F&SF February 2005, Locus January 2005, the New Yorker January 10, 2005, and Fortean Times February 2005

This month's stack o' magazines has been cooling its heels for a week or so now as I catch up with reality and it whooshes past me. As usual, it's a mixed bag, but a bag well worth shoving your head inside.

I think that Fortean Times 192 -- February 2005 -- was actually the first to arrive. The cover story -- 'Bigfoot Exposed' -- is probably a whopper for those who haven’t been following the emerging claims and counter-claims that have been flying about for the last year or so. The short version...

We've probably all seen, at one time or another, the famous 1967 film of Bigfoot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. It's the origin of all the shaky-cam footage that is currently the most annoying film-fashion to shiver onscreen. In Bluff Creek, California, in 1967, Patterson and Gimlin claimed to have shot the famous footage of an ape-woman out for a stroll. The veracity of the film and the story has been endlessly debated, and the article by Kal K. Korff, from the book 'The Making of Bigfoot' by journalist Greg Long, published by Prometheus Books -- is not likely to change that. Of course, they do seem to have Patterson and Gimlin pretty much debunked. He's got a confession from Bob Heironimus, who claims to have worn the Bigfoot suit seen in the movie and Phillip Morris who claims to have made the suit. They've got the guy who helped Patterson fake the footprints, who rented the camera. It's over. But. But.

I can’t say that Long and Korff help matters much by doing the famous James Randi trick of re-creating the film using the original players, to show that the film could have been faked. This is an article that demands more than a casual glance at the local independent bookstore where you peruse the magazines. They've got a row of pictures that might give the impression of being outtakes from the making of the Patterson film instead of their own mockup. And to my mind, the old "We can fake it so it must be fake," argument belongs in the Bigfoot dungheap. With, of course, all those phony footprints. Where is the truth in all this? Accompanying the article by Korff is an inset by Daniel Perez, a well-known advocate for the existence of Bigfoot. Loren Coleman argues persuasively for the existence of undiscovered North American apes, while Korff and Long argue persuasively for precisely the opposite. If the truth is somewhere between, what might it be? We can, of course, thank the Fortean Times for providing material on both sides of the divide. In either case, there's a lot to be left for the imagination.