Hailed as the man who kick-started modern day scepticism for the findings and conclusions of mainstream science, Charles Fort is actually a man who is paid more tribute now than ever before with the advent of alternative archaeology and science in general and with more and more people (researchers, scientists or not) actually doubting some of our more precious scientific dogmas.
This book is a celebration of humor as well as scepticism, the humor part being the one which most people have greatly misunderstood about C.Fort.
Fort takes literally 100s of examples of bizzare unexplained phenomena such as things falling from the sky (ranging from frogs or fish to metal objects) to spontaneous combustion, to unidentified flying objects, to time travel among others and actually exposes science's comical "answers" to these phenomena.
Frogs that have been rained by the sky or fish for that matter are not a phenomenon that has stopped. It still happens. The "official explanation" remains as hilarious as it was back in Fort's times, namely: a hurricane or a whirlwind picks them up and "rains" them somewhere else. However, why these winds are selective in what they pick up remains unaswered by science.
The usual and continuing up to this day explanation about UFOs which concerns mass illusion or the classic "weather baloon" explanation is picked up by Fort and given the ridiculing treatment it deserves.
What makes Fort such a classic and cult figure is his ability to use subtle (mostly) but lethal sarcasm to debunk the dogmatic and more than often funny explanations that scientists offer when cornered with occurences that dont fit or even shutter their sacred theories.
Fort's intention is none other than to highlight our trait of mixing cluelessness with arrogance and at the same time to trigger openmindedness or more importantly thinking for oneself and not religiously depending on science to shape the answers so that they fit the question.
The problem that Fort brings out with the "Book of the damned" is one that persists today as well. With Darwinistic theories being heavily challenged, with the Bing Bang theory being literally taken apart by daring scientists, and with Quantum physics proving that the "unthinkable" might actually be very thinkable indeed it's the Fortean spirit celebrated all over again on a grand scale.
Fort's critics (and they aren't few) take his theories the way they take the theories of mainstream science as well: for granted. Fort offers in this book for example a theory of a "super Sargasso sea" where all these living organisms keep falling from. One would have to be tremendously lacking in humour or imagination not to gather that Fort is yanking the collective chain here. What he does say in reality is: "if you can offer such a ridiculous theory about this phenomenon (insert unexplained phenomenon here) then i might as well add my own which by no means is less or more serious but it's nevertheless just as unproven as yours".
It's as simple as that really and Fort uses this technique repeateadly in his "Book of the damned" calling damned those who "dare" refuse official dogma.
There has been much criticism as well concerning the overwhelming bulk of paradigms that Fort uses in this book and the critics are probably right in this case. There was no need for such volume as the point would easily get across with 1/3 of these examples.
But that aside, this is in fact a book way, way ahead of its time.
It's funny how a man can be thrown to the pyre exactly because he uses his humour to dismiss our fear of not being able to explain the world around us. It's even funnier that we keep insisting we can despite alarming failures.
The "Book of the damned" is a grand example of a brave mind. The problem with brave minds is that they are usually shoved under the gigantic rug tagged "truth" for a very long time before anyone recognises their impact.
This book, one of four he published before passing away in 1932, exploits Fort's research into reports of peculiar things in the sky or fallen from the sky to challenge the authority of establishment science. He describes the book as an assemblage of data of external relations of this earth, "damned" by those who hold for our planet's isolation. According to Fort, the attitude of Science and Christian Science toward the unwelcome is the same: it does not exist.
Some of the events described in these reports would be described today as UFO's. While some of these cases may warrant attention, others seem marginal.
Fort hypothesizes that "there is somewhere aloft a place" where life may have orginated; "evolution on this earth has been induced by external influences." He offers alternative explanations for unexplained sightings: another world that is in secret communication with certain "esoteric" inhabitants of this earth; other worlds that are trying to establish communication with all the inhabitants of the earth; other worlds and vast structures that pass us by without the slightest desire to communicate; a vast construction that has often come to this earth, dipped into an ocean, then gone away. At one point, Fort writes that the earth was a no-man's land explored and colonized by other worlds; now something owns this earth, warning off all others. All this, he goes on, has been known, perhaps for ages, to certain ones upon the earth.
It is hard to know how much of this is serious and how much is just satire. Fort's imagined super-constructions a few miles above the earth stretch credibility too far. His quirky writing style, though sometimes entertaining, tends to further undermine his believability. Nonetheless, anyone wanting to read into the UFO phenomenon may find this book useful background.
