25 November) carried the notice:
“Donn Brazier reports that DOUBT, Fortean Society mag, carries items of stf interest. Some notes by Art Joquel II; Derleth and Arkham House; Some new law of physics that questions Newton’s third law; (this was discovered by a 4 1/2 year old); A note about Cahill’s Butterfly map (method of laying out the world on paper and still keeping it in correct proportions) being copied by orthodox map mares without giving Cahill credit and an article by Lt. B.F. Pinkerton questioning whether the atomic bomb actually splits atoms or is just a high explosive. The Fortean Society address is Box 192, Grand Central Annex, New York City (17).”
Brazier also wrote a column for that issue of Fanews.
After the war, Brazier returned to Milwaukee, getting a job as scientific assistant at the Milwaukee Public Museum, where he helped modernize the museum’s educational outreach. In the late 1940s, about 42,000 public and parochial students visited as part of an educational program. Brazier helped replace the lantern-slide lectures with movies and also started allowing the kids to touch some of the exhibited items. Tired of watching the museum discard extra material, in 1951 he started a trading post at the museum, where kids could bring in something of theirs and swap it for a museum extra. Brazier hoped that kids could then start on a new hobby—collecting rocks or stamps. Non-educational toys, comic books, and weapons were not allowed as barter—except int he case that one kid brought a live grenade from home, and the museum exchanged it for something less explosive. Brazier would stay with museums all his professional life, moving to St. Louis in 1959 where he joined what was then-called the Museum of Science and Natural History (later rechristened The St. Louis Science Center).
Brazier also returned to fandom and Forteanism—those other kinds of collecting hobbys. In May 1946, he put out the ‘zine Googol under the aegis of the Vanguard Amateur Press Association. (VAPA was associated with the New York science fiction group The Futurians, and particularly Robert Lowndes and the Blishes, Jim and Virginia Kidd.) Later in that spring or summer, he published the ‘zine Embers on a (mostly weekly) basis, continuing at least through February 1947. (There were no less than 33 issues.) In addition, he continued to be mentioned by Fanews. The year 1946 also saw Brazier joining with fans Philip Schuman (who had edited the fifth issue of Frontier), Bob Stein, Robert Bloch, and others to form the Neoterics, the name taken from Theodore Sturgeon’s 1941 story “The Microcosmic God.”
The two ‘zines produced by Brazier in this post-war outburst both continued his fascination with fandom and Forteanism (or, as he saw it, the conjunctions between science and philosophy). In the former category, Gogol, for example, took on James Blish’s ideas about jazz music. And Embers discussed perennial fandom subjects Esperanto, ‘zine publications, Lovecraft, and gossip. The publication schedule of Arkham House. There was the usual back and forth between fans through letters. Brazier also displayed an affection for James Branch Cabell.
The latter category—the category of Forteanism—cropped up in Googol and never really disappeared, even as it was also never the dominant subject. In Googol, Brazier reviewed Samuel Roth’s “The Peep-Hole of the Present,” a bad mixture of Einstein, Eddington, and Fort—which the Saturday Review suggested may be one of the worst books ever written—finding ideas worthy of mulling and calling particular attention to Roth’s use of Fort. Embers was even more devoted to Forteana.
Embers started almost like a Doubt that was more geared toward discussion. Brazier did not title articles, but numbered paragraph, making it easy for correspondents to refer to subjects (“in regards to #8. . . ” or “As mentioned in #27 . . .”). Many of these were straight Fortean topics: falling frogs, vegetation and Mars, mysteries of the Northern lights, the pyramids, idols that could not be photographed. Tesla. Some of Brazier’s humor peeked out here, too. He commented on the so-called Vortex houses in Santa Cruz and Oregon—really just optical illusions, which he understood—that it was odd how the earth’s strangest spot kept moving. Klingbiel sent in lots of material. So did another Fortean, George Wetzel, who, inter alia, recommended Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled: “I think you’ll find a gold mine of outré facts and assumptions in this book.” There were stories of rocketships above Mt. Shasta, thought by some to be the last refuge of the Lemurians—or home to the Shaver Mystery deros. In issue 5 (27 July 1946), Brazier pointed readers toward Thayer’s Doubt (in this case, number 15):
“Doubt is chuck full of interesting and thought provoking items, a great many of them sent in by Eric F. Russell, the ‘Sinister Barrier’ man. The cover shows some mysterious footprints: what made them? I think I’ll take it down to the museum and let the zoologists ponder over the tracks. There are some interesting sallies about the recent radar contact with the moon. A definition of STUDY is given as ‘the process of finding out which questions have no answers.’ Korzybski comes in for some over due praise, for Thayer (editor of DOUBT) admits that previously he had said that ‘an essentially simple subject was being perverted, obfuscated and purposely made difficult, for the chief reason of providing an income for Korzybski.’ E. Hoffman Price even contributes several columns on the subject of translators ad their errors.”
K. Martin Carlson, a fan and contributor, said, “I think it is a swell idea to come out with strange facts and ideas. Many of the fen do not hear of these things.”
Not all fen, though, were happy with the Fortean material preferring their science fiction unalloyed with mystery-mongering and speculative philosophy. D. B. Thompson thought that the material on pyramids was no better than the Shaver mystery—hogwash presented as fact. Harry Warner (who by 1959 must have forgotten he corresponded with Ember) agreed. Jack Speer said, I don’t think the energy spent in digging up and publishing odd fragments of all sorts does much good, and the time were better spent in systematic study and research. However, as Ember takes on a more general character, it has quite a bit of materials that interests me.” He thought the Vortex houses were hoaxes and doubted that winds were strong enough to lift frogs. He also thought that Thayer’s definition of study was inadequate. Brazier responded, “This is a hobby, old man, not my ‘life’s work.’”
And, indeed, Forteanism was not Brazier’s life work. Nor was fandom. Apparently, museumship crowded out his hobby during the middle part of the century. He seems to have stopped all fan and Fortean activity by 1948. A 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has him selling off his entire collection of science fiction magazines. He did eventually return to fan activity in the 1970s, apparently one of the first to use a photocopier to reproduce his ‘zine, but by that point Forteanism seems to have dropped out of his repertoire: it was no longer a hobby, no longer something worth collecting. But the mixture of Forteanism and fan activity in the 1940s created some interesting combinations.
The intertwining of fan interests and Fortean interests can be seen in a story that started in the second issue of Ember. Klingbiel had read the travel diary “Altai-Himalaya,” which mentioned the abominable snowman and, he thought, might be the source of H.P. Lovecraft’s “Mi-Go”: so both a Fortean topic and a fannish one. In the next issue, K. Marton Carlson endorsed this direction for Ember—see above quote—and suggested that Raymond A. Palmer might be interested in the connection, as the story of the snowmen might, in some way, be connected to the Shaver mystery. Right around the same time—the summer of 1946—the 15th number of Doubt appeared, and it had a strange trackway on its cover. These were the “Devil’s Hoofmarks,” and they were recorded by Eric Frank Russell on a snow-covered hill in Belgium. He followed them, but couldn’t find their maker, and locals could not explain them. Pure Forteana, then, Russell concluded. Although, he mused, they “weren’t as dramatic as Gould’s” and he couldn’t photograph them “as Smythe did those prints of the Abominable Snowmen in the Himalayas.” Brazier mentioned this issue of Doubt in the 27th July number of Embers (#5), but didn't connect it to his own earlier reporters until 24 August (Embers #10). Who is this Gould?, Brazier asked, and is Smythe the same guy who wrote “Altai-Himalaya”? The 6 October issue (Ember #16) had a letter from Al.L. Joquel. He had checked Fort’s book for mention of the footprints and found nothing, but he had discovered Gould’s identity: it was Rupert Gould, who had published a couple of pre-Fort books on anomalous events. And so a question about Lovecraft’s sources had turned up a new book to feed interest in philosophy, science, and science’s limits.
Such investigations could also be more topical. Early on in Embers, there was some consideration of the baleful effects of atomic fallout, the subject itself somewhat Fortean, in that the consequences of exposure were unknown and pointed to science’s overreach. This discussion, though, was soon shuffled off to one of Joquel’s publications, as he was making atomic consequences one of his main subjects. Rockets, though, remained a covered subject in Embers, for their obvious science fiction connections, their role in current science—especially space travel—and also because they pressed up against one of Fort’s main cosmological claims: that the planets were close, new lands rather than new worlds.
Robert L. Farnsworth was the correspondent chiefly interested in rockets. He was a fan from Chicago, head of the U.S. Rocket Society, publisher of its Rockets and champion of rockets as a new path to empire. Brazier mentioned Farnsworth as early as the fourth issue of Embers, included him on the priority mailing list for the ‘zine, and ran advertisements for his society and its publications. Farnsworth could come across as self-promoting—he sent an autographed headshot of himself to Brazier—and Jack Speer, for one, did not like his ‘flag-waving’ patriotism. But when Farnsworth and Brazier met, Farnsworth impressed Brazier as having important government contacts. Even so, Brazier ran an article by the astronomer R.S. Richardson which suggested—in great technical detail—that Farnsworth’s science was shoddy. So was the idea of rocket ships to the moon a Fortean fantasy? Or would it blast through the Fortean fantasy of a tiny solar system?
