A Verne enthusiast and Fortean who found solace in that old time religion.
Idrisyn Oliver Evans was born 11 November 1894, in the Orange Free State, now part of South Africa. Idrysin—or I. O., as he would go by for most of his adult life—was the son of Harry and Sara Winifred (Sutton). There’s only a little bit of biographical information on his life, most of it not from official sources, but recollections in various compilations of brief author biographies and especially from an extensive correspondence with the science fiction writer (and Fortean) Eric Frank Russell—all of what remains from this relationship is one-sided, only Evans’s letters surviving.
With British understatement, he recalled that his childhood was “not over-happy” and he escaped into books. His father’s collection included Verne, as did a small, mostly religious village library after his parents relocated to England, when Idrisyn was just a child, and he fell in love with the French writer. Evans read A Journey to the Centre of the Earth so many times as to commit much of it to memory. In the course of his education, he learned English and French, and moved on to other writers of the marvelous, Wells and Poe and Kayyam. He was a boy scout. In 1912, finished with school—he did not attend university—Evans joined the civil service.
Idrisyn Oliver Evans was born 11 November 1894, in the Orange Free State, now part of South Africa. Idrysin—or I. O., as he would go by for most of his adult life—was the son of Harry and Sara Winifred (Sutton). There’s only a little bit of biographical information on his life, most of it not from official sources, but recollections in various compilations of brief author biographies and especially from an extensive correspondence with the science fiction writer (and Fortean) Eric Frank Russell—all of what remains from this relationship is one-sided, only Evans’s letters surviving.
With British understatement, he recalled that his childhood was “not over-happy” and he escaped into books. His father’s collection included Verne, as did a small, mostly religious village library after his parents relocated to England, when Idrisyn was just a child, and he fell in love with the French writer. Evans read A Journey to the Centre of the Earth so many times as to commit much of it to memory. In the course of his education, he learned English and French, and moved on to other writers of the marvelous, Wells and Poe and Kayyam. He was a boy scout. In 1912, finished with school—he did not attend university—Evans joined the civil service.
In 1914, Evans went to war, an experience that would change him dramatically for the next three decades. The Boy Scouts, he told Russell, had not prepared him for the “stupidity” of the “Brass Hats”: “Young and unsophisticated, an ex-Boy Scout who had swallowed all the political ideology of that ‘non-political’ movement, so you imagine the shock I got.” Evans, part of the Welsh Regiment, was present at a number of battles on the Western Front, and it shook his religious belief. Someone he knew in the army showed him the writings of Robert Ingersoll, a nineteenth-century American freethinker and religious skeptic; it didn’t take, but Wells’s “God the Invisible King” did, even if Evans did see some logical fallacies in the presentation. Still, combined with the war, it was enough to push him toward a religiously-engaged agnosticism or Unitarianism: he didn’t dismiss faith (though he saw himself as superior to those with a committed faith) and was interested in religious ideas. He could not commit to any, though. Evans told Russell, “I was never an atheist, never contemptuous of Christ, but I was mildly anti-clerical, and apt to get facetious at the Bible and the clergy.”
Leaving the service, finally, in 1920, Evans returned to his duties as a civil servant; he was also a seeker, experimenting with various alternatives to religion and progressive movements. He became caught up with Social Credit, as did so many Forteans. He learned Esperanto. Vaguely he recollected, some thirty years later, “in the twenties I was ill-advised enough to join one of those curious idealistic movements that flourished then, all of which seemed to have the twofold aim of reforming the world and shocking their maiden auntie.” For a time, he was a nudist, which may have been this “curious idealistic movement,” or may have been in addition to it: Evans was always a man of many and diverse enthusiasms. In the mid-1930s, he wrote the pamphlet “Sensible Sunbathing” as a reference for nudists. (Another British Fortean, Edward H. Simpson, also preferred life in his birthday suit.)
In 1933, as the Loch Ness Monster became a worldwide sensation, Evans made his way north to investigate. In the 1950s, he recalled,
“There I became friendly with Captain Frazer (I think I have his name correctly [sic Fraser]) who was organising a systematic watch upon the water; he was convinced of the Monster’s authenticity, though he had not seen it, and soon I was convinced of it though I failed to see it myself. (Captain Frazer in fact did so, somewhat later, and even got a rather poor photo) [sic period]
“The Captain introduced me to a number of local residents who claimed to have seen it, and—with one exception—I am convinced of their sincerity, common-sense (and sobriety!). The exception was a youth who had partly for his own purposes and partly I think for devilment had invented [sic] a preposterous story about the Monster, and who had to stick to it or publicly confess himself a gaudy liar. But the others were people of a very different calibre, who had nothing to gain by their narratives and who impressed me by their moral and intellectual integrity.
“As to the idea that the story was invented or systematically exploited merely to attract tourists, I can assure you that there was no evidence of it whatever. At Inverness the shopkeepers were ‘cashing in’ on the legend, so that you could buy preposterous plush ‘monsters’ as souvenirs, or photos of sea-serpents swallowing excursion-steamers so obviously faked that they would not deceive a child, but there was nothing of the sort along the Loch side.
“Here the people, if asked about the Monster at once got very ‘cagey’; they had suffered too much from casual enquiries and ridicule. But of they were assured that one was a genuine enquirer, honestly seeking the truth—and thanks to Captain Frazer they were good enough to accept me on that basis—they became more communicative. It was clear to me that they had seen something unusual in the Loch—and as local people were hardly likely to be taken in by porpoises (if there are such things in the Loch!) tangles of seaweed, or any of the other ‘enquiry stoppers’.
“The impression I got is of a creature with a largish body and long neck and tail, possibly resembling a Plesiosaur in build—but, I suspect, not a reptile but a mammal. Apparently its spine is so flexible that it can raise its body either into one hump or several.”
Nearing forty, Evans began to be published on a number of subjects—reflecting his wide range of avocations—doing the research and writing for his books after long days of Civil Service work. In 1932 he edited The Witness of History to the Power of Christ, which were congregationalist addresses that reflected his continued interest in religion; that same year, republished The Junior Outline of History based on his hero H.G. Wells’s massive work, The Outline of History (although the two were officially unrelated, and Evans’s did incorporate Christian ideas, including a call for monetary reform based in the Christ’s teachings). The following year, he put his interest in science fiction to work—rooted in Verne and Wells, the enthusiasm had spread to more recent publications—and compiled The World of Tomorrow—A Junior Book of Forecasts. In 1935, he and his friend from the war, Bernard Newman, edited Anthology of Armageddon, a large tome that reflected their disappointment with the war. Two more years passed, and he put out Cigarette Cards and How to Collect Them. He also compiled some of Upton Sinclair’s writings. As the titles indicate, most of these were for juveniles, and Evans would note in the 1950s that he tried often to write for an adult audience, publisher’s rejected almost all of these manuscripts—indeed, by his account, they rejected more of what he wrote tout court than they accepted.
A bachelor to this point, Evans had the time to work, to read, to write. He studied geology and became a spelunker (like another Fortean, Don Bloch), seeing the science as evocative of Verne, steeped in adventure. (Geology by the Wayside appeared in 1940 and The Observer’s Book of Geology in 1949). This hobby had obvious Fortean connotations, not only the exploration of the unknown, but also of a hollow earth, that figured in the writings of Verne and the later Shaver Mystery. Letters of his appeared in science fiction magazines, Weird Tales in 1937 and Tales of Wonder in 1938. But single life also came to an end as Evans entered his forties. On 6 March 1937, 42 years old, the civil servant married Marie Elizabeth Mumford. She was a few years younger than him, but otherwise I don’t know anything about Marie.
The marriage, though, does not seem to have slowed Evans’s work. The forties saw him put out books on the ocean, geography, treasures, freshwater, and fossils, prehistory (which he rightly noted was a subspecies of fantastic fiction, allied with science fiction—think of Conan, or even the Shaver Mystery), and the history science. He published a series of historical novels for young readers: Gadget City: A Story of Alexandria (1944); The Coming of a King: A Story of the Stone Age (1950); Strange Devices: A Story of the Siege of Syracuse; and others that I apparently cannot find in bibliographies. Evans felt that the fiction broadened his perspective, allowing him to adopt alter egos: “I have tried to write from the point of view of prehistoric medicine-men sincerely and successfully practicising white or black magic; pious Hellenic polytheists; skeptical Alexandrian philosophers; and Renaissance Catholics–including Grand Inquisitors!” He also tried his hand at science fiction, a 1944 story “Kraken” (1944) appearing in the short-lived “Weird Shorts.”
During this decade, Evans also endured another crisis of faith—or, rather, the return of his old faith in fully developed form. His Civil Service work was demanding—probably because of the war—and he was also involved with a Roman Catholic who was trying to convert both him and Marie—forcing him to consult the Bible and study religious texts. More pressing—more pressing even than his own after life or fear of hell and damnation—was the “survival of our culture,” as he later told Russell. Since the rise of what some called the “post-Christian era,” he said, there had been a correlated “of brutality not only in total war and concentration camps but in a more vicious gangsterism, the greater vulgarity and sensuality of life, the lapse of manners and morals and efficiency of work, the spread of gambling and of puerile superstitions.” Set against this obvious decline, he said,
“It became increasingly clear to me that the moral earnestness of the much-despised Victorians, which had produced such tremendous advances in social affairs, was the direct result of their be belief in Christianity. Similarly the loss of moral earnestness, which is manifestly corrupting our civilisation and may destroy everything worth while in life, is the direct result of the general loss in that belief. The obvious deduction was that nothing could re-civilise us except a return of our faith.
This of course was not evidence of the truth of Christianity, and would not justify one’s professing it. But it did induce me to reconsider the whole matter. As a result of converging lines of thought, the details of which I will not inflict on you, I came at last to return to the Faith which I had rejected. Since then—nearly ten years ago [ca. 1943] I have never regretted this. On the other hand, what I regret is that I took so long over it: or rather that I ever apostasised in the first place.”
Evans joined the Church of England—not because he thought it was the “true” church, but because he enjoyed its rituals. He was a rather progressive member of the church, approving of women’s rights, disapproving of militarism. He had respect for many faiths—to varying degrees—including the non-conformists such as the Quakers and even the Roman Catholics: though they had a tendency to persecute others, it was also Catholic culture that had nurtured “such minds as Leonardo and Michael Angelo [sic],” he said, quoting Wells’s biography, and adding Galileo to the mix. He even had a fond place in his heart for nudists, though he realized that a member of the church should be more conservative in such matters of dress (not that there was anything devilish about nudity, he was quick to add) and recognizing that nudism could be too easily ruined by weirdoes or health faddists. It seems that what made Evans anxious were not the peccadilloes of little groups, but the more general decline of the world, and that he saw himself as he did his two literary heroes, Verne and Wells. Late in the 1950s, he told Russell that Verne was “a very great man—but I am inclined to think that, like Wells, he lived to see the arriving of the world he had forecast—and it nearly broke his heart.” The church was keeping his own heart from breaking, reminding him of some eternal verities that could not be corrupted by the vulgarity of modern times.
It was through the lens of faith that Evans approached much science fiction, especially through the early part of the 1950s, when he was still interested in the contemporary scene. British science fiction had suffered much during the war, after a promising beginning, and was fandom was slow in regathering after World War II, centered especially around Walter Gilling’s ‘zine “Fantasy Review,” its associated publications, and some private lending libraries that sprang up around it. Evans was involved, writing a review of his friend Bernard Newman’s book “Flying Saucers,” for one issue, as an example. But he was not fond of all that he saw—particularly at the flirtations with occultism and esotericism that were part and parcel of the science fiction scene on both sides of the Atlantic. He scoffed at the advertising for “Joan the Wad” in British publications—essentially a lucky charm—and rolled his eyes at those he called “Nothingarians”—those with a superficial agnosticism, the one “who vaguely believes in ‘Fate,’ mass-produced newspaper astrology, or ‘Science’ or ‘Nature’ in impressive capitals; who insists on ‘touching wood’, or succumbs to the blandishment of that vulgarised ‘Piskie’ Joan the Wad who for some reason used to be advertised in the s/f magazines.” Setting himself apart from most fans of the time, he thought that C.S. Lewis—with his religious allegories—was the best science fiction authority at work in the late 1940s.
Early in 1950, Evans (re)discovered Eric Frank Russell as a writer. He had been in contact with him for about a year to that time, as Russell was the point person for the Fortean Society in Britain, collecting dues and handling subscriptions. Then, Evans borrowed Russell’s “Sinister Barrier” from one of the private fantasy book lending libraries and was blown away. He remembered reading the story—in the U.S. publication Unknown, he thought, but had forgotten the title and author. And now he realized he had been writing to the author all along. In May, Evans sent a congratulatory note to Russell, which sparked a more intensive correspondence between them. There was no British version of the book yet—and Evans disappointed to hear that Russell wasn’t interested in correcting that matter—but Evans obtained a copy of the U.S. version from a correspondent and had Russell autograph it. He liked “Sinister Barrier” as a story, as a Fortean expression—and also as a spiritual tale.
In March 1951, he was still raving about Sinister Barrier: “I am still greatly impressed with the story, which seems to me to have deep spiritual implications—the extraordinary resemblance of your ‘Visions’ with the demons of mediaeval tradition.” It is clear from this that Evans thought of Russell as working int he same tradition as C.S. Lewis (and, indeed, in March 1950 had suggested connecting the two, since he was in correspondence with Lewis, too). It would be another two years before Evans realized that Russell was a dedicated atheist—a mocker of religion “as a sort of ideological sewage”—and the two started corresponding on the subject of religion, Russell (in the lost letters) explaining his spiritual pilgrimage to unfaith as Evans recounted his own prodigal experiences. Even so, Evans did not give up his religious reading of science fiction, or Russell’s Sinister Barrier:
“I have been interested to see many orthodox doctrines appearing in other words, and quite unconsciously, in science-fiction stories. Examples are Wells’ ‘Camford Visitation,, and Dr. Smith’s second ‘Skylark’ story—Smith’s Lensmen series have very much in common with Zoroastrianism. The outstanding example is however your own ‘Sinister Barrier’, an exact statement in a modernised form of one of the most ancient beliefs of mankind, a belief which appears in the oldest Christian tradition and is still held by certain Churches though it is rejected not only by others but by most of our own non-Christians. The Foreword expresses your belief that it is based on fact, and by orthodox standards this is literally true.
“In short, your present position seems to be almost an antechamber to Christianity, and one day you may feel called on to cross the threshold. If meantime I can give you a less scornful, and a more sympathetic, view of religion in general and Christianity in particular, I shall be glad indeed.”
The correspondence with Russell was wide ranging—not only Christianity and the state of science fiction, but the political situation, the dottiness of publishers, and the merits of Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam (another Fortean connection: Thayer loved the Rubaiyat because he loved Fitzgerald’s voice, while both Evans and Russell wanted to cut through the translation to the actual Khayyam)—and beyond the extensive letter writing, he was busy as ever, still working his civil service job and trying to write. He took over editing a book on flags; he continued his editing of Upton Sinclair’s work; he wrote a juvenile novel on the Olympics in Athens (with an eye toward London hosting as a marketing opportunity). In 1952, he published Led by the Star: A Christmas Play; a lifelong versifier, he published a book of poetry, Sparks from a Wayside Fire in 1954. Finally, in 1957, Evans retired from Civil Service and lived on a meager pension that he continued to supplement with his writings.
In the mid-1950s, there was something of a Verne revival going on—Walt Disney’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” helped—and Evans was recruited to translate and edit Verne’s works—the so-called Fitzroy editions—a project that would consume the rest of his life. Evans’s work on Verne would be criticized for being insufficiently scholarly, but they were still the standard anglophone editions of Verne’s body of works into the 1980s. Associated with his work on Verne, Evans was also writing science fiction criticism—and this was at a time that both he and Russell had become tired of the genre. With a cut in his income, Evans had to give up buying science fiction magazines, which he didn’t see as too much of a sacrifice; meanwhile, Russell felt he didn’t have much to write anymore. Evans thought that maybe this presaged a breakthrough to some new genre of writing for Russell, the way Wells eventually drifted from the subject. For himself, Evans did publish a couple of science fiction stories, but was mostly reading Newman’s crime novels, history, or biography,
The correspondence between Evans and Russell eventually petered out, making it difficult to know what Evans was up to during the last seventeen years of his life. There was no dramatic beak. Certainly, the two had their tiffs—though Evans went out of his way to make the religious discussions amiable—once over some poems that Evans shared with Russell. I don’t know their content, but apparently they badly offended Russell’s wife, and Evans abjectly apologized. It’s hard to see what might have been so offensive, given that the other point of contention between the two men was Russell’s vulgarity. He was not shy about cursing and could be shockingly crude, which upset Evans, who valued manners so highly. No, it wasn’t any of these picayune matters that broke up the relationship—or, I guess, more exactly, seemed to end the correspondence, since there are no letters between them after 1960. (This ending might just be an artefact of what Russell, in whose collection the letters are stored, chose to keep.) What seems to have ended the relationship was the collapse of the Fortean Society in 1959—it had structured there twelve years of correspondence, with Evans seemingly reminded to write each year by the dues notice enclosed with his copy of Doubt, a reminder that then set off a new round of letter writing.
We do know that Evans continued his work on Verne throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1970s, he also published some more of his poetry—most of his poetic works, like his other writing, went unpublished, and I do not know where (or if) it is archived.
Idrisyn Oliver Evans died 13 February 1977. He was 83.
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I do not know where or when Evans first came in contact with Charles Fort. His interest in fringe movements during the 1920s and 1930s—social credit, nudism, the Loch Ness Monster—may have led him to one or more of Fort’s volumes. It is also certainly possible—likely, even—that he came across Fort in his science fiction reading. Astounding serialized Lo! in 1934. Walter Gilling’s “Fantasy Review” mentioned both Fort and the Fortean Society. His name first appeared in Doubt 17 (1946); he mentioned Fort in “Fantasy Review” volume 2, issue 2, dated December 1948, January 1949, and that showed a familiarity with both Fort and the Fortean Society. The first letter of his to Russell in Russell’s collection (at the University of Liverpool) is dated April 1949. Subsequently, of course, he continued to correspond with Russell; and his name appeared in Doubt 14 more times, through issue 59 (January 1959), including one long letter. In addition, Thayer mentioned Evans to Russell in correspondence a number of times (mostly for mundane reasons—indeed, Evans sheds some light on the operations of the Fortean Society) and Evans incorporated Fort into some of his own writing, as well as seeking out other writers of a Fortean bent who might not otherwise have considered themselves Forteans. All of this gives a fair amount of information for understanding Evans’s Forteanism. His was a limber Forteanism, able to incorporate Fort at times—including to criticize himself and his own ideas—but also willing to drop the Fortean perspective: to use Fort, not abuse him, or be used by the developments on-going within Forteanism. Always Christianity was his main anchor.
All of the correspondence between Thayer and Russell that mentioned Evans, as well as a great deal of correspondence between Evans and Russell, dealt with subscription payments for Doubt. Apparently, Doubt was sent to subscribers with notices when their subscription fees were due, and these prompted Evans to start corresponding with Russell in April 1949. Thayer dubbed him a “prince among princes for paying” his dues. Many Forteans, it seems from Thayer’s other comments—I have no hard records—never paid, but Thayer usually kept them on the rolls, especially if they were contributors, pled poverty, or were famous. That didn't stop Evans from worrying, though: the Society’s bookkeeping sometimes was less than fantastic, and in 1950, he was dunned twice, by accident. (The same mistake occurred in 1959.) Apparently, he sent a complaining note to Thayer—without satisfaction— and so “to regularise maters,” as he said, he paid a second time. Russell, realizing the mistake, returned the check, but it wasn’t the money that worried Evans—it was the that “I should have been unhappy if they had removed me from their membership.”
Evans was committed, and continued to pay his dues throughout the life of the Society, if not regularly (he may have missed 1954), then close enough for jazz. Part of this may have been Evans’s civil servant training and own sense of moral rectitude, but it was also a sign of his attachment to the Society. In 1957, when he retired and gave up buying science fiction magazines, it was so he had enough money on hand to pay his Fortean dues. He continued to pay even after the price doubled—in 1958—from 8 shillings to 16. “I quite understand about the increase in the Fortean sub,” he said. “It was very considerate of Thayer to give us special terms, and naturally like everybody else he has to cope with rising costs. Even now it is very moderate, judging by common form in these matters.” Two years before, he had even considered taking over some of the work Russell and Thayer was doing, but decided against it because, with his job and his own writing, he simply didn’t have the time: “I quite agree that you and Thayer have done a splendid work in running it for so long. And certainly you have earned a rest. I hope you will find someone else as devoted and efficient as yourself.”
His enthusiasm for the Society was especially apparent in the late 1940s, when he first joined. His first clipping appeared in Doubt 17, dated 1946, and he had another two issues later, the Thayer’s flying saucer issues, then again in the very next, Doubt 20 from March 1948. Later that year, in his review of Newman’s “Flying Saucer”—the first book to use that phrase in a title—he couldn’t help but mention the Society. Newman’s was an espionage story, with a professor trying to unite the human race by faking an invasion from Mars. (Did Alan Moore, a known Fortean, read this before writing “Watchmen” four decades later? That seems worth researching.) Evans recounts some of the various plot points and ends,
“Nor does Mr. Newman neglect the phenomena which give his story its title; and he shows himself acquainted with the authoritative summary of the Flying Saucers' alleged appearances as presented by the Fortean magazine Doubt. Since he is not writing expressly for a science fiction public, he finds it necessary to sketch briefly the progress of rocketry and to glance at a little elementary astronomy, but the initiated will find that he has treated the familiar themes with a refreshing novelty, giving us a book that is amusing if not amazing, and which contains plenty of action while leaving ample scope for thought.”
What’s striking, here, is that the Fortean Society was hardly the most enthusiastic about flying saucers, and Doubt was hardly the most authoritative or definitive publication dealing with the issue. For Evans, though, anomalous sky phenomena were necessarily a Fortean topic, and seemingly not connected to the more frequent discussion of them in Theosophical and esoteric terms—which may have been an influence of his Christianity. While not dismissing these new faiths, Evans was not particularly enamored of them, either, seeming to see them as too closely allied with nothingarianism. He told Russell that if he was interested in religion at all, there was no need to explore the exotic, Christianity offered the same pleasures as those, without a lot of the dottiness. In another letter, he quipped, “Incidentally, that is one reason why I value Christianity—I’ve seen its substitutes!”
He was reading his “Doubt”s closely. In April 1948 —or perhaps August, the writing is not quite legible—he told Russell, “I’m very interested in the discussion on astronomy in the current issue. It doesn’t surprise me, as at one time I had some spirited but inconclusive discussion with the Flat Earth-ers!” He also noted that someone had suggested that America was the source of humanity—America discovered the world not the other way ‘round. Evans didn’t accept the claim, but it was delicious in upsetting—again—Theosophical and esoteric speculations. He said to Russell, the claim “that civilisation originated in the U.S. interests without convincing me. If one rules out Atlantis and so forth, Egypt is my guess.” And he was contributing, too; indeed, one of his more inexplicable contributions came in that issue—Doubt 25—regarding a British man who was arrested in Buenos Aires for no reason and saw footprints on the ceiling of his cell; it is unclear what point the clipping was supposed to suggest, and was rare among Evans’s contributions for not dealing with aerial phenomena. There were only three other outliers, all from the early 1950s: the disappearance of a quay with cranes (Doubt 31, Jan 1951); a South African baby (reported in a South African paper) with the alphabet stamped on one iris, the numbers 1-12 on the other, either a miracle or a “billion to one” arrangement of pigment cells (Doubt 36, April 1952); and suds in six English rivers, possibly from industrial detergents used by paper mills (Doubt 41, July 1953).
In Doubt 26, appearing around October 1949, Thayer continued on with the astronomical and geological themes that interested Evans. He published an extended excerpt of “The Stable Earth and the Starry Heavens” by John Rollo, which in excruciating detail arguing that the universe revolved around a stationary earth. The book had been published, privately, around 1933 and sent to Fort by Rollo’s sister, Rollo himself having died. Thayer was looking for information on Rollo—and on some Fortean to engage with the argument. Evans did just that. He had been thinking deeply on these issues—having published recent books on geology and Galileo. The great astronomer was by now a symbol of convention, and the dogma against which Fort railed, especially in his second book “New Lands,” but Evans thought otherwise. After all, Galileo had offered what was then a completely novel cosmology and so, as he said to Russell, “who, I think you will agree, has some claim to be reckoned as a sort of Fortean morning star.”
Evans wrote a long letter to Thayer on the mater, which was published in the next issue, Doubt 27, appearing in the winter of 1949. “No Fortean could object to Mr. Rollo’s criticism of the modernized Copernican System. Certainly I could not, as at one time I had some spirited discussions with people who out-Fort Charles Fort himself--the Flat Earth enthusiasts who deny his acceptance that the idea of a central earth, with the stars revolving around it, is ‘reasonable.’ (Books of Charles Fort, page 713.) At the same time, Mr. Rollo’s arguments do not convince me.
“His general idea, of a central stationery [sic] earth surrounded by revolving stars whose nature is totally different from terrestrial matter, is in all essentials that accepted by the Aristotelians of the Middle Ages. It was indeed established orthodoxy, supported by tradition by what was known as Greek culture, by the teaching of the Church, and by plain common-sense. For if Mr. Rollo, who is accustomed to the idea of a moving earth, finds this difficult to believe because it looks improbable, how must it have seemed to those who heard of it, or surmised it, for the first time!
“This traditional view dropped out of mind simply because the Forteans of the time found reason to doubt it. Not just a few outstanding ‘heroes of astronomy’ like Copernicus and Galileo, but a number of less famous thinkers and speculators. These early Forteans studied the observed facts and compared them with the orthodox beliefs, and were forced to the conclusion that the beliefs would not hold water. So they floated, at first tentatively, then with growing confidence, the idea of a moving earth. It was no wonder that astronomers like Tycho Brahe and thinkers like Bacon found it incredible, and that religious poets like Addison and Milton treated it rather ambiguously.
“That so improbable a view as that of the moving earth should at last have won general credence is a tribute, I think, to a certain strain of Forteanism in the human race.
“The argument of Mr. Rollo which I find most difficult to get over is that based on the comparative absence of movement in sea and air. I am surprised, however, that he accepts Foucault’s Pantheon [sic] experiment, as the Flat Earth-ers [sic] state that this gives ambiguous and contradictory results and hint that it was faked. On the other hand he does not mention what seems to me evidence of the earth’s rotations, the precession of the equinoxes. Nor does he mention, what again seems likely, that the movements of the various planetary satellites suggests that the law of gravitation prevails at any rate that far out into space.
“But if ‘the Heavens’ are moving, how far does that movement extend? Does it go on to infinity--which seems unlikely! Or if beyond the stars there is something motionless, why does it not slow down their motion? Are they frictionless, as the mediaeval Aristotelians surmised? Or are their forces beyond the starts which keep them moving and at the same time hold the earth fixed? Or must we simply say we don’t know, and leave it at that?
“On the whole, therefore, though I expect our present ideas of the universe to go fairly drastic revision [sic], I do not expect a reversion to the older Aristotelian views. I do not think a Fortean must subscribe to the dogma that all current scientific theories are necessarily wrong! No doubt he should regard them as not necessarily right, but that is not quite the same thing.”
The letter is an important one for getting at how Evans conceived Forteanism. First, there is the case that Forteanism is a limber mode of thinking—but not one that must be used at all times. As he said a number of times—examples above—he is often interested in ideas, without being convinced by them: they are good to think with, but not necessarily to accept. Michael Saler calls this method of reasoning the “ironic imagination”—playing with ideas one knows are not true in a grand sense. It’s a lens for viewing the world, but not the only one. (Once he confessed to Russell about one of his scientific books, it was “not very Fortean, I’m afraid, but there we are.”) The lability of Evans’s thought allows him, even as a Fortean, to accept certain premises—or at least not to reject them out of hand. Maybe they’re not right—but maybe they are. Obviously, this approach makes room for his own Christianity—maybe it’s not right, but it need not be dismissed—but also for certain scientific subjects, too, meaning that even as a Fortean eh could write books about geography or geology or astronomy that need not classify them as bunk. Another time, he explained to Russell that his geology book was “not one would call Fortean, except in so far that you might say that ll geology is Fortean as compared with what seems plain common-sense. And—compare my letter in the last issue of DOUBT—one might say that all science is that.”
By the early 1950s, Evans’s interest in the Society waned a bit. Perhaps this was why he missed paying his dues in 1954. In 1952, he said to Russell, “I can’t say that the new subject-matter of ‘Doubt’ appeals to me as much as the old, but I suppose the Editor knows what he is doing.” The new subject matter apparently referred to Thayer’s return to more political matters, after he had downplayed them for a few years, in deference to Aaron Sussman, a Fortean Founder and friend who was upset at what he thought of as Thayer’s seditious response to World War II. Thayer was again upset by mandatory vaccination, by adulterated food, and especially by Civilian Defense, which was having everyday citizens become militarized against Russia and communism. Evans much preferred aerial phenomena, including flying saucers (a subject that Thayer, incidentally, hated.)
Despite Thayer’s renewed political activism—he was trying to organize Forteans against Civilian Defense—Evans continued to contribute his preferred clippings. The first one he had sent in—back in 1947—had been about lightning that killed cattle two weeks after it struck, apparently originating int he ground, somehow. The second had been on flying saucers. (Evans was listed among many contributors, making it impossible to know exactly what he sent in.) Another on lightning strikes appeared in Doubt 20. Doubt 31 (January 1951) included a story from him about blue rain; the next issue (March 1951) he contributed to with a story about unusual ice falls that had started in England the previous November—the story was well-known in Fortean circles and lots of other people contributed, a breakthrough of sorts because many officials admitted that they had no explanation. His name appeared in two issues during 1954—both credits unattached to specific clippings—and once in 1955 for something on flying saucers (again the specifics cannot be pinned down). He sent in material, otherwise unspecified, about strange falls of ice, hail, or tinsel, for Doubt 55 (November 1957). Two issues later (July 1958), Thayer discussed a story sent by him in which wash hung out to dry and paint on a house were mysteriously streaked green, as though something had fallen from on high. His last appearance, Doubt 59 (January 1959) in the magazine was for an unspecified clipping about things that fall from the sky. But it wasn’t his last contribution. In March 1960, he wrote asking Russell,
“Is the Fortean Society still functioning? A house nearby has been hit by a ‘thunderbolt’ and they might be interest [sic] to see the press-cutting.”
When it turned out that the Fortean Society had effectively died with Thayer, in August of 1959, Evans was disappointed. 25.hope all is well. “I don’t seem to have heard anything recently from the Fortean Society, and I am beginning to wonder if it has had to suspend work. I great pity [sic] if it has, for it was certainly performing a very useful service.” That came in his final (saved?) letter to Russell—and is the last evidence of Evans being active in Fortean matters. (If he joined the international Fortean Organization or became associated with The News, as the Fortean Times was initially called, I don’t know about it.) But it’s not the last word on Evans as a Fortean—because his Forteanism was always bigger than his involvement with the Society. It was a mode of appreciating—and understanding—the universe that he applied in a number of different ways and at a number of different times in his life.
As has already been suggested, Evans brought a Fortean perspective to his writing—even if he didn’t always employ it. In 1956, he published a short in the collection “Adventures for Boys” called “Danger in Space.” I have not seen it, but Evans pointed out tot Russell that it was rooted in Fort: “I tried to give it a theme which so far as I know has never been used before as a basis for science fiction—and you would at once recognize that it is an idea first suggested by Charles Fort!” In 1959, he wrote “Discovering the Heavens,” a concise history of astronomy—with nary an attack on house “lo!”-cryers, the astronomers. He confessed to Russell that the choice was a conscious one—there’s that slipping into and out of Forteanism again—but despite appearances, Fort was in the background:
“As regards my own work, I should think my latest book would almost lead to my being excommunicated from the Fortean Society with bell, book, and candle! Discovering the Heavens is in fact a story of astronomy for young people, written more or less from the orthodox point of view. Still, I wrote it after a careful reading of Charles Fort’s acid comments on the subjects—in New Lands and elsewhere—and as my book has been well and truly jumped on in the Times Lit. Sup. and the New Scientist, that may perhaps rehabilitate me in the eyes of all good Forteans!”
Evans had done something similar while writing a history of the world. Recognizing his own preference for Wells, he read Chesterton and Upton Sinclair to remind himself of different ideas—to bd interested by them, even if not convinced by them.
His Forteanism also crept, a bit, into his work on Verne—a kind of return, then, since as Sam Moskowitz posits, Fort may have bene influenced by French writers of the fantastic. In 1957’s “Jules Verne: Master of Science Fiction,” he entitled excerpts of Hector Servadec “Aberrant and Anomalous Phenomena”—“I felt rather proud of myself for coining that phrase!,” he told Russell, frankly admitting he was going for a Fortean ring. Later, when the first of the two volumes of the complete Hector Servadec was published, it was under the title Anomalous Phenomena, rather than To the Sun? (The second part was Homeward Bound rather than Off on a Comet!) Evans also went for the same Fortean ring with an excerpt from “An Antarctic Mystery”—which was indeed a response to Poe’s “The Narrative of Gordon Pym—retitling it “End of the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pam.” The Fortean connection here is harder to see, but may have to do with the speculations about the the Poles—as entrance to the hollow earth, or home to some controlling race—common in Fortean sources, or perhaps just the link between Poe and Fort.
Evans also brought a Fortean perspective to his reading—even when it worked against his own strong opinions. Notably, he recommended that Russell read Galton’s first edition of “Enquiries into Human Faculty,” which suggested that prayer could be tested scientifically—a point so controversial at the time it was removed from later editions. Evans thought Russell, the atheist would approve, even if it was a strike against Christian ritual. He also recommended to Russell other books with a Fortean bent that he thought both of them might appreciate. One was A. Standen’s “Science is a Sacred Cow,” which he admitted was written from a religious—probably Catholic—perspective but would appeal to Russell. Another was Hugh Ross Williamson’s “Enigmas of History” which “has an introduction which is pure Forteanism!” And he wore his Fortean spectacles—not to get too cute about it—when reading Russell himself. He greatly enjoyed Russell’s contribution to nonfictional Forteana, Great World Mysteries, especially the chapter on the Mary Celeste, but the book also sparked his remembrances about the Loch Ness Monster, which he used to dispute Russell’s presumption that the whole mess was invented for publicity.
Of course, he also read Russell’s science fiction in Fortean terms—which for him also informed his religious ideas. He was dismayed when he found out that Russell was an atheist, because he loved his own faith, undoubtedly, but also because it seemed unFortean: “I am surprised that so keen a Fortean should have so determinedly closed a mind on a whole class of data, some of it well-authenticated, extremely interesting, and literally of infinite theoretical and practical importance,” he wrote Russell early in May 1953, and repeated them later in the month, after Russell tried to explain—in letters now lost—exactly how he had come to atheism: “While I still find the certainty of your outlook rather surprising in a Fortean, I honour the efforts which you have made to arrive at it. You have evidently taken an immense amount of trouble before arriving at your present position. Your spiritual pilgrimage in some respects resembles my own, except that it has ranged far more widely and that we have arrived at opposite conclusions—whereas you regard all religions with contempt, I regard them all with respect: some more than others, of course.”
Russell tried to bait Evans on matters Christian, especially regarding the hypocrisy of Christians, but Evans refused to be taken: he was of the opinion that one should keep an open mind on the issues, regardless of personalities and even conceded that Christians could too often be less than exemplary: “The Chief argument against Christianity has always been the Christian,” he said. He dismissed Russell’s claim that Hitler and Goebbels were Christian—and so reflected on the faith no more than a lapsed Fortean would reflect on Fort—but allowed that Russell’s claim that contemporary Christians would crucify a returned Messiah: Jesus was crucified the first time by people no better or worse than those who lived int he 20th century, he said. It was the phenomena, that mattered, the ritual, and he was as unwilling to throw out all religion as he was all science, in fact seeing a kind of Forteanism at work in holding to the views, particularly as they became less acceptable, and as Forteans were so quick to dismiss any kind of scientific (or religious) claim).
This Christian Forteanism, unique among the Forteans I have so-far studied, might explain Evans’ inordinate interest in aerial phenomena. In his mind, they seem to have been associated with demons, although it is hard to know how seriously he took this thought. (It was an interesting idea, but was it convincing.) From another angle, one could, perhaps, see the etheric theories of N. Meade Layne and his coterie making a somewhat similar claim: flying saucers were visitors from another dimension. Theosophists also approached the subject of flying saucers in religious terms—seeing them as chariots of the gods, to borrow a phrase, carrying enlightened brothers. Much later, the Fortean John Keel would develop ufology into a strain of demonology. But at the time he was writing, Evans seems to have been alone in wedding Forteanism and Christianity, and (perhaps) seeing demons as behind (some of the) Fortean phenomena.
This view was clearly expressed in his discussion of Russell’s “Sinister Barrier,” and it also came out in his reading of another science fiction story, the lesser tale “Beyond the Visible,” by H. J. Campbell. As with “Sinister Barrier,” the story posited the existence of elemental beings—comprised of radio waves—that cause quarrels and wars. (Robert Spencer Carr wrote yet another variant on this theme, but his beings were fairies causing Fortean phenomena to stop the destruction of the environment.) Evans was not so impressed with Campbell’s story because it did not make sense historically—the beings of his story came into existence when radio waves were existed, which failed to explain humanity’s long standing troubles—certainly a Christian knew that humans had sinned from the beginning, even if the situation was getting worse. He told Russell, “Well, I suppose anyone influenced by Charles Fort should be ready to consider any idea, but the notion that before the mechanical age the world was free from such disputes strikes me as improbable, even by Fortean standards.”
There it was again, that limber imagination, willing to consider ideas but not accept them. Dedicated Christian though he was—and so convinced of a dogma so many Fortean rejected, including Fort himself, who thought humanity had finished the the Religious Dominant, Evans was very much a Fortean.
Leaving the service, finally, in 1920, Evans returned to his duties as a civil servant; he was also a seeker, experimenting with various alternatives to religion and progressive movements. He became caught up with Social Credit, as did so many Forteans. He learned Esperanto. Vaguely he recollected, some thirty years later, “in the twenties I was ill-advised enough to join one of those curious idealistic movements that flourished then, all of which seemed to have the twofold aim of reforming the world and shocking their maiden auntie.” For a time, he was a nudist, which may have been this “curious idealistic movement,” or may have been in addition to it: Evans was always a man of many and diverse enthusiasms. In the mid-1930s, he wrote the pamphlet “Sensible Sunbathing” as a reference for nudists. (Another British Fortean, Edward H. Simpson, also preferred life in his birthday suit.)
In 1933, as the Loch Ness Monster became a worldwide sensation, Evans made his way north to investigate. In the 1950s, he recalled,
“There I became friendly with Captain Frazer (I think I have his name correctly [sic Fraser]) who was organising a systematic watch upon the water; he was convinced of the Monster’s authenticity, though he had not seen it, and soon I was convinced of it though I failed to see it myself. (Captain Frazer in fact did so, somewhat later, and even got a rather poor photo) [sic period]
“The Captain introduced me to a number of local residents who claimed to have seen it, and—with one exception—I am convinced of their sincerity, common-sense (and sobriety!). The exception was a youth who had partly for his own purposes and partly I think for devilment had invented [sic] a preposterous story about the Monster, and who had to stick to it or publicly confess himself a gaudy liar. But the others were people of a very different calibre, who had nothing to gain by their narratives and who impressed me by their moral and intellectual integrity.
“As to the idea that the story was invented or systematically exploited merely to attract tourists, I can assure you that there was no evidence of it whatever. At Inverness the shopkeepers were ‘cashing in’ on the legend, so that you could buy preposterous plush ‘monsters’ as souvenirs, or photos of sea-serpents swallowing excursion-steamers so obviously faked that they would not deceive a child, but there was nothing of the sort along the Loch side.
“Here the people, if asked about the Monster at once got very ‘cagey’; they had suffered too much from casual enquiries and ridicule. But of they were assured that one was a genuine enquirer, honestly seeking the truth—and thanks to Captain Frazer they were good enough to accept me on that basis—they became more communicative. It was clear to me that they had seen something unusual in the Loch—and as local people were hardly likely to be taken in by porpoises (if there are such things in the Loch!) tangles of seaweed, or any of the other ‘enquiry stoppers’.
“The impression I got is of a creature with a largish body and long neck and tail, possibly resembling a Plesiosaur in build—but, I suspect, not a reptile but a mammal. Apparently its spine is so flexible that it can raise its body either into one hump or several.”
Nearing forty, Evans began to be published on a number of subjects—reflecting his wide range of avocations—doing the research and writing for his books after long days of Civil Service work. In 1932 he edited The Witness of History to the Power of Christ, which were congregationalist addresses that reflected his continued interest in religion; that same year, republished The Junior Outline of History based on his hero H.G. Wells’s massive work, The Outline of History (although the two were officially unrelated, and Evans’s did incorporate Christian ideas, including a call for monetary reform based in the Christ’s teachings). The following year, he put his interest in science fiction to work—rooted in Verne and Wells, the enthusiasm had spread to more recent publications—and compiled The World of Tomorrow—A Junior Book of Forecasts. In 1935, he and his friend from the war, Bernard Newman, edited Anthology of Armageddon, a large tome that reflected their disappointment with the war. Two more years passed, and he put out Cigarette Cards and How to Collect Them. He also compiled some of Upton Sinclair’s writings. As the titles indicate, most of these were for juveniles, and Evans would note in the 1950s that he tried often to write for an adult audience, publisher’s rejected almost all of these manuscripts—indeed, by his account, they rejected more of what he wrote tout court than they accepted.
A bachelor to this point, Evans had the time to work, to read, to write. He studied geology and became a spelunker (like another Fortean, Don Bloch), seeing the science as evocative of Verne, steeped in adventure. (Geology by the Wayside appeared in 1940 and The Observer’s Book of Geology in 1949). This hobby had obvious Fortean connotations, not only the exploration of the unknown, but also of a hollow earth, that figured in the writings of Verne and the later Shaver Mystery. Letters of his appeared in science fiction magazines, Weird Tales in 1937 and Tales of Wonder in 1938. But single life also came to an end as Evans entered his forties. On 6 March 1937, 42 years old, the civil servant married Marie Elizabeth Mumford. She was a few years younger than him, but otherwise I don’t know anything about Marie.
The marriage, though, does not seem to have slowed Evans’s work. The forties saw him put out books on the ocean, geography, treasures, freshwater, and fossils, prehistory (which he rightly noted was a subspecies of fantastic fiction, allied with science fiction—think of Conan, or even the Shaver Mystery), and the history science. He published a series of historical novels for young readers: Gadget City: A Story of Alexandria (1944); The Coming of a King: A Story of the Stone Age (1950); Strange Devices: A Story of the Siege of Syracuse; and others that I apparently cannot find in bibliographies. Evans felt that the fiction broadened his perspective, allowing him to adopt alter egos: “I have tried to write from the point of view of prehistoric medicine-men sincerely and successfully practicising white or black magic; pious Hellenic polytheists; skeptical Alexandrian philosophers; and Renaissance Catholics–including Grand Inquisitors!” He also tried his hand at science fiction, a 1944 story “Kraken” (1944) appearing in the short-lived “Weird Shorts.”
During this decade, Evans also endured another crisis of faith—or, rather, the return of his old faith in fully developed form. His Civil Service work was demanding—probably because of the war—and he was also involved with a Roman Catholic who was trying to convert both him and Marie—forcing him to consult the Bible and study religious texts. More pressing—more pressing even than his own after life or fear of hell and damnation—was the “survival of our culture,” as he later told Russell. Since the rise of what some called the “post-Christian era,” he said, there had been a correlated “of brutality not only in total war and concentration camps but in a more vicious gangsterism, the greater vulgarity and sensuality of life, the lapse of manners and morals and efficiency of work, the spread of gambling and of puerile superstitions.” Set against this obvious decline, he said,
“It became increasingly clear to me that the moral earnestness of the much-despised Victorians, which had produced such tremendous advances in social affairs, was the direct result of their be belief in Christianity. Similarly the loss of moral earnestness, which is manifestly corrupting our civilisation and may destroy everything worth while in life, is the direct result of the general loss in that belief. The obvious deduction was that nothing could re-civilise us except a return of our faith.
This of course was not evidence of the truth of Christianity, and would not justify one’s professing it. But it did induce me to reconsider the whole matter. As a result of converging lines of thought, the details of which I will not inflict on you, I came at last to return to the Faith which I had rejected. Since then—nearly ten years ago [ca. 1943] I have never regretted this. On the other hand, what I regret is that I took so long over it: or rather that I ever apostasised in the first place.”
Evans joined the Church of England—not because he thought it was the “true” church, but because he enjoyed its rituals. He was a rather progressive member of the church, approving of women’s rights, disapproving of militarism. He had respect for many faiths—to varying degrees—including the non-conformists such as the Quakers and even the Roman Catholics: though they had a tendency to persecute others, it was also Catholic culture that had nurtured “such minds as Leonardo and Michael Angelo [sic],” he said, quoting Wells’s biography, and adding Galileo to the mix. He even had a fond place in his heart for nudists, though he realized that a member of the church should be more conservative in such matters of dress (not that there was anything devilish about nudity, he was quick to add) and recognizing that nudism could be too easily ruined by weirdoes or health faddists. It seems that what made Evans anxious were not the peccadilloes of little groups, but the more general decline of the world, and that he saw himself as he did his two literary heroes, Verne and Wells. Late in the 1950s, he told Russell that Verne was “a very great man—but I am inclined to think that, like Wells, he lived to see the arriving of the world he had forecast—and it nearly broke his heart.” The church was keeping his own heart from breaking, reminding him of some eternal verities that could not be corrupted by the vulgarity of modern times.
It was through the lens of faith that Evans approached much science fiction, especially through the early part of the 1950s, when he was still interested in the contemporary scene. British science fiction had suffered much during the war, after a promising beginning, and was fandom was slow in regathering after World War II, centered especially around Walter Gilling’s ‘zine “Fantasy Review,” its associated publications, and some private lending libraries that sprang up around it. Evans was involved, writing a review of his friend Bernard Newman’s book “Flying Saucers,” for one issue, as an example. But he was not fond of all that he saw—particularly at the flirtations with occultism and esotericism that were part and parcel of the science fiction scene on both sides of the Atlantic. He scoffed at the advertising for “Joan the Wad” in British publications—essentially a lucky charm—and rolled his eyes at those he called “Nothingarians”—those with a superficial agnosticism, the one “who vaguely believes in ‘Fate,’ mass-produced newspaper astrology, or ‘Science’ or ‘Nature’ in impressive capitals; who insists on ‘touching wood’, or succumbs to the blandishment of that vulgarised ‘Piskie’ Joan the Wad who for some reason used to be advertised in the s/f magazines.” Setting himself apart from most fans of the time, he thought that C.S. Lewis—with his religious allegories—was the best science fiction authority at work in the late 1940s.
Early in 1950, Evans (re)discovered Eric Frank Russell as a writer. He had been in contact with him for about a year to that time, as Russell was the point person for the Fortean Society in Britain, collecting dues and handling subscriptions. Then, Evans borrowed Russell’s “Sinister Barrier” from one of the private fantasy book lending libraries and was blown away. He remembered reading the story—in the U.S. publication Unknown, he thought, but had forgotten the title and author. And now he realized he had been writing to the author all along. In May, Evans sent a congratulatory note to Russell, which sparked a more intensive correspondence between them. There was no British version of the book yet—and Evans disappointed to hear that Russell wasn’t interested in correcting that matter—but Evans obtained a copy of the U.S. version from a correspondent and had Russell autograph it. He liked “Sinister Barrier” as a story, as a Fortean expression—and also as a spiritual tale.
In March 1951, he was still raving about Sinister Barrier: “I am still greatly impressed with the story, which seems to me to have deep spiritual implications—the extraordinary resemblance of your ‘Visions’ with the demons of mediaeval tradition.” It is clear from this that Evans thought of Russell as working int he same tradition as C.S. Lewis (and, indeed, in March 1950 had suggested connecting the two, since he was in correspondence with Lewis, too). It would be another two years before Evans realized that Russell was a dedicated atheist—a mocker of religion “as a sort of ideological sewage”—and the two started corresponding on the subject of religion, Russell (in the lost letters) explaining his spiritual pilgrimage to unfaith as Evans recounted his own prodigal experiences. Even so, Evans did not give up his religious reading of science fiction, or Russell’s Sinister Barrier:
“I have been interested to see many orthodox doctrines appearing in other words, and quite unconsciously, in science-fiction stories. Examples are Wells’ ‘Camford Visitation,, and Dr. Smith’s second ‘Skylark’ story—Smith’s Lensmen series have very much in common with Zoroastrianism. The outstanding example is however your own ‘Sinister Barrier’, an exact statement in a modernised form of one of the most ancient beliefs of mankind, a belief which appears in the oldest Christian tradition and is still held by certain Churches though it is rejected not only by others but by most of our own non-Christians. The Foreword expresses your belief that it is based on fact, and by orthodox standards this is literally true.
“In short, your present position seems to be almost an antechamber to Christianity, and one day you may feel called on to cross the threshold. If meantime I can give you a less scornful, and a more sympathetic, view of religion in general and Christianity in particular, I shall be glad indeed.”
The correspondence with Russell was wide ranging—not only Christianity and the state of science fiction, but the political situation, the dottiness of publishers, and the merits of Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam (another Fortean connection: Thayer loved the Rubaiyat because he loved Fitzgerald’s voice, while both Evans and Russell wanted to cut through the translation to the actual Khayyam)—and beyond the extensive letter writing, he was busy as ever, still working his civil service job and trying to write. He took over editing a book on flags; he continued his editing of Upton Sinclair’s work; he wrote a juvenile novel on the Olympics in Athens (with an eye toward London hosting as a marketing opportunity). In 1952, he published Led by the Star: A Christmas Play; a lifelong versifier, he published a book of poetry, Sparks from a Wayside Fire in 1954. Finally, in 1957, Evans retired from Civil Service and lived on a meager pension that he continued to supplement with his writings.
In the mid-1950s, there was something of a Verne revival going on—Walt Disney’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” helped—and Evans was recruited to translate and edit Verne’s works—the so-called Fitzroy editions—a project that would consume the rest of his life. Evans’s work on Verne would be criticized for being insufficiently scholarly, but they were still the standard anglophone editions of Verne’s body of works into the 1980s. Associated with his work on Verne, Evans was also writing science fiction criticism—and this was at a time that both he and Russell had become tired of the genre. With a cut in his income, Evans had to give up buying science fiction magazines, which he didn’t see as too much of a sacrifice; meanwhile, Russell felt he didn’t have much to write anymore. Evans thought that maybe this presaged a breakthrough to some new genre of writing for Russell, the way Wells eventually drifted from the subject. For himself, Evans did publish a couple of science fiction stories, but was mostly reading Newman’s crime novels, history, or biography,
The correspondence between Evans and Russell eventually petered out, making it difficult to know what Evans was up to during the last seventeen years of his life. There was no dramatic beak. Certainly, the two had their tiffs—though Evans went out of his way to make the religious discussions amiable—once over some poems that Evans shared with Russell. I don’t know their content, but apparently they badly offended Russell’s wife, and Evans abjectly apologized. It’s hard to see what might have been so offensive, given that the other point of contention between the two men was Russell’s vulgarity. He was not shy about cursing and could be shockingly crude, which upset Evans, who valued manners so highly. No, it wasn’t any of these picayune matters that broke up the relationship—or, I guess, more exactly, seemed to end the correspondence, since there are no letters between them after 1960. (This ending might just be an artefact of what Russell, in whose collection the letters are stored, chose to keep.) What seems to have ended the relationship was the collapse of the Fortean Society in 1959—it had structured there twelve years of correspondence, with Evans seemingly reminded to write each year by the dues notice enclosed with his copy of Doubt, a reminder that then set off a new round of letter writing.
We do know that Evans continued his work on Verne throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1970s, he also published some more of his poetry—most of his poetic works, like his other writing, went unpublished, and I do not know where (or if) it is archived.
Idrisyn Oliver Evans died 13 February 1977. He was 83.
********
I do not know where or when Evans first came in contact with Charles Fort. His interest in fringe movements during the 1920s and 1930s—social credit, nudism, the Loch Ness Monster—may have led him to one or more of Fort’s volumes. It is also certainly possible—likely, even—that he came across Fort in his science fiction reading. Astounding serialized Lo! in 1934. Walter Gilling’s “Fantasy Review” mentioned both Fort and the Fortean Society. His name first appeared in Doubt 17 (1946); he mentioned Fort in “Fantasy Review” volume 2, issue 2, dated December 1948, January 1949, and that showed a familiarity with both Fort and the Fortean Society. The first letter of his to Russell in Russell’s collection (at the University of Liverpool) is dated April 1949. Subsequently, of course, he continued to correspond with Russell; and his name appeared in Doubt 14 more times, through issue 59 (January 1959), including one long letter. In addition, Thayer mentioned Evans to Russell in correspondence a number of times (mostly for mundane reasons—indeed, Evans sheds some light on the operations of the Fortean Society) and Evans incorporated Fort into some of his own writing, as well as seeking out other writers of a Fortean bent who might not otherwise have considered themselves Forteans. All of this gives a fair amount of information for understanding Evans’s Forteanism. His was a limber Forteanism, able to incorporate Fort at times—including to criticize himself and his own ideas—but also willing to drop the Fortean perspective: to use Fort, not abuse him, or be used by the developments on-going within Forteanism. Always Christianity was his main anchor.
All of the correspondence between Thayer and Russell that mentioned Evans, as well as a great deal of correspondence between Evans and Russell, dealt with subscription payments for Doubt. Apparently, Doubt was sent to subscribers with notices when their subscription fees were due, and these prompted Evans to start corresponding with Russell in April 1949. Thayer dubbed him a “prince among princes for paying” his dues. Many Forteans, it seems from Thayer’s other comments—I have no hard records—never paid, but Thayer usually kept them on the rolls, especially if they were contributors, pled poverty, or were famous. That didn't stop Evans from worrying, though: the Society’s bookkeeping sometimes was less than fantastic, and in 1950, he was dunned twice, by accident. (The same mistake occurred in 1959.) Apparently, he sent a complaining note to Thayer—without satisfaction— and so “to regularise maters,” as he said, he paid a second time. Russell, realizing the mistake, returned the check, but it wasn’t the money that worried Evans—it was the that “I should have been unhappy if they had removed me from their membership.”
Evans was committed, and continued to pay his dues throughout the life of the Society, if not regularly (he may have missed 1954), then close enough for jazz. Part of this may have been Evans’s civil servant training and own sense of moral rectitude, but it was also a sign of his attachment to the Society. In 1957, when he retired and gave up buying science fiction magazines, it was so he had enough money on hand to pay his Fortean dues. He continued to pay even after the price doubled—in 1958—from 8 shillings to 16. “I quite understand about the increase in the Fortean sub,” he said. “It was very considerate of Thayer to give us special terms, and naturally like everybody else he has to cope with rising costs. Even now it is very moderate, judging by common form in these matters.” Two years before, he had even considered taking over some of the work Russell and Thayer was doing, but decided against it because, with his job and his own writing, he simply didn’t have the time: “I quite agree that you and Thayer have done a splendid work in running it for so long. And certainly you have earned a rest. I hope you will find someone else as devoted and efficient as yourself.”
His enthusiasm for the Society was especially apparent in the late 1940s, when he first joined. His first clipping appeared in Doubt 17, dated 1946, and he had another two issues later, the Thayer’s flying saucer issues, then again in the very next, Doubt 20 from March 1948. Later that year, in his review of Newman’s “Flying Saucer”—the first book to use that phrase in a title—he couldn’t help but mention the Society. Newman’s was an espionage story, with a professor trying to unite the human race by faking an invasion from Mars. (Did Alan Moore, a known Fortean, read this before writing “Watchmen” four decades later? That seems worth researching.) Evans recounts some of the various plot points and ends,
“Nor does Mr. Newman neglect the phenomena which give his story its title; and he shows himself acquainted with the authoritative summary of the Flying Saucers' alleged appearances as presented by the Fortean magazine Doubt. Since he is not writing expressly for a science fiction public, he finds it necessary to sketch briefly the progress of rocketry and to glance at a little elementary astronomy, but the initiated will find that he has treated the familiar themes with a refreshing novelty, giving us a book that is amusing if not amazing, and which contains plenty of action while leaving ample scope for thought.”
What’s striking, here, is that the Fortean Society was hardly the most enthusiastic about flying saucers, and Doubt was hardly the most authoritative or definitive publication dealing with the issue. For Evans, though, anomalous sky phenomena were necessarily a Fortean topic, and seemingly not connected to the more frequent discussion of them in Theosophical and esoteric terms—which may have been an influence of his Christianity. While not dismissing these new faiths, Evans was not particularly enamored of them, either, seeming to see them as too closely allied with nothingarianism. He told Russell that if he was interested in religion at all, there was no need to explore the exotic, Christianity offered the same pleasures as those, without a lot of the dottiness. In another letter, he quipped, “Incidentally, that is one reason why I value Christianity—I’ve seen its substitutes!”
He was reading his “Doubt”s closely. In April 1948 —or perhaps August, the writing is not quite legible—he told Russell, “I’m very interested in the discussion on astronomy in the current issue. It doesn’t surprise me, as at one time I had some spirited but inconclusive discussion with the Flat Earth-ers!” He also noted that someone had suggested that America was the source of humanity—America discovered the world not the other way ‘round. Evans didn’t accept the claim, but it was delicious in upsetting—again—Theosophical and esoteric speculations. He said to Russell, the claim “that civilisation originated in the U.S. interests without convincing me. If one rules out Atlantis and so forth, Egypt is my guess.” And he was contributing, too; indeed, one of his more inexplicable contributions came in that issue—Doubt 25—regarding a British man who was arrested in Buenos Aires for no reason and saw footprints on the ceiling of his cell; it is unclear what point the clipping was supposed to suggest, and was rare among Evans’s contributions for not dealing with aerial phenomena. There were only three other outliers, all from the early 1950s: the disappearance of a quay with cranes (Doubt 31, Jan 1951); a South African baby (reported in a South African paper) with the alphabet stamped on one iris, the numbers 1-12 on the other, either a miracle or a “billion to one” arrangement of pigment cells (Doubt 36, April 1952); and suds in six English rivers, possibly from industrial detergents used by paper mills (Doubt 41, July 1953).
In Doubt 26, appearing around October 1949, Thayer continued on with the astronomical and geological themes that interested Evans. He published an extended excerpt of “The Stable Earth and the Starry Heavens” by John Rollo, which in excruciating detail arguing that the universe revolved around a stationary earth. The book had been published, privately, around 1933 and sent to Fort by Rollo’s sister, Rollo himself having died. Thayer was looking for information on Rollo—and on some Fortean to engage with the argument. Evans did just that. He had been thinking deeply on these issues—having published recent books on geology and Galileo. The great astronomer was by now a symbol of convention, and the dogma against which Fort railed, especially in his second book “New Lands,” but Evans thought otherwise. After all, Galileo had offered what was then a completely novel cosmology and so, as he said to Russell, “who, I think you will agree, has some claim to be reckoned as a sort of Fortean morning star.”
Evans wrote a long letter to Thayer on the mater, which was published in the next issue, Doubt 27, appearing in the winter of 1949. “No Fortean could object to Mr. Rollo’s criticism of the modernized Copernican System. Certainly I could not, as at one time I had some spirited discussions with people who out-Fort Charles Fort himself--the Flat Earth enthusiasts who deny his acceptance that the idea of a central earth, with the stars revolving around it, is ‘reasonable.’ (Books of Charles Fort, page 713.) At the same time, Mr. Rollo’s arguments do not convince me.
“His general idea, of a central stationery [sic] earth surrounded by revolving stars whose nature is totally different from terrestrial matter, is in all essentials that accepted by the Aristotelians of the Middle Ages. It was indeed established orthodoxy, supported by tradition by what was known as Greek culture, by the teaching of the Church, and by plain common-sense. For if Mr. Rollo, who is accustomed to the idea of a moving earth, finds this difficult to believe because it looks improbable, how must it have seemed to those who heard of it, or surmised it, for the first time!
“This traditional view dropped out of mind simply because the Forteans of the time found reason to doubt it. Not just a few outstanding ‘heroes of astronomy’ like Copernicus and Galileo, but a number of less famous thinkers and speculators. These early Forteans studied the observed facts and compared them with the orthodox beliefs, and were forced to the conclusion that the beliefs would not hold water. So they floated, at first tentatively, then with growing confidence, the idea of a moving earth. It was no wonder that astronomers like Tycho Brahe and thinkers like Bacon found it incredible, and that religious poets like Addison and Milton treated it rather ambiguously.
“That so improbable a view as that of the moving earth should at last have won general credence is a tribute, I think, to a certain strain of Forteanism in the human race.
“The argument of Mr. Rollo which I find most difficult to get over is that based on the comparative absence of movement in sea and air. I am surprised, however, that he accepts Foucault’s Pantheon [sic] experiment, as the Flat Earth-ers [sic] state that this gives ambiguous and contradictory results and hint that it was faked. On the other hand he does not mention what seems to me evidence of the earth’s rotations, the precession of the equinoxes. Nor does he mention, what again seems likely, that the movements of the various planetary satellites suggests that the law of gravitation prevails at any rate that far out into space.
“But if ‘the Heavens’ are moving, how far does that movement extend? Does it go on to infinity--which seems unlikely! Or if beyond the stars there is something motionless, why does it not slow down their motion? Are they frictionless, as the mediaeval Aristotelians surmised? Or are their forces beyond the starts which keep them moving and at the same time hold the earth fixed? Or must we simply say we don’t know, and leave it at that?
“On the whole, therefore, though I expect our present ideas of the universe to go fairly drastic revision [sic], I do not expect a reversion to the older Aristotelian views. I do not think a Fortean must subscribe to the dogma that all current scientific theories are necessarily wrong! No doubt he should regard them as not necessarily right, but that is not quite the same thing.”
The letter is an important one for getting at how Evans conceived Forteanism. First, there is the case that Forteanism is a limber mode of thinking—but not one that must be used at all times. As he said a number of times—examples above—he is often interested in ideas, without being convinced by them: they are good to think with, but not necessarily to accept. Michael Saler calls this method of reasoning the “ironic imagination”—playing with ideas one knows are not true in a grand sense. It’s a lens for viewing the world, but not the only one. (Once he confessed to Russell about one of his scientific books, it was “not very Fortean, I’m afraid, but there we are.”) The lability of Evans’s thought allows him, even as a Fortean, to accept certain premises—or at least not to reject them out of hand. Maybe they’re not right—but maybe they are. Obviously, this approach makes room for his own Christianity—maybe it’s not right, but it need not be dismissed—but also for certain scientific subjects, too, meaning that even as a Fortean eh could write books about geography or geology or astronomy that need not classify them as bunk. Another time, he explained to Russell that his geology book was “not one would call Fortean, except in so far that you might say that ll geology is Fortean as compared with what seems plain common-sense. And—compare my letter in the last issue of DOUBT—one might say that all science is that.”
By the early 1950s, Evans’s interest in the Society waned a bit. Perhaps this was why he missed paying his dues in 1954. In 1952, he said to Russell, “I can’t say that the new subject-matter of ‘Doubt’ appeals to me as much as the old, but I suppose the Editor knows what he is doing.” The new subject matter apparently referred to Thayer’s return to more political matters, after he had downplayed them for a few years, in deference to Aaron Sussman, a Fortean Founder and friend who was upset at what he thought of as Thayer’s seditious response to World War II. Thayer was again upset by mandatory vaccination, by adulterated food, and especially by Civilian Defense, which was having everyday citizens become militarized against Russia and communism. Evans much preferred aerial phenomena, including flying saucers (a subject that Thayer, incidentally, hated.)
Despite Thayer’s renewed political activism—he was trying to organize Forteans against Civilian Defense—Evans continued to contribute his preferred clippings. The first one he had sent in—back in 1947—had been about lightning that killed cattle two weeks after it struck, apparently originating int he ground, somehow. The second had been on flying saucers. (Evans was listed among many contributors, making it impossible to know exactly what he sent in.) Another on lightning strikes appeared in Doubt 20. Doubt 31 (January 1951) included a story from him about blue rain; the next issue (March 1951) he contributed to with a story about unusual ice falls that had started in England the previous November—the story was well-known in Fortean circles and lots of other people contributed, a breakthrough of sorts because many officials admitted that they had no explanation. His name appeared in two issues during 1954—both credits unattached to specific clippings—and once in 1955 for something on flying saucers (again the specifics cannot be pinned down). He sent in material, otherwise unspecified, about strange falls of ice, hail, or tinsel, for Doubt 55 (November 1957). Two issues later (July 1958), Thayer discussed a story sent by him in which wash hung out to dry and paint on a house were mysteriously streaked green, as though something had fallen from on high. His last appearance, Doubt 59 (January 1959) in the magazine was for an unspecified clipping about things that fall from the sky. But it wasn’t his last contribution. In March 1960, he wrote asking Russell,
“Is the Fortean Society still functioning? A house nearby has been hit by a ‘thunderbolt’ and they might be interest [sic] to see the press-cutting.”
When it turned out that the Fortean Society had effectively died with Thayer, in August of 1959, Evans was disappointed. 25.hope all is well. “I don’t seem to have heard anything recently from the Fortean Society, and I am beginning to wonder if it has had to suspend work. I great pity [sic] if it has, for it was certainly performing a very useful service.” That came in his final (saved?) letter to Russell—and is the last evidence of Evans being active in Fortean matters. (If he joined the international Fortean Organization or became associated with The News, as the Fortean Times was initially called, I don’t know about it.) But it’s not the last word on Evans as a Fortean—because his Forteanism was always bigger than his involvement with the Society. It was a mode of appreciating—and understanding—the universe that he applied in a number of different ways and at a number of different times in his life.
As has already been suggested, Evans brought a Fortean perspective to his writing—even if he didn’t always employ it. In 1956, he published a short in the collection “Adventures for Boys” called “Danger in Space.” I have not seen it, but Evans pointed out tot Russell that it was rooted in Fort: “I tried to give it a theme which so far as I know has never been used before as a basis for science fiction—and you would at once recognize that it is an idea first suggested by Charles Fort!” In 1959, he wrote “Discovering the Heavens,” a concise history of astronomy—with nary an attack on house “lo!”-cryers, the astronomers. He confessed to Russell that the choice was a conscious one—there’s that slipping into and out of Forteanism again—but despite appearances, Fort was in the background:
“As regards my own work, I should think my latest book would almost lead to my being excommunicated from the Fortean Society with bell, book, and candle! Discovering the Heavens is in fact a story of astronomy for young people, written more or less from the orthodox point of view. Still, I wrote it after a careful reading of Charles Fort’s acid comments on the subjects—in New Lands and elsewhere—and as my book has been well and truly jumped on in the Times Lit. Sup. and the New Scientist, that may perhaps rehabilitate me in the eyes of all good Forteans!”
Evans had done something similar while writing a history of the world. Recognizing his own preference for Wells, he read Chesterton and Upton Sinclair to remind himself of different ideas—to bd interested by them, even if not convinced by them.
His Forteanism also crept, a bit, into his work on Verne—a kind of return, then, since as Sam Moskowitz posits, Fort may have bene influenced by French writers of the fantastic. In 1957’s “Jules Verne: Master of Science Fiction,” he entitled excerpts of Hector Servadec “Aberrant and Anomalous Phenomena”—“I felt rather proud of myself for coining that phrase!,” he told Russell, frankly admitting he was going for a Fortean ring. Later, when the first of the two volumes of the complete Hector Servadec was published, it was under the title Anomalous Phenomena, rather than To the Sun? (The second part was Homeward Bound rather than Off on a Comet!) Evans also went for the same Fortean ring with an excerpt from “An Antarctic Mystery”—which was indeed a response to Poe’s “The Narrative of Gordon Pym—retitling it “End of the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pam.” The Fortean connection here is harder to see, but may have to do with the speculations about the the Poles—as entrance to the hollow earth, or home to some controlling race—common in Fortean sources, or perhaps just the link between Poe and Fort.
Evans also brought a Fortean perspective to his reading—even when it worked against his own strong opinions. Notably, he recommended that Russell read Galton’s first edition of “Enquiries into Human Faculty,” which suggested that prayer could be tested scientifically—a point so controversial at the time it was removed from later editions. Evans thought Russell, the atheist would approve, even if it was a strike against Christian ritual. He also recommended to Russell other books with a Fortean bent that he thought both of them might appreciate. One was A. Standen’s “Science is a Sacred Cow,” which he admitted was written from a religious—probably Catholic—perspective but would appeal to Russell. Another was Hugh Ross Williamson’s “Enigmas of History” which “has an introduction which is pure Forteanism!” And he wore his Fortean spectacles—not to get too cute about it—when reading Russell himself. He greatly enjoyed Russell’s contribution to nonfictional Forteana, Great World Mysteries, especially the chapter on the Mary Celeste, but the book also sparked his remembrances about the Loch Ness Monster, which he used to dispute Russell’s presumption that the whole mess was invented for publicity.
Of course, he also read Russell’s science fiction in Fortean terms—which for him also informed his religious ideas. He was dismayed when he found out that Russell was an atheist, because he loved his own faith, undoubtedly, but also because it seemed unFortean: “I am surprised that so keen a Fortean should have so determinedly closed a mind on a whole class of data, some of it well-authenticated, extremely interesting, and literally of infinite theoretical and practical importance,” he wrote Russell early in May 1953, and repeated them later in the month, after Russell tried to explain—in letters now lost—exactly how he had come to atheism: “While I still find the certainty of your outlook rather surprising in a Fortean, I honour the efforts which you have made to arrive at it. You have evidently taken an immense amount of trouble before arriving at your present position. Your spiritual pilgrimage in some respects resembles my own, except that it has ranged far more widely and that we have arrived at opposite conclusions—whereas you regard all religions with contempt, I regard them all with respect: some more than others, of course.”
Russell tried to bait Evans on matters Christian, especially regarding the hypocrisy of Christians, but Evans refused to be taken: he was of the opinion that one should keep an open mind on the issues, regardless of personalities and even conceded that Christians could too often be less than exemplary: “The Chief argument against Christianity has always been the Christian,” he said. He dismissed Russell’s claim that Hitler and Goebbels were Christian—and so reflected on the faith no more than a lapsed Fortean would reflect on Fort—but allowed that Russell’s claim that contemporary Christians would crucify a returned Messiah: Jesus was crucified the first time by people no better or worse than those who lived int he 20th century, he said. It was the phenomena, that mattered, the ritual, and he was as unwilling to throw out all religion as he was all science, in fact seeing a kind of Forteanism at work in holding to the views, particularly as they became less acceptable, and as Forteans were so quick to dismiss any kind of scientific (or religious) claim).
This Christian Forteanism, unique among the Forteans I have so-far studied, might explain Evans’ inordinate interest in aerial phenomena. In his mind, they seem to have been associated with demons, although it is hard to know how seriously he took this thought. (It was an interesting idea, but was it convincing.) From another angle, one could, perhaps, see the etheric theories of N. Meade Layne and his coterie making a somewhat similar claim: flying saucers were visitors from another dimension. Theosophists also approached the subject of flying saucers in religious terms—seeing them as chariots of the gods, to borrow a phrase, carrying enlightened brothers. Much later, the Fortean John Keel would develop ufology into a strain of demonology. But at the time he was writing, Evans seems to have been alone in wedding Forteanism and Christianity, and (perhaps) seeing demons as behind (some of the) Fortean phenomena.
This view was clearly expressed in his discussion of Russell’s “Sinister Barrier,” and it also came out in his reading of another science fiction story, the lesser tale “Beyond the Visible,” by H. J. Campbell. As with “Sinister Barrier,” the story posited the existence of elemental beings—comprised of radio waves—that cause quarrels and wars. (Robert Spencer Carr wrote yet another variant on this theme, but his beings were fairies causing Fortean phenomena to stop the destruction of the environment.) Evans was not so impressed with Campbell’s story because it did not make sense historically—the beings of his story came into existence when radio waves were existed, which failed to explain humanity’s long standing troubles—certainly a Christian knew that humans had sinned from the beginning, even if the situation was getting worse. He told Russell, “Well, I suppose anyone influenced by Charles Fort should be ready to consider any idea, but the notion that before the mechanical age the world was free from such disputes strikes me as improbable, even by Fortean standards.”
There it was again, that limber imagination, willing to consider ideas but not accept them. Dedicated Christian though he was—and so convinced of a dogma so many Fortean rejected, including Fort himself, who thought humanity had finished the the Religious Dominant, Evans was very much a Fortean.
