The International Fortean Organization (INFO) is a network of professional Fortean researchers and writers. John Keel, author and parapsychologist, in both his writings and at his appearances at INFO's FortFest, said "the International Fortean Organization (INFO) carries on Charles Fort's name as successor to the Fortean Society."[citation needed] Keel, Colin Wilson and John Michell were long-time advisors to the organization.[citation needed]
The International Fortean Organization (INFO) publishes the INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown,[2] keeps a library of Forteana and offers research service. Science Digest, in 1978, mentions their "attempts to handle inquiries from a world-wide membership".[3][verification needed] The Skeptic's Dictionary says "The International Fortean Organization publishes INFO Journal several times a year. It features stories on such topics as anomalous astronomical phenomena, anomalies in the physical sciences, scientific hoaxes and cryptozoology."[4] The quarterly INFO Journal grew from a 54-page publication to a 69-page publication[citation needed] and according to Factsheet Five, a publication dedicated to the review of periodicals, by 1993 was the longest-running Fortean publication.[5]
John Michell and Bob Rickard in their book Unexplained Phenomena said of the International Fortean Organization "INFO was founded in 1965 as the natural successor to the original Fortean Society."[6] Colin Wilson said he wished to assure The American Spectator that Charles Fort is far from forgotten and credited the publishing efforts of the International Fortean Organization's INFO Journal.
Una McGovern in Chamber's Dictionary of the Unexplained said, "Seven years lapsed between the demise of the Fortean Society and the formation of the International Fortean Organization (INFO)...which played a vital role in encouraging a new generation of young forteans." Although the Fortean Society was never officially dissolved their aims were continued by the International Fortean Organization according to Lewis Spence in the "Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology" and encouraged by Damon Knight who credited the organization in his introduction to the Complete Works of Charles Fort published by Dover. Martin Gardner, in a chapter devoted to Fort, which according to the Sceptic Report neither scorns or damns, in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, notes that Fort doubted everything, even his own speculations. Gardner makes the point that Forteanism serves to remind science that no theory is above doubt, and that knowledge is provisional, it serves a 'sound and healthy' purpose.
The organization was formed in the early 1960s by brothers, the writers Ron and Paul Willis, who acquired much of the material of the original Fortean Society which had begun in 1932 in the spirit of Charles Fort but which had grown silent by 1959 with the death of its founder Tiffany Thayer. The Fortean Society was formed by a friend of Charles Fort, Theodore Dreiser, who had threatened his publisher that he would leave if The Book of the Damned was not put into print. The original society included many of New York's literati including Booth Tarkington, Ben Hecht, Clarence Darrow, Alexander Woollcott and Dorothy Parker. Oliver Wendall Holmes and H.L. Mencken were also early members along with a number of fledgling science-fiction writers such as Eric Frank Russell, Edmond Hamilton and Damon Knight.
Dan Oldenburg in the Washington Post said of the all-volunteer staffed International Fortean Organization, "Its membership ranges from hard-core skeptics to top scholars to true believers -- but its cornerstone is open-mindedness."