Kinda into it though it’s largely lists of strange occurrences then trailing off lambasting accepted explanations. Aurora borealis, at this time of year, in your kitchen? Or perhaps a floating cloud city with lights dropped in lines into the atmosphere... giant black crow hovering over the moon... no reports of whirlwinds...

What a slog this is - I may not finish. Fort builds his arguments slowly and the narrative thread is thin; his method is to convince the reader by overwhelming with similar data points - it is tiresome at best. There are a few nuggets and his outrage is entertaining (I keep thinking of Vizzini in the Princess Bride - "Inconceivable!" - for some reason). Fort's POV is interesting & worth considering but reading this makes me want to watch early episodes of The X-Files (which owes a lot to Fort/Fortean ideas), a much easier route to the similar conclusions.

Very densely written and a bit hard to read. Also kind of illustrates the difference between a good scientist and a bad one; a bad one would follow a lot of theses actions.

Very densely written and a bit hard to read. Also kind of illustrates the difference between a good scientist and a bad one; a bad one would follow a lot of theses actions.

‘All things in the sky are pure to those who have no telescopes.’

This book contains all four of Charles Fort’s books: ‘The Book of the Damned’; ‘New Lands’; ‘Lo!’; and ‘Wild Talents’. ‘By the damned’, wrote Charles Fort, ‘I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science excluded.’ And in these four books (or processions) we have a feat of recorded events of bizarre, strange and inexplicable anomalies for which science could not fully account. And what are these recorded events? They include frogs falling from the sky during storms, monsters, teleportation, poltergeists, and floating islands. They include people who disappear; people who reappear; and people who spontaneously combust. This is an engrossing compilation of miscellaneous attention-grabbing events, approached with both belief and scepticism, and blended with scholarship and humour.

How to read this massive book? I’m pleased that I took Jim Steinmeyer’s advice to read ‘Lo!’ (the third book) first. By the time I got (back) to ‘Book of the Damned’, I was totally engrossed. Fort’s writing is humorous, cynical and witty. In Fort’s view, it is not possible for humans to fully know or define the universe. I especially like his statement that: ‘There is something wrong with everything that is popular.’ Whether or not this is always true, popularity certainly does not guarantee ‘truth’.

The collection of oddities compiled by Charles Fort is fascinating and it is possible to simply enjoy the descriptions without wondering about how and why these events took place. Fort’s floating ‘Sargasso Seas’ in the sky as a means of sucking in and dropping of frogs (and other objects) is as good as any other explanation for frogs falling from skies during storms. The fact that we can’t explain all events doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look for explanations to examine, accept or reject. Now that I have read Fort’s writings, I am keen to read more about Fort himself.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Charles Fort had a lot of interesting ideas, as is evident from this book and his development of the “Intermediatist” philosophy of knowledge, but unfortunately, none of it comes off with any coherence in this maddening, opaque ode to open-mindedness.

Written nearly a century ago, in 1919, “The Book of the Damned” presents a lot of interesting
food for thought but, in the end, I found it all nearly incomprehensible. Charles Fort, the origin of much modern day studies and philosophies of the paranormal and the weird in popular culture, from aliens to time travel, writes about facts “damned” by mainstream early 20th century science for not fitting into preconceived conceptions of the world. Listing off weird weather events, things falling from the sky, odd coincidences and other oddness garnered from news reports from across the world (Fort was nothing if not an exhaustive researcher), his arguments become quickly bogged down in long, pointless digressions.

Fort’s concerns involving scientists forcing their discoveries and theories to fit into imperfect human thought patterns could still be important today, but on the other hand a lot of Fort’s speculation and ideas were rendered even more ridiculous through as scientific knowledge continued to advance throughout the century. Worse, Fort’s prose is so dense, impenetrable, and meandering, his chapters organized by no discernible order, it made it very tough reading in spite of how interesting I found the subject matter.