Charles Fort

New territory - enter at your own risk!

Charles Fort, the indefatigable collector of unexplained facts, dealt in The Book of the Damned with the tendency of science in general to sort out and ignore inappropriate data. In Neuland he goes a step further: he devotes himself exclusively to the data "condemned" by astronomy, which prove relations of the earth to "other worlds

Fort lists cases where the appearance of a comet or planet was calculated but no comet appeared. He tells of planets discovered between the Earth and the Sun that were never verified. He speaks of solar eclipses that did not occur despite predictions. He lists discoveries of new stars made by amateurs - for months astronomers had not noticed anything. The universe is small, the stars are close.

We are, Fort says, in the position of the Indians in 1492 - we see lights from Columbus ships, but we don't realise what's coming.

Neuland is also a masterpiece of fantastic speculation. Every page is interspersed with Fort's absurd and intellectual humour. Charles Fort depicts alien worlds, exotic cities in the sky, visitors from the cosmos. More than 20 years before the appearance of UFOs, he wrote the first book on the topic. Each report is documented in detail and provided with the source. For Fort beat science at its own game - all his quotes come from astronomical publications.

When this book first appeared in America in 1923, Booth Tarkington could only marvel: "Even the wildest earthquakes of this world are but a tempest in a teapot compared with the visions Charles Fort creates before our eyes."

Then, as now, Fort's rollercoaster ride through the universe is the best medicine against encrusted thinking. Written in his own brilliant style, which does not let us rest until we have come to the last page.

"Five out of six people who read this book lose their minds." Ben Hecht, Alfred Hitchcock's screenwriter.