Flying Saucer Review

History

Flying Saucer Review launched in March 1955 in London under the editorship of Denis Ninham, with Derek Dempster as its first managing editor. From the start it set itself apart from the growing number of American UFO publications by refusing to confine its coverage to the English-speaking world. The journal attracted contributions from military officers, academics, and diplomats who would not publish in less rigorous outlets. Its London address carried weight. This was not a mimeographed bulletin from someone's garage; it was a properly printed quarterly with international distribution and an editorial board that included people with security clearances.

1955 to 1962: The Ninham and Dempster Founding Period

The journal's founding period coincided with the explosive growth of UFO reporting across postwar Europe, the Levelland sightings in the United States in November 1957, the Brazilian flap of late 1957 and 1958 that produced the Antonio Villas-Boas abduction and the Itaipu Fortress sentry-burn case, and the early Adamski-era contactee literature. FSR's editorial position from issue one was that the phenomenon required serious investigation rather than ridicule, and that British and continental researchers had something distinctive to bring to the American-dominated public discourse.

The early FSR contributor list included Brinsley Le Poer Trench (Earl of Clancarty), Waveney Girvan, and a rotating cast of British researchers with military and intelligence backgrounds whose names recur across the journal's archive for the next four decades. The Tananarive sightings of 16 to 18 August 1954 in Madagascar, the Quaroble case in northern France of 10 September 1954, and the Trindade Island photographs of 16 January 1958 all entered the English-language record through early FSR coverage.

1962 to 1982: The Bowen Editorship

Charles Bowen took over editorial duties in the early 1960s and steered the journal through the great wave years of 1965 to 1968, when sighting reports were flooding in from every continent. Under Bowen, FSR published some of the earliest serious English-language analysis of the close encounter phenomenon, including detailed case studies from Brazil, France, and Spain that no other anglophone publication would touch for another decade. Bowen also oversaw the publication of FSR Special Issues, thematic monographs that compiled case evidence on specific topics: occupant encounters, physical trace cases, electromagnetic effects.

The journal's mid-period contributor list reads like a directory of mid-century ufology's most careful thinkers. Jacques Vallee published in FSR before Passport to Magonia (1969) made him an internationally recognised researcher. Aime Michel, the French researcher who identified the orthoteny patterns in the 1954 French wave, contributed throughout the 1960s. Dr. Olavo Fontes, the Brazilian physician who investigated the Ubatuba magnesium fragment and the Villas-Boas case, filed reports directly from Rio de Janeiro until his death in 1968. Coral and Jim Lorenzen of APRO maintained an ongoing cross-Atlantic editorial relationship with Bowen.

1982 to 2003: The Creighton Translation Era

Gordon Creighton assumed the editorship in 1982 and held it until his death in 2003. Creighton was a former British diplomat who had served in China, the Soviet Union, and South America. He spoke Mandarin, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, and several other languages fluently. This linguistic range was not academic ornament: Creighton personally translated case reports from Brazilian police files, Soviet research journals, and Spanish-language investigation bulletins that would otherwise never have appeared in English.

Under Creighton's two-decade tenure, FSR became the journal of record for international UFO cases. It maintained correspondents across South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The journal published original translations of cases from the French GEPAN files, the Spanish Air Force declassification programme of 1992 to 1999, and Soviet-era research that was largely unknown in the West until FSR brought it to its readership.

The journal ceased regular publication after Creighton's death in 2003, though sporadic issues appeared for several years afterwards. At its peak it had subscribers in over fifty countries and was cited by researchers, military officials, and intelligence analysts worldwide. The British Ministry of Defence's DI55 section is known to have maintained a subscription throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Connections

FSR's translation pipeline made it the English-language node through which the rest of the world's UFO record reached anglophone readers. Every editor, contributor, case, and sister publication that ran through these pages has its own home in the archive.

People in this collection

FSR's four editors across forty-eight years, the founding-circle contributors, and the international correspondents whose work the journal carried.

• Derek Dempster, FSR's first managing editor from 1955, with Denis Ninham as founding editor
• Charles Bowen, editor from the early 1960s to 1982, who steered the journal through the great wave years and the FSR Special Issues monograph series
• Gordon Creighton, editor from 1982 until his death in 2003, the former British diplomat whose translations of Brazilian, Spanish, Russian and Italian source material defined the journal's late period
• Brinsley le Poer Trench, Earl of Clancarty, founding-circle contributor and later founder of the House of Lords UFO Study Group
• Waveney Girvan, founding-circle contributor and FSR editorial board member
• Jacques Vallée, who published in FSR before Passport to Magonia (1969) made him an internationally recognised researcher
• Aime Michel, the French researcher whose orthoteny analysis of the 1954 French wave ran throughout the 1960s
• Olavo Fontes, the Brazilian physician who filed Villas Boas and Ubatuba reports directly from Rio de Janeiro until his death in 1968
• Coral Lorenzen and Jim Lorenzen, APRO's directors, who maintained the cross-Atlantic editorial relationship with Bowen across two decades
• Antonio Villas Boas, the Brazilian witness whose 1957 encounter Fontes investigated and FSR carried into the English-language record
• Trevor Constable, the speculative-research contributor whose late-period FSR essays sat at the high-strangeness edge of the journal's range
• Hilary Evans, the psychosocial-school researcher whose work crossed between FSR and Magonia
• Timothy Good, the British researcher whose FSR contributions preceded his Above Top Secret (1987) institutional history

Cases FSR carried

The landmark international cases that reached the English-language record through FSR's translation pipeline.

• Operação Prato, the Brazilian Air Force investigation of the 1977 to 1978 Colares "chupa-chupa" wave on Pará's river delta, translated by Creighton from the original BAF reports
• The Tehran F-4 intercept of 19 September 1976, the Imperial Iranian Air Force scramble FSR documented through US DIA correspondence
• The Trindade Island photographs of 16 January 1958, the Brazilian Navy hydrographic survey case that entered the English-language record through FSR's early Fontes coverage
• The 1954 Tananarive sightings in Madagascar and the Quaroble case of 10 September 1954 in northern France, covered in the Ninham-Dempster founding period
• The Manises Air Force Base incident of 11 November 1979, the Spanish military case Creighton translated from Spanish police and military reports

Related publications

The international civilian-research network FSR's translation pipeline connected, and the British and continental peers it shared correspondents with.

• Lumières Dans La Nuit, Raymond Veillith's French-language journal from Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, FSR's primary francophone counterpart from 1958
• Notiziario UFO, the Italian-language journal Creighton cross-translated from
• Inexplicata, the Spanish-language tradition the journal's Iberian-correspondent network fed into
• SOBEPS Flash, the Belgian francophone journal that covered the 1989 to 1990 Belgian wave alongside FSR's English-language reporting
• Magonia, John Rimmer's British psychosocial counterpart, the critical wing of UK ufology that took its name from Vallée's FSR-era writing
• APRO Bulletin, the Lorenzens' Tucson publication and FSR's primary American editorial counterpart through Bowen's tenure
• NICAP UFO Investigator, the Washington civilian-establishment journal FSR drew on through the 1960s and 1970s
• International UFO Reporter, the Centre for UFO Studies publication that became FSR's late-period American academic counterpart
• MUFON UFO Journal, the American post-NICAP successor publication FSR exchanged source material with

Cross-cutting themes and surfaces

• Abductions, the theme anchored across Fontes' Villas Boas work, the Pascagoula reporting, and the broader high-strangeness body Bowen and Creighton carried
• Contactees, the literature FSR covered with editorial distance through the Adamski-era period and after
• United Kingdom, the country exhibition FSR's editorial record sits inside
• Brazil, the country exhibition where the Operação Prato investigation, the Villas Boas case, and the Trindade photographs are catalogued
• France, the country exhibition where the Aime Michel orthoteny work and the GEPAN material the journal translated from sit alongside
• France Reading Room, the GEPAN/CNES source material Creighton translated extensively from
• Newsletter Archive, the catalogue surface for all 246 newsletter collections