Bob Rickard

Bob Rickard
Born	1945 (age 71–72) Deolali, India
Occupation	Paranormal Writer Anomalist
Organization	Fortean Times, Charles Fort Institute, ASSAP

Robert "Bob" J M Rickard is the founder and editor of the UK magazine Fortean Times: The Journal of Strange Phenomena, which debuted in 1973 under its original title The News. The magazine's express purpose is to continue the documentary work of Charles Fort on the strange, anomalous and unexplained. In addition to his editorial role, Rickard has written several books and hundreds of articles on a wide range of Fortean topics. In 1981, he was a founding member of ASSAP and is also the founder of the Charles Fort Institute.

Robert J M Rickard was born in "an R&R station for shell-shocked [WW2] British Army soldiers" in Deolali, India in 1945. (Rickard notes that "Deolali" is the origin of the term "", "which probably accounts for many of his eccentricities"!)

Discovering the books of Charles Fort, in large part through the science-fiction magazine Astounding Science Fiction ("editor John W. Campbell would encourage his writers - such as Robert A. Heinlein, Charles Harness, Theodore Sturgeon, etc - to expand on Fort's themes") and Galaxy, in which "naturalist Willy Ley wrote such inspiring essays on what we now call cryptozoology." Thus attracted, when he attended an SF convention in Worcester in the early 1970s and obtained "all four of the Ace paperback editions," he writes that he "miss[ed] the rest of the Con" to read them. Rickard describes Fort as:

In 1973, after encouragement from "Paul Willis (of INFO), Paul Screeton (of Ley Hunter) and Steve Moore (I Ching specialist)," he founded The News (later renamed Fortean Times) to continue the work of Fort in documenting the strange and unexplained.

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