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Charles Fort

Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932) was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold well and are still in print. His work continues to inspire admirers, who refer to themselves as "Forteans", and has influenced some aspects of science fiction.[1]

Charles Hoy Fort
Fort in 1920
Born
Charles Hoy Fort

(1874-08-06)August 6, 1874
DiedMay 3, 1932(1932-05-03) (aged 57)
The Bronx, New York City, US
OccupationAnomalistics researcher

Fort's collections of scientific anomalies, including The Book of the Damned (1919), influenced numerous science-fiction writers with their skepticism and as sources of ideas. "Fortean" phenomena are events which seem to challenge the boundaries of accepted scientific knowledge, and the Fortean Times (founded as The News in 1973 and renamed in 1976) investigates such phenomena.

Biography edit

Fort was born in Albany, New York, in 1874,[2] of Dutch ancestry. His father, a grocer, was an authoritarian, and in his unpublished autobiography Many Parts, Fort mentions the physical abuse he endured from his father.[3] Fort's biographer, Damon Knight, suggested that his distrust of authority began in his treatment as a child. Fort developed a strong sense of independence during his early years.

As a young adult, Fort wanted to be a naturalist, collecting sea shells, minerals, and birds. Although Fort was described as curious and intelligent, he was not a good student. An autodidact, his considerable knowledge of the world was due mainly to his extensive personal reading.[4]

At age 18, Fort left New York to embark on a world tour to "put some capital in the bank of experience".[5] He travelled through the western United States, Scotland, and England, until becoming ill in Southern Africa. When he returned home, he was nursed by Anna Filing, whom he had known since childhood. They were married on October 26, 1896, at an Episcopal church.[6] For a few years, the newly married couple lived in poverty in the Bronx while Fort tried to earn a living writing stories for newspapers and magazines. In 1906, he began to collect accounts of anomalies.[5]

Career as a full-time writer edit

His uncle Frank A. Fort died in 1916,[7] and a modest inheritance gave Fort enough money to quit his various day jobs and to write full-time.[2] In 1917, Fort's brother Clarence died; his portion of the same inheritance was divided between Fort and his other brother, Raymond.[8]

Fort's experience as a journalist,[2] coupled with his wit and contrarian nature, prepared him for his real-life work, ridiculing the pretensions of scientific positivism and the tendency of journalists and editors of newspapers and scientific journals to rationalize.[9]

Fort wrote 10 novels, although only one, The Outcast Manufacturers (1909), a tenement tale, was published. Reviews were mostly positive, but it was unsuccessful commercially.[10] During 1915, Fort began to write two books, titled X and Y, the first dealing with the idea that beings on Mars were controlling events on Earth, and the second with the postulation of a sinister civilization extant at the South Pole.[11] These books caught the attention of writer Theodore Dreiser, who tried to get them published, but to no avail.[11] Discouraged, Fort burnt the manuscripts, but soon began work on the book that would change the course of his life, The Book of the Damned (1919), which Dreiser helped to get published. The title referred to "damned" data that Fort collected, phenomena for which science could not account, and that was thus rejected or ignored.[12]

Fort and Anna lived intermittently in London between 1920[13] and 1928,[14] so Fort could carry out research in the Reading Room of the British Museum.[5] Although born in Albany, Fort lived most of his life in the Bronx. He was, like his wife, fond of movies, and often took her from their Ryer Avenue apartment to a movie theater nearby, stopping at an adjacent newsstand for an arm full of various newspapers. Fort frequented the parks near the Bronx, where he sifted through piles of clippings. He often rode the subway down to the main Public Library on Fifth Avenue, where he spent many hours reading scientific journals, newspapers, and periodicals from around the world. Fort also had literary friends who gathered at various apartments, including his own, to drink and talk.[15]

Death edit

Suffering from poor health and failing eyesight, Fort was pleasantly surprised to find himself the subject of a cult following.[16] Talk arose of the formation of a formal organization to study the type of odd events related by his books. Jerome Clark writes, "Fort himself, who did nothing to encourage any of this, found the idea hilarious. Yet he faithfully corresponded with his readers, some of whom had taken to investigating reports of anomalous phenomena and sending their findings to Fort".[17] Fort distrusted doctors and did not seek medical help for his worsening health. Rather, he emphasized completing Wild Talents.[18]

After he collapsed on May 3, 1932, Fort was rushed to Royal Hospital. Later that same day, Fort's publisher visited him to show him the advance copies of Wild Talents. Fort died only hours afterward, probably of leukemia.[5] He was interred in the Fort family plot in Albany, New York.[5]

Fort and the unexplained edit

Overview edit

For more than 30 years, Charles Fort visited libraries in New York City and London, assiduously reading scientific journals, newspapers, and magazines, collecting notes on phenomena that were not explained well by the accepted theories and beliefs of the time.

Fort took thousands of notes during his lifetime. In his undated short story "The Giant, the Insect and The Philanthropic-looking Old Gentleman" (first published by the International Fortean Organization in issue No. 70 of the INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown), Fort spoke of having often toyed with the idea of burning a collection of some 48,000 notes, and of one day letting "several" notes be blown away by the wind because he couldn't be bothered to save them (they were supposedly returned to him by a gentleman on a neighbouring park bench).[19] The notes were kept on cards and scraps of paper in shoeboxes, in a cramped shorthand of Fort's own invention. More than once, depressed and discouraged, Fort destroyed his work, but began anew. Some notes were published by the Fortean Society magazine Doubt, and upon the death of its editor Tiffany Thayer in 1959, most were donated to the New York Public Library, where they are still available to researchers.[20] Material created by Charles Fort has also survived as part of the papers of Theodore Dreiser, held at the University of Pennsylvania.[21]

From this research, Fort wrote four books: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932); one book was written between New Lands and Lo! but it was abandoned and absorbed into Lo!.

Fort's writing style edit

Fort suggested that a Super-Sargasso Sea exists, into which all lost things go,[2] and justified his theories by noting that they fit the data as well as the conventional explanations. As to whether Fort believed this theory, or any of his other proposals, he himself noted, "I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written".[4]

Notable literary contemporaries of Fort's openly admired his writing style and befriended him. Among these were: Ben Hecht, John Cowper Powys, Sherwood Anderson, Clarence Darrow, and Booth Tarkington.

After Fort's death, the writer Colin Wilson said that he suspected that Fort took few if any of his "explanations" seriously, and noted that Fort made "no attempt to present a coherent argument". He described Fort as "a patron saint of cranks"[22] while at the same time he compared Fort to Robert Ripley, a popular contemporary cartoonist and writer who found major success publishing similar oddities in a syndicated newspaper panel series named Ripley's Believe It or Not!

Wilson called Fort's writing style "atrocious" and "almost unreadable", yet despite his objections to Fort's prose, he allowed that "the facts are certainly astonishing enough." In the end, Fort's work gave him "the feeling that no matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels."[23]

Jerome Clark, though, wrote that Fort was "essentially a satirist hugely skeptical of human beings'—especially scientists'—claims to ultimate knowledge".[24] Clark described Fort's writing style as a "distinctive blend of mocking humor, penetrating insight, and calculated outrageousness".[25] Fort was skeptical of sciences and wrote his own mocking explanations to defy scientists who used traditional methods.[2]

In a review for Lo!, The New York Times wrote: "Reading Fort is a ride on a comet; if the traveler returns to earth after the journey, he will find, after his first dizziness has worn off, a new and exhilarating emotion that will color and correct all his future reading of less heady scientific literature."[12]

Fortean phenomena edit

Examples of the odd phenomena in Fort's books include many occurrences of the sort variously referred to as occult, supernatural, and paranormal. Reported events include teleportation (a term Fort is generally credited with inventing),[26][27] falls of frogs, fishes, and inorganic materials,[2] spontaneous human combustion,[2] ball lightning[2] (a term explicitly used by Fort), poltergeist events, unaccountable noises and explosions, levitation, unidentified flying objects, unexplained disappearances, giant wheels of light in the oceans, and animals found outside their normal ranges (see phantom cat). He offered many reports of out-of-place artifacts (OOPArts), strange items found in unlikely locations. He was also perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction, and was an early proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, specifically suggesting that strange lights or objects sighted in the skies might be alien spacecraft.

Forteans edit

Fort's work has inspired some people to consider themselves "Forteans". The first of these was screenwriter Ben Hecht, who in a review of The Book of the Damned, declared, "I am the first disciple of Charles Fort... henceforth, I am a Fortean".[28] Among Fort's other notable fans were John Cowper Powys, Sherwood Anderson, Clarence Darrow, and Booth Tarkington, who wrote the foreword to New Lands.

Precisely what is encompassed by the term "Fortean" is a matter of great debate; the term is widely applied to people ranging from Fortean purists dedicated to Fort's methods and interests, to those with open and active acceptance of the actuality of paranormal phenomena, a belief with which Fort may not have agreed. Most generally, Forteans have a wide interest in unexplained phenomena, concerned mostly with the natural world, and have a developed "agnostic skepticism" regarding the anomalies they note and discuss. For Hecht, as an example, being a Fortean meant hallowing a pronounced distrust of authority in all its forms, whether religious, scientific, political, philosophical, or otherwise. It did not, of course, include an actual belief in the anomalous data enumerated in Fort's works.

The Fortean Society was initiated at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York City on January 26, 1931, by some of Fort's friends, including such significant writers as Hecht, Theodore Dreiser, and Alexander Woollcott, and organized by fellow American writer Tiffany Thayer, half in earnest and half in the spirit of great good humor, like the works of Fort himself. The board of founders included Dreiser, Hecht, Tarkington, Powys, Aaron Sussman, former Puck editor Harry Leon Wilson, Woollcott, and J. David Stern, publisher of The Philadelphia Record. Active members of the Fortean Society included prominent science-fiction writers such as Eric Frank Russell and Damon Knight. Fort, however, rejected the society and refused the presidency, which went to his friend Dreiser; he was lured to its inaugural meeting by false telegrams. As a strict nonauthoritarian, Fort refused to establish himself as an authority, and further objected on the grounds that those who would be attracted by such a group would be spiritualists, zealots, and those opposed to a science that rejected them; it would attract those who believed in their chosen phenomena—an attitude exactly contrary to Forteanism. Fort did hold unofficial meetings and had a long history of getting together informally with many of New York City's literati such as Dreiser and Hecht at their apartments, where they would talk, have a meal, and then listen to brief reports.[29]

The magazine Fortean Times (first published in November 1973) is a proponent of Fortean journalism, combining humor, skepticism, and serious research into subjects that scientists and other respectable authorities often disdain. Another such group is the International Fortean Organization (INFO), which was formed during the early 1960s (incorporated in 1965) by brothers and writers Ron and Paul Willis, who acquired much of the material of the Fortean Society, which had largely ceased by 1959 with the death of Tiffany Thayer. INFO publishes the INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown and organizes the FortFest, the world's first continuously running conference on anomalous phenomena dedicated to the spirit of Charles Fort. INFO, since the mid-1960s, also provides audio CDs and filmed DVDs of notable conference speakers, including Colin Wilson, John Michell, Graham Hancock, John Anthony West, William Corliss, John Keel, and Joscelyn Godwin. Other notable Fortean societies include the London Fortean Society, Edinburgh Fortean Society, in Edinburgh and the Isle of Wight.

Scholarly evaluation edit

Religious scholars such as Jeffrey J. Kripal and Joseph P. Laycock view Fort as a pioneering theorist who helped define "paranormal" as a discursive category and provided insight into its importance in human experience. Consistently critical of how science studied abnormal phenomena in his day, Fort remains a point of reference for those who engage in such studies today.[2][30][31]

Literary influence edit

More than a few modern authors of fiction and nonfiction who have written about the influence of Fort are sincere devotees of Fort. One of the most notable is British philosopher John Michell, who wrote the introduction to the edition of Lo!, published by John Brown in 1996.[32] Michell says: "Fort, of course, made no attempt at defining a world-view, but the evidence he uncovered gave him an 'acceptance' of reality as something far more magical and subtly organized than is considered proper today." Stephen King also uses the works of Fort to illuminate his main characters, notably It and Firestarter. In Firestarter, the parents of a pyrokinetically gifted child are advised to read Fort's Wild Talents rather than the works of baby doctor Benjamin Spock. Loren Coleman is a well-known cryptozoologist, author of The Unidentified (1975) dedicated to Fort, and Mysterious America, which Fortean Times termed a Fortean classic. Coleman terms himself the first Vietnam era conscientious objector to base his pacificist ideas on Fortean thoughts. Jerome Clark has described himself as a "skeptical Fortean".[33] Mike Dash is another Fortean, bringing his historian's training to bear on all manner of odd reports, while being careful to avoid uncritically accepting any orthodoxy, be it that of fringe devotees or mainstream science. Science-fiction writers of note including Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, and Robert Anton Wilson were also fans of the work of Fort. Alfred Bester's teleportation-themed novel, The Stars My Destination, pays homage to the coiner of the term by naming the first teleporter "Charles Fort Jaunte".[34] Fort's work, of compilation and commentary on anomalous phenomena has been carried on by William R. Corliss, whose self-published books and notes bring Fort's collections up to date.[1]

In 1939, Eric Frank Russell first published the novel which became Sinister Barrier, in which he names Fort explicitly as an influence. Russell included some of Fort's data in the story.[35] In chapter 3 of William Gaddis’s 1955 novel The Recognitions, protagonist Wyatt Gwyon twice quotes from Fort’s The Book of the Damned--“By the damned, I mean the excluded”; “By prostitution, I mean usefulness”—and paraphrases him from the same book: “Charles Fort says maybe we’re fished for, by supercelestial beings.”[36] Ivan T. Sanderson, Scottish naturalist and writer, was a devotee of Fort's work, and referenced it heavily in several of his own books on unexplained phenomena, notably Things (1967), and More Things (1969). Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier's The Morning of the Magicians was also heavily influenced by Fort's work and mentions it often. Author Donald Jeffries referenced Charles Fort repeatedly in his 2007 novel The Unreals.[37] Joe Milutis writes a short chapter in his book Failure, a Writer's Life on Charles Fort, characterising Fort's prose as "well-nigh unreadable, yet strangely exhilarating".[38]

Noted UK paranormalist, Fortean, and ordained priest Lionel Fanthorpe presented the Fortean TV series on Channel 4, between 1997 and 1998.[39] Paul Thomas Anderson's popular movie Magnolia (1999) has an underlying theme of unexplained events, taken from the 1920s and '30s works of Charles Fort. Fortean author Loren Coleman has written a chapter about this motion picture, entitled "The Teleporting Animals and Magnolia", in one of his recent books.[40] The film has many hidden Fortean themes, notably "falling frogs". In one scene, one of Fort's books is visible on a table in a library and an end credit thanks him by name.[41] In the 2011 film The Whisperer in Darkness, Fort is portrayed by Andrew Leman.[42]

American crime and science-fiction author Fredric Brown included an excerpt from Fort's book Wild Talents as an epigraph to his novel Compliments of a Fiend. In that quote, Fort speculated about the disappearance of two people named Ambrose and wondered "was someone collecting Ambroses?" Brown's novel concerns the disappearance of a character named Ambrose, and the kidnapper calls himself the "Ambrose collector" as an obvious homage to Fort.[43]

In Blue Balliett's bestselling children's novel, Chasing Vermeer, Fort is given several mentions throughout the book, such as Fort's Lo! being found and thoroughly read by one of the book's protagonists, and being an inspiration to the main characters.[44]

Bibliography edit

Fort published five books during his lifetime, including one novel. All five are available on-line (see External links section below).

  • Many Parts (1901, unpublished autobiography)
  • The Outcast Manufacturers (1909; B.W. Dodge), novel
  • The Book of the Damned (1919), Reprinted by Ace Books, K-156, c. 1962, and H-24, c. 1966; Prometheus Books, 1999, paperback, 310 pages, ISBN 1-57392-683-3.
  • New Lands (1923), Reprinted by Ace Books, H-74, 1968, and later printings, mass market paperback. ISBN 0-7221-3627-7
  • Lo! (1931), Reprinted by Ace Books, K-217, c. 1965, and later printings, mass market paperback. ISBN 1-870870-89-1
  • Wild Talents (1932), Reprinted by Ace Books, H-88, c. 1968, and later printings, mass market paperback. ISBN 1-870870-29-8

Posthumous editions:

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ a b Boyle, Tanner F. (2021). The Fortean influence on science fiction : Charles Fort and the evolution of the genre. Jefferson, North Carolina. ISBN 978-1-4766-7740-8. OCLC 1201695513.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Bill Bradbury (1982). Tiedon rajamailla [Into the Unknown] (in Finnish). Reader's Digest. ISBN 978-951-9078-89-2.
  3. ^ Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin. pp. 19–20. ISBN 978-1-4362-0566-5. OCLC 608554928.
  4. ^ a b Lippard, Jim (1996). "Charles Fort". In Stein, Gordon M. (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. pp. 277–80. ISBN 1-57392-021-5.
  5. ^ a b c d e Rickard, Bob (1997). "Charles Fort: His Life and Times". Charles Fort Institute.
  6. ^ Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-4362-0566-5. OCLC 608554928.
  7. ^ Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin. p. 144. ISBN 978-1-4362-0566-5. OCLC 608554928.
  8. ^ Knight, Damon (1970). Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. p. 58.
  9. ^ Barrett, David V. (May 28, 2008). "Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented The Supernatural, by Jim Steinmeyer". The Independent. Retrieved January 1, 2023.
  10. ^ Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin. pp. 124–25. ISBN 978-1-4362-0566-5. OCLC 608554928.
  11. ^ a b Dash, Mike. "Charles Fort and a Man Named Dreiser" (PDF). Fortean Times (51): 40–48.
  12. ^ a b "Charles Fort, Enfant Terrible of Science," Archived via the TimesMachine,The New York Times, 29 July 2020.
  13. ^ Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-58542-640-9. OCLC 196302255.
  14. ^ Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin. p. 222. ISBN 978-1-58542-640-9. OCLC 196302255.
  15. ^ Sleigh, Charlotte (2015). "Writing the Scientific Self: Samuel Butler and Charles Hoy Fort" (PDF). Journal of Literature and Science. 8 (2): 17–35. doi:10.12929/jls.08.2.02.
  16. ^ "Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer". Publishers Weekly. 2008. Retrieved January 1, 2023.
  17. ^ Clark, Jerome (1998). The UFO Book. Visible Ink. p. 235.
  18. ^ Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin. p. 267. ISBN 978-1-4362-0566-5. OCLC 608554928.
  19. ^ "The Giant, the Insect, and the Philanthropic-looking Old Gentleman" by Charles Hoy Fort". Retrieved December 10, 2012.
  20. ^ "Archives and manuscripts Fort, Charles, 1874–1932".
  21. ^ "Theodore Dreiser papers - Philadelphia Area Archives". findingaids.library.upenn.edu. Retrieved January 2, 2023.
  22. ^ Wilson, Colin, Mysteries, Putnam (ISBN 0-399-12246-X), p. 199.
  23. ^ Wilson, Colin: ibid., p. 201 (emphasis in original).
  24. ^ Clark, Jerome: "The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in the Early UFO Age" in UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge, edited David M. Jacobs, University Press of Kansas: 2000 (ISBN 0-7006-1032-4), p. 123. See Pyrrhonism for a similar type of skepticism.
  25. ^ Clark, Jerome: The UFO Book, Visible Ink: 1998, p. 200.
  26. ^ "Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indications that there exists a transportory force that I shall call Teleportation." in Fort. C. Lo! at Sacred Texts.com. Retrieved January 4, 2009
  27. ^ "less well-known is the fact that Charles Fort coined the word in 1931" in Rickard, B. and Michell, J. Unexplained Phenomena: a Rough Guide special (Rough Guides, 2000 (ISBN 1-85828-589-5), p. 3)
  28. ^ Knight, Damon (1971). Charles Fort: prophet of the unexplained. London: Gollancz. p. 70. ISBN 0-575-00613-7. OCLC 279082.
  29. ^ Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin. p. 144. ISBN 978-1-4362-0566-5. OCLC 608554928.
  30. ^ Laycock, Joseph (2014). "Approaching the Paranormal". Nova Religio. 18 (1): 5–15. doi:10.1525/nr.2014.18.1.5. JSTOR 10.1525/nr.2014.18.1.5.
  31. ^ Bester, Alfred. The Stars My Destination, p. 5; Orion Books; 1956.
  32. ^ Fort, Charles (1997). Lo!. X. London: John Brown. ISBN 1-870870-89-1. OCLC 43197036.
  33. ^ Clark, Jerome (1983). "Confessions of a Fortean Sceptic". Magonia.
  34. ^ "Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: jaunt". sfdictionary.com. Retrieved January 2, 2023.
  35. ^ Russell, Eric Frank (1966). Sinister Barrier. New York: Paperback Library (#52-384).
  36. ^ The Recognitions (Harcourt Brace, 1955), pp. 81, 87
  37. ^ Vareli, Mary (April 28, 2017). "Forteana, The Mysterious World of Charles Fort". Paradox Ethereal Magazine. Retrieved January 1, 2023.
  38. ^ Failure, a writer's life. Joe Milutis. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. 2013. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-78099-704-9. OCLC 818462403.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  39. ^ Martin, Robert (November 11, 2022). "Fortean TV (DVD review)". STARBURST Magazine. Retrieved January 1, 2023.
  40. ^ Coleman, Loren (2001). Mysterious America (Rev. ed.). New York: Paraview Press. ISBN 1-931044-05-8. OCLC 46798826.
  41. ^ Coleman, Loren (2007). "Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures". Simon & Schuster.
  42. ^ Branney, Sean (May 19, 2011), The Whisperer in Darkness (Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller), HPLHS Motion Pictures, Fungi, retrieved January 6, 2023
  43. ^ Brown, Fredric (1950). Compliments of a Fiend. MysteriousPress.com. ISBN 978-1-5040-6825-3. OCLC 1273982012.
  44. ^ Balliett, Blue (2004). Chasing Vermeer. Brett Helquist (1st ed.). New York: Scholastic Press. ISBN 0-439-37294-1. OCLC 51172514.

Further reading edit

  • Gardner, Martin has a chapter on Charles Fort in his Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science 1957; Dover; ISBN 0-486-20394-8.
  • Knight, Damon, Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained (1970) is a dated but valuable biographical resource, detailing Fort's early life, his pre-'Fortean' period and also provides chapters on the Fortean society and brief studies of Fort's work in relation to Immanuel Velikovsky; intro by R. Buckminster Fuller.
  • Magin, Ulrich, Der Ritt auf dem Kometen. Über Charles Fort is similar to Knight's book, in German language, and contains more detailed chapters on Fort's philosophy.
  • Pauwels, Louis has an entire chapter on Fort, "The Vanished Civilizations", in The Morning of the Magicians.
  • Pauwels, Louis, The Morning of the Magicians (Stein & Day, 1964), pp. 91 et seq. Reprinted by Destiny in 2008, ISBN 1-59477-231-2.
  • Bennett, Colin (2002). Politics of the Imagination: The Life, Work and Ideas of Charles Fort (paperback). Head Press. p. 206. ISBN 978-1-900486-20-0.
  • Boyle, Tanner F.; E. Palumbo, Donald; Sullivan III, C. W. (2021). The Fortean influence on science fiction : Charles Fort and the evolution of the genre. Jefferson, North Carolina. ISBN 978-1-4766-4190-4. OCLC 1227700541.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Carroll, Robert Todd. "Fort, Charles (1874–1932)" (pp. 148–150 in The Skeptic's Dictionary, Robert Todd Carroll, John Wiley & Sons, 2003; ISBN 0-471-27242-6)
  • Clark, Jerome. "The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in the Early UFO Age" (pp. 122–140 in UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge, David M. Jacobs, editor; University Press of Kansas, 2000; ISBN 0-7006-1032-4)
  • Clark, Jerome. The UFO Book, Visible Ink: 1998.
  • Dash, Mike. "Charles Fort and a Man Named Dreiser." in Fortean Times no. 51 (Winter 1988–1989), pp. 40–48.
  • Kidd, Ian James. "Who Was Charles Fort?" in Fortean Times no. 216 (Dec 2006), pp. 54–55.
  • Kidd, Ian James. "Holding the Fort: how science fiction preserved the name of Charles Fort" in Matrix no. 180 (Aug/Sept 2006), pp. 24–25.
  • Kripal, Jeffrey J. (2010). Authors of the impossible: the paranormal and the sacred. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-45387-3.
  • Lippard, Jim. "Charles Fort" (pp. 277–280 in Encyclopedia of the Paranormal, Gordon M. Stein, editor; Prometheus Books, 1996; ISBN 1-57392-021-5)
  • Skinner, Doug, "Tiffany Thayer", Fortean Times, June 2005.
  • Sleigh, Charlotte (2017). "An outcry of silences': Charles Hoy Fort and the uncanny voices of science". In Mellor, Felicity; Webster, Stephen (eds.). The silences of science : gaps and pauses in the communication of science. London. doi:10.4324/9781315609102. ISBN 978-1-317-05503-7. OCLC 958482578.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Steinmeyer, Jim (2008). Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural (hardback). Heinemann. pp. 352 pages. ISBN 978-0-434-01629-7.
  • Wilson, Colin. Mysteries, Putnam, ISBN 0-399-12246-X
  • Ludwigsen, Will. "We Were Wonder Scouts" in Asimov's Science Fiction, Aug 2011

External links edit

  • The Charles Fort Institute
  • Works by Charles Fort at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by or about Charles Fort at Internet Archive
  • Works by Charles Fort at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • Mr. X, Consulting Resologist – contains links to Fort's works
  • Dunning, Brian (October 13, 2015). "Skeptoid #488: Who Was Charles Fort?". Skeptoid.

charles, fort, this, article, about, american, writer, source, term, fortean, other, uses, disambiguation, charles, fort, august, 1874, 1932, american, writer, researcher, specialized, anomalous, phenomena, terms, fortean, forteana, sometimes, used, characteri. This article is about the American writer and source of the term Fortean For other uses see Charles Fort disambiguation Charles Hoy Fort August 6 1874 May 3 1932 was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena The terms Fortean and Forteana are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena Fort s books sold well and are still in print His work continues to inspire admirers who refer to themselves as Forteans and has influenced some aspects of science fiction 1 Charles Hoy FortFort in 1920BornCharles Hoy Fort 1874 08 06 August 6 1874Albany New York USDiedMay 3 1932 1932 05 03 aged 57 The Bronx New York City USOccupationAnomalistics researcherFort s collections of scientific anomalies including The Book of the Damned 1919 influenced numerous science fiction writers with their skepticism and as sources of ideas Fortean phenomena are events which seem to challenge the boundaries of accepted scientific knowledge and the Fortean Times founded as The News in 1973 and renamed in 1976 investigates such phenomena Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Career as a full time writer 1 2 Death 2 Fort and the unexplained 2 1 Overview 2 2 Fort s writing style 2 3 Fortean phenomena 2 4 Forteans 2 5 Scholarly evaluation 3 Literary influence 4 Bibliography 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External linksBiography editFort was born in Albany New York in 1874 2 of Dutch ancestry His father a grocer was an authoritarian and in his unpublished autobiography Many Parts Fort mentions the physical abuse he endured from his father 3 Fort s biographer Damon Knight suggested that his distrust of authority began in his treatment as a child Fort developed a strong sense of independence during his early years As a young adult Fort wanted to be a naturalist collecting sea shells minerals and birds Although Fort was described as curious and intelligent he was not a good student An autodidact his considerable knowledge of the world was due mainly to his extensive personal reading 4 At age 18 Fort left New York to embark on a world tour to put some capital in the bank of experience 5 He travelled through the western United States Scotland and England until becoming ill in Southern Africa When he returned home he was nursed by Anna Filing whom he had known since childhood They were married on October 26 1896 at an Episcopal church 6 For a few years the newly married couple lived in poverty in the Bronx while Fort tried to earn a living writing stories for newspapers and magazines In 1906 he began to collect accounts of anomalies 5 Career as a full time writer edit His uncle Frank A Fort died in 1916 7 and a modest inheritance gave Fort enough money to quit his various day jobs and to write full time 2 In 1917 Fort s brother Clarence died his portion of the same inheritance was divided between Fort and his other brother Raymond 8 Fort s experience as a journalist 2 coupled with his wit and contrarian nature prepared him for his real life work ridiculing the pretensions of scientific positivism and the tendency of journalists and editors of newspapers and scientific journals to rationalize 9 Fort wrote 10 novels although only one The Outcast Manufacturers 1909 a tenement tale was published Reviews were mostly positive but it was unsuccessful commercially 10 During 1915 Fort began to write two books titled X and Y the first dealing with the idea that beings on Mars were controlling events on Earth and the second with the postulation of a sinister civilization extant at the South Pole 11 These books caught the attention of writer Theodore Dreiser who tried to get them published but to no avail 11 Discouraged Fort burnt the manuscripts but soon began work on the book that would change the course of his life The Book of the Damned 1919 which Dreiser helped to get published The title referred to damned data that Fort collected phenomena for which science could not account and that was thus rejected or ignored 12 Fort and Anna lived intermittently in London between 1920 13 and 1928 14 so Fort could carry out research in the Reading Room of the British Museum 5 Although born in Albany Fort lived most of his life in the Bronx He was like his wife fond of movies and often took her from their Ryer Avenue apartment to a movie theater nearby stopping at an adjacent newsstand for an arm full of various newspapers Fort frequented the parks near the Bronx where he sifted through piles of clippings He often rode the subway down to the main Public Library on Fifth Avenue where he spent many hours reading scientific journals newspapers and periodicals from around the world Fort also had literary friends who gathered at various apartments including his own to drink and talk 15 Death edit Suffering from poor health and failing eyesight Fort was pleasantly surprised to find himself the subject of a cult following 16 Talk arose of the formation of a formal organization to study the type of odd events related by his books Jerome Clark writes Fort himself who did nothing to encourage any of this found the idea hilarious Yet he faithfully corresponded with his readers some of whom had taken to investigating reports of anomalous phenomena and sending their findings to Fort 17 Fort distrusted doctors and did not seek medical help for his worsening health Rather he emphasized completing Wild Talents 18 After he collapsed on May 3 1932 Fort was rushed to Royal Hospital Later that same day Fort s publisher visited him to show him the advance copies of Wild Talents Fort died only hours afterward probably of leukemia 5 He was interred in the Fort family plot in Albany New York 5 Fort and the unexplained editOverview edit For more than 30 years Charles Fort visited libraries in New York City and London assiduously reading scientific journals newspapers and magazines collecting notes on phenomena that were not explained well by the accepted theories and beliefs of the time Fort took thousands of notes during his lifetime In his undated short story The Giant the Insect and The Philanthropic looking Old Gentleman first published by the International Fortean Organization in issue No 70 of the INFO Journal Science and the Unknown Fort spoke of having often toyed with the idea of burning a collection of some 48 000 notes and of one day letting several notes be blown away by the wind because he couldn t be bothered to save them they were supposedly returned to him by a gentleman on a neighbouring park bench 19 The notes were kept on cards and scraps of paper in shoeboxes in a cramped shorthand of Fort s own invention More than once depressed and discouraged Fort destroyed his work but began anew Some notes were published by the Fortean Society magazine Doubt and upon the death of its editor Tiffany Thayer in 1959 most were donated to the New York Public Library where they are still available to researchers 20 Material created by Charles Fort has also survived as part of the papers of Theodore Dreiser held at the University of Pennsylvania 21 From this research Fort wrote four books The Book of the Damned 1919 New Lands 1923 Lo 1931 and Wild Talents 1932 one book was written between New Lands and Lo but it was abandoned and absorbed into Lo Fort s writing style edit Fort suggested that a Super Sargasso Sea exists into which all lost things go 2 and justified his theories by noting that they fit the data as well as the conventional explanations As to whether Fort believed this theory or any of his other proposals he himself noted I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written 4 Notable literary contemporaries of Fort s openly admired his writing style and befriended him Among these were Ben Hecht John Cowper Powys Sherwood Anderson Clarence Darrow and Booth Tarkington After Fort s death the writer Colin Wilson said that he suspected that Fort took few if any of his explanations seriously and noted that Fort made no attempt to present a coherent argument He described Fort as a patron saint of cranks 22 while at the same time he compared Fort to Robert Ripley a popular contemporary cartoonist and writer who found major success publishing similar oddities in a syndicated newspaper panel series named Ripley s Believe It or Not Wilson called Fort s writing style atrocious and almost unreadable yet despite his objections to Fort s prose he allowed that the facts are certainly astonishing enough In the end Fort s work gave him the feeling that no matter how honest scientists think they are they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity Expressed in a sentence Fort s principle goes something like this People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels 23 Jerome Clark though wrote that Fort was essentially a satirist hugely skeptical of human beings especially scientists claims to ultimate knowledge 24 Clark described Fort s writing style as a distinctive blend of mocking humor penetrating insight and calculated outrageousness 25 Fort was skeptical of sciences and wrote his own mocking explanations to defy scientists who used traditional methods 2 In a review for Lo The New York Times wrote Reading Fort is a ride on a comet if the traveler returns to earth after the journey he will find after his first dizziness has worn off a new and exhilarating emotion that will color and correct all his future reading of less heady scientific literature 12 Fortean phenomena edit Examples of the odd phenomena in Fort s books include many occurrences of the sort variously referred to as occult supernatural and paranormal Reported events include teleportation a term Fort is generally credited with inventing 26 27 falls of frogs fishes and inorganic materials 2 spontaneous human combustion 2 ball lightning 2 a term explicitly used by Fort poltergeist events unaccountable noises and explosions levitation unidentified flying objects unexplained disappearances giant wheels of light in the oceans and animals found outside their normal ranges see phantom cat He offered many reports of out of place artifacts OOPArts strange items found in unlikely locations He was also perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction and was an early proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis specifically suggesting that strange lights or objects sighted in the skies might be alien spacecraft Forteans edit Fort s work has inspired some people to consider themselves Forteans The first of these was screenwriter Ben Hecht who in a review of The Book of the Damned declared I am the first disciple of Charles Fort henceforth I am a Fortean 28 Among Fort s other notable fans were John Cowper Powys Sherwood Anderson Clarence Darrow and Booth Tarkington who wrote the foreword to New Lands Precisely what is encompassed by the term Fortean is a matter of great debate the term is widely applied to people ranging from Fortean purists dedicated to Fort s methods and interests to those with open and active acceptance of the actuality of paranormal phenomena a belief with which Fort may not have agreed Most generally Forteans have a wide interest in unexplained phenomena concerned mostly with the natural world and have a developed agnostic skepticism regarding the anomalies they note and discuss For Hecht as an example being a Fortean meant hallowing a pronounced distrust of authority in all its forms whether religious scientific political philosophical or otherwise It did not of course include an actual belief in the anomalous data enumerated in Fort s works The Fortean Society was initiated at the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York City on January 26 1931 by some of Fort s friends including such significant writers as Hecht Theodore Dreiser and Alexander Woollcott and organized by fellow American writer Tiffany Thayer half in earnest and half in the spirit of great good humor like the works of Fort himself The board of founders included Dreiser Hecht Tarkington Powys Aaron Sussman former Puck editor Harry Leon Wilson Woollcott and J David Stern publisher of The Philadelphia Record Active members of the Fortean Society included prominent science fiction writers such as Eric Frank Russell and Damon Knight Fort however rejected the society and refused the presidency which went to his friend Dreiser he was lured to its inaugural meeting by false telegrams As a strict nonauthoritarian Fort refused to establish himself as an authority and further objected on the grounds that those who would be attracted by such a group would be spiritualists zealots and those opposed to a science that rejected them it would attract those who believed in their chosen phenomena an attitude exactly contrary to Forteanism Fort did hold unofficial meetings and had a long history of getting together informally with many of New York City s literati such as Dreiser and Hecht at their apartments where they would talk have a meal and then listen to brief reports 29 The magazine Fortean Times first published in November 1973 is a proponent of Fortean journalism combining humor skepticism and serious research into subjects that scientists and other respectable authorities often disdain Another such group is the International Fortean Organization INFO which was formed during the early 1960s incorporated in 1965 by brothers and writers Ron and Paul Willis who acquired much of the material of the Fortean Society which had largely ceased by 1959 with the death of Tiffany Thayer INFO publishes the INFO Journal Science and the Unknown and organizes the FortFest the world s first continuously running conference on anomalous phenomena dedicated to the spirit of Charles Fort INFO since the mid 1960s also provides audio CDs and filmed DVDs of notable conference speakers including Colin Wilson John Michell Graham Hancock John Anthony West William Corliss John Keel and Joscelyn Godwin Other notable Fortean societies include the London Fortean Society Edinburgh Fortean Society in Edinburgh and the Isle of Wight Scholarly evaluation edit Religious scholars such as Jeffrey J Kripal and Joseph P Laycock view Fort as a pioneering theorist who helped define paranormal as a discursive category and provided insight into its importance in human experience Consistently critical of how science studied abnormal phenomena in his day Fort remains a point of reference for those who engage in such studies today 2 30 31 Literary influence editMore than a few modern authors of fiction and nonfiction who have written about the influence of Fort are sincere devotees of Fort One of the most notable is British philosopher John Michell who wrote the introduction to the edition of Lo published by John Brown in 1996 32 Michell says Fort of course made no attempt at defining a world view but the evidence he uncovered gave him an acceptance of reality as something far more magical and subtly organized than is considered proper today Stephen King also uses the works of Fort to illuminate his main characters notably It and Firestarter In Firestarter the parents of a pyrokinetically gifted child are advised to read Fort s Wild Talents rather than the works of baby doctor Benjamin Spock Loren Coleman is a well known cryptozoologist author of The Unidentified 1975 dedicated to Fort and Mysterious America which Fortean Times termed a Fortean classic Coleman terms himself the first Vietnam era conscientious objector to base his pacificist ideas on Fortean thoughts Jerome Clark has described himself as a skeptical Fortean 33 Mike Dash is another Fortean bringing his historian s training to bear on all manner of odd reports while being careful to avoid uncritically accepting any orthodoxy be it that of fringe devotees or mainstream science Science fiction writers of note including Philip K Dick Robert Heinlein and Robert Anton Wilson were also fans of the work of Fort Alfred Bester s teleportation themed novel The Stars My Destination pays homage to the coiner of the term by naming the first teleporter Charles Fort Jaunte 34 Fort s work of compilation and commentary on anomalous phenomena has been carried on by William R Corliss whose self published books and notes bring Fort s collections up to date 1 In 1939 Eric Frank Russell first published the novel which became Sinister Barrier in which he names Fort explicitly as an influence Russell included some of Fort s data in the story 35 In chapter 3 of William Gaddis s 1955 novel The Recognitions protagonist Wyatt Gwyon twice quotes from Fort s The Book of the Damned By the damned I mean the excluded By prostitution I mean usefulness and paraphrases him from the same book Charles Fort says maybe we re fished for by supercelestial beings 36 Ivan T Sanderson Scottish naturalist and writer was a devotee of Fort s work and referenced it heavily in several of his own books on unexplained phenomena notably Things 1967 and More Things 1969 Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier s The Morning of the Magicians was also heavily influenced by Fort s work and mentions it often Author Donald Jeffries referenced Charles Fort repeatedly in his 2007 novel The Unreals 37 Joe Milutis writes a short chapter in his book Failure a Writer s Life on Charles Fort characterising Fort s prose as well nigh unreadable yet strangely exhilarating 38 Noted UK paranormalist Fortean and ordained priest Lionel Fanthorpe presented the Fortean TV series on Channel 4 between 1997 and 1998 39 Paul Thomas Anderson s popular movie Magnolia 1999 has an underlying theme of unexplained events taken from the 1920s and 30s works of Charles Fort Fortean author Loren Coleman has written a chapter about this motion picture entitled The Teleporting Animals and Magnolia in one of his recent books 40 The film has many hidden Fortean themes notably falling frogs In one scene one of Fort s books is visible on a table in a library and an end credit thanks him by name 41 In the 2011 film The Whisperer in Darkness Fort is portrayed by Andrew Leman 42 American crime and science fiction author Fredric Brown included an excerpt from Fort s book Wild Talents as an epigraph to his novel Compliments of a Fiend In that quote Fort speculated about the disappearance of two people named Ambrose and wondered was someone collecting Ambroses Brown s novel concerns the disappearance of a character named Ambrose and the kidnapper calls himself the Ambrose collector as an obvious homage to Fort 43 In Blue Balliett s bestselling children s novel Chasing Vermeer Fort is given several mentions throughout the book such as Fort s Lo being found and thoroughly read by one of the book s protagonists and being an inspiration to the main characters 44 Bibliography editFort published five books during his lifetime including one novel All five are available on line see External links section below Many Parts 1901 unpublished autobiography The Outcast Manufacturers 1909 B W Dodge novel The Book of the Damned 1919 Reprinted by Ace Books K 156 c 1962 and H 24 c 1966 Prometheus Books 1999 paperback 310 pages ISBN 1 57392 683 3 New Lands 1923 Reprinted by Ace Books H 74 1968 and later printings mass market paperback ISBN 0 7221 3627 7 Lo 1931 Reprinted by Ace Books K 217 c 1965 and later printings mass market paperback ISBN 1 870870 89 1 Wild Talents 1932 Reprinted by Ace Books H 88 c 1968 and later printings mass market paperback ISBN 1 870870 29 8Posthumous editions The Books of Charles Fort 1941 Holt intro by Tiffany Thayer index by Henry Schlanger Complete Books of Charles Fort Dover Publications New York City 1998 hardcover ISBN 0 486 23094 5 reprint of above with new introduction by Damon Knight The Book of the Damned The Collected Works of Charles Fort Tarcher New York City 2008 paperback ISBN 978 1 58542 641 6 with introduction by Jim Steinmeyer See also editGhost Stations Inoue Enryō Leonard George List of haunted locations List of magazines of anomalous phenomena T Peter Park Philosophy of science Philosophical skepticism Pyrrho Sextus Empiricus Scientism Committee for Skeptical Inquiry List of skeptics and skeptical organizationsReferences edit a b Boyle Tanner F 2021 The Fortean influence on science fiction Charles Fort and the evolution of the genre Jefferson North Carolina ISBN 978 1 4766 7740 8 OCLC 1201695513 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link a b c d e f g h i Bill Bradbury 1982 Tiedon rajamailla Into the Unknown in Finnish Reader s Digest ISBN 978 951 9078 89 2 Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort the man who invented the supernatural New York J P Tarcher Penguin pp 19 20 ISBN 978 1 4362 0566 5 OCLC 608554928 a b Lippard Jim 1996 Charles Fort In Stein Gordon M ed Encyclopedia of the Paranormal Prometheus Books pp 277 80 ISBN 1 57392 021 5 a b c d e Rickard Bob 1997 Charles Fort His Life and Times Charles Fort Institute Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort the man who invented the supernatural New York J P Tarcher Penguin p 68 ISBN 978 1 4362 0566 5 OCLC 608554928 Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort the man who invented the supernatural New York J P Tarcher Penguin p 144 ISBN 978 1 4362 0566 5 OCLC 608554928 Knight Damon 1970 Charles Fort Prophet of the Unexplained Garden City N Y Doubleday p 58 Barrett David V May 28 2008 Charles Fort The Man Who Invented The Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer The Independent Retrieved January 1 2023 Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort the man who invented the supernatural New York J P Tarcher Penguin pp 124 25 ISBN 978 1 4362 0566 5 OCLC 608554928 a b Dash Mike Charles Fort and a Man Named Dreiser PDF Fortean Times 51 40 48 a b Charles Fort Enfant Terrible of Science Archived via the TimesMachine The New York Times 29 July 2020 Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort the man who invented the supernatural New York J P Tarcher Penguin p 193 ISBN 978 1 58542 640 9 OCLC 196302255 Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort the man who invented the supernatural New York J P Tarcher Penguin p 222 ISBN 978 1 58542 640 9 OCLC 196302255 Sleigh Charlotte 2015 Writing the Scientific Self Samuel Butler and Charles Hoy Fort PDF Journal of Literature and Science 8 2 17 35 doi 10 12929 jls 08 2 02 Charles Fort The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer Publishers Weekly 2008 Retrieved January 1 2023 Clark Jerome 1998 The UFO Book Visible Ink p 235 Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort the man who invented the supernatural New York J P Tarcher Penguin p 267 ISBN 978 1 4362 0566 5 OCLC 608554928 The Giant the Insect and the Philanthropic looking Old Gentleman by Charles Hoy Fort Retrieved December 10 2012 Archives and manuscripts Fort Charles 1874 1932 Theodore Dreiser papers Philadelphia Area Archives findingaids library upenn edu Retrieved January 2 2023 Wilson Colin Mysteries Putnam ISBN 0 399 12246 X p 199 Wilson Colin ibid p 201 emphasis in original Clark Jerome The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in the Early UFO Age in UFOs and Abductions Challenging the Borders of Knowledge edited David M Jacobs University Press of Kansas 2000 ISBN 0 7006 1032 4 p 123 See Pyrrhonism for a similar type of skepticism Clark Jerome The UFO Book Visible Ink 1998 p 200 Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indications that there exists a transportory force that I shall call Teleportation in Fort C Lo at Sacred Texts com Retrieved January 4 2009 less well known is the fact that Charles Fort coined the word in 1931 in Rickard B and Michell J Unexplained Phenomena a Rough Guide special Rough Guides 2000 ISBN 1 85828 589 5 p 3 Knight Damon 1971 Charles Fort prophet of the unexplained London Gollancz p 70 ISBN 0 575 00613 7 OCLC 279082 Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort the man who invented the supernatural New York J P Tarcher Penguin p 144 ISBN 978 1 4362 0566 5 OCLC 608554928 Laycock Joseph 2014 Approaching the Paranormal Nova Religio 18 1 5 15 doi 10 1525 nr 2014 18 1 5 JSTOR 10 1525 nr 2014 18 1 5 Bester Alfred The Stars My Destination p 5 Orion Books 1956 Fort Charles 1997 Lo X London John Brown ISBN 1 870870 89 1 OCLC 43197036 Clark Jerome 1983 Confessions of a Fortean Sceptic Magonia Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction jaunt sfdictionary com Retrieved January 2 2023 Russell Eric Frank 1966 Sinister Barrier New York Paperback Library 52 384 The Recognitions Harcourt Brace 1955 pp 81 87 Vareli Mary April 28 2017 Forteana The Mysterious World of Charles Fort Paradox Ethereal Magazine Retrieved January 1 2023 Failure a writer s life Joe Milutis Winchester UK Zero Books 2013 p 13 ISBN 978 1 78099 704 9 OCLC 818462403 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint others link Martin Robert November 11 2022 Fortean TV DVD review STARBURST Magazine Retrieved January 1 2023 Coleman Loren 2001 Mysterious America Rev ed New York Paraview Press ISBN 1 931044 05 8 OCLC 46798826 Coleman Loren 2007 Mysterious America The Ultimate Guide to the Nation s Weirdest Wonders Strangest Spots and Creepiest Creatures Simon amp Schuster Branney Sean May 19 2011 The Whisperer in Darkness Mystery Sci Fi Thriller HPLHS Motion Pictures Fungi retrieved January 6 2023 Brown Fredric 1950 Compliments of a Fiend MysteriousPress com ISBN 978 1 5040 6825 3 OCLC 1273982012 Balliett Blue 2004 Chasing Vermeer Brett Helquist 1st ed New York Scholastic Press ISBN 0 439 37294 1 OCLC 51172514 Further reading editGardner Martin has a chapter on Charles Fort in his Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science 1957 Dover ISBN 0 486 20394 8 Knight Damon Charles Fort Prophet of the Unexplained 1970 is a dated but valuable biographical resource detailing Fort s early life his pre Fortean period and also provides chapters on the Fortean society and brief studies of Fort s work in relation to Immanuel Velikovsky intro by R Buckminster Fuller Magin Ulrich Der Ritt auf dem Kometen Uber Charles Fort is similar to Knight s book in German language and contains more detailed chapters on Fort s philosophy Pauwels Louis has an entire chapter on Fort The Vanished Civilizations in The Morning of the Magicians Pauwels Louis The Morning of the Magicians Stein amp Day 1964 pp 91 et seq Reprinted by Destiny in 2008 ISBN 1 59477 231 2 Bennett Colin 2002 Politics of the Imagination The Life Work and Ideas of Charles Fort paperback Head Press p 206 ISBN 978 1 900486 20 0 Boyle Tanner F E Palumbo Donald Sullivan III C W 2021 The Fortean influence on science fiction Charles Fort and the evolution of the genre Jefferson North Carolina ISBN 978 1 4766 4190 4 OCLC 1227700541 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Carroll Robert Todd Fort Charles 1874 1932 pp 148 150 in The Skeptic s Dictionary Robert Todd Carroll John Wiley amp Sons 2003 ISBN 0 471 27242 6 Clark Jerome The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in the Early UFO Age pp 122 140 in UFOs and Abductions Challenging the Borders of Knowledge David M Jacobs editor University Press of Kansas 2000 ISBN 0 7006 1032 4 Clark Jerome The UFO Book Visible Ink 1998 Dash Mike Charles Fort and a Man Named Dreiser in Fortean Times no 51 Winter 1988 1989 pp 40 48 Kidd Ian James Who Was Charles Fort in Fortean Times no 216 Dec 2006 pp 54 55 Kidd Ian James Holding the Fort how science fiction preserved the name of Charles Fort in Matrix no 180 Aug Sept 2006 pp 24 25 Kripal Jeffrey J 2010 Authors of the impossible the paranormal and the sacred Chicago The University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 45387 3 Lippard Jim Charles Fort pp 277 280 in Encyclopedia of the Paranormal Gordon M Stein editor Prometheus Books 1996 ISBN 1 57392 021 5 Skinner Doug Tiffany Thayer Fortean Times June 2005 Sleigh Charlotte 2017 An outcry of silences Charles Hoy Fort and the uncanny voices of science In Mellor Felicity Webster Stephen eds The silences of science gaps and pauses in the communication of science London doi 10 4324 9781315609102 ISBN 978 1 317 05503 7 OCLC 958482578 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Steinmeyer Jim 2008 Charles Fort The Man Who Invented the Supernatural hardback Heinemann pp 352 pages ISBN 978 0 434 01629 7 Wilson Colin Mysteries Putnam ISBN 0 399 12246 X Ludwigsen Will We Were Wonder Scouts in Asimov s Science Fiction Aug 2011External links editCharles Fort at Wikipedia s sister projects nbsp Media from Commons nbsp Quotations from Wikiquote nbsp Texts from Wikisource nbsp Data from Wikidata International Fortean Organization The Charles Fort Institute Works by Charles Fort at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Charles Fort at Internet Archive Works by Charles Fort at LibriVox public domain audiobooks nbsp Mr X Consulting Resologist contains links to Fort s works Dunning Brian October 13 2015 Skeptoid 488 Who Was Charles Fort Skeptoid Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Charles Fort amp oldid 1176787469 Fortean phenomena, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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