Richard Fortey 'Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind'

Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind

Professor Richard Fortey has been a devoted field mycologist all his life. He has rejoiced in the exuberant variety and profusion of mushrooms since reading as a boy of nuns driven mad by ergot (a fungus). Drawing on decades of experience doing science in the woods and fields, Fortey starts with the perfect 'fungus day' - eating ceps in Piedmont. He introduces brown rotters and the white, earthstars and death caps; fungal annuals and perennials, dung lovers and parasites, even fungi that move through the trees like mycelial monkeys. We learn that the giant puffball produces more spores than there are known stars in the universe and fetid stinkhorns begin looking like arrivals from the planet Tharg. He tells of the fungus that turns flies into zombies, the ones that clean up metallic waste the delicious subterranean fungi truffe de Perigord, the delight of gourmets.

Amongst these and many other 'close encounters' of a fungal kind, the book attempts to answer the questions: what are fungi? Why did their means of reproduction escape discovery for so long? What role do they play in the development of life?

The vast kingdom of fungi is more diverse and species rich than plants or animals. Their glorious profusion has the starring role in this magical, deeply informed book which takes us from familiar places into strange worlds.

Richard Fortey

Richard Fortey is a palaeontologist who studies the evolution of arthropods and has a particular interest in the long-extinct marine arthropods, trilobites — one of the earliest groups of arthropods in existence. Richard is also a well-known natural history television presenter and popular science author.

Arthropods are invertebrates with an external skeleton, a segmented body and jointed appendages. Diverse and widespread, trilobites were amongst the most successful of all early animals, roaming the oceans for over 270 million years before suffering a mass extinction. Due to their ancient demise, Richard learns about trilobites from their fossilised remnants and his research has significantly furthered our understanding of invertebrate evolution.

A talented science communicator, and winner of the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize, Richard has appeared in many natural history television programmes for the BBC. In 2010, he travelled with David Attenborough to the Atlas Mountains to find trilobite fossils for BBC Two’s . In 1993, Richard’s book The Hidden Landscape: Journey into the Geological Past was named the Natural World Book of the Year.

Host or Publisher Blackwell's, Broad Street Oxford