Fortean Essentials!
Publisher Tim Beckley has just released a 4-book set of Charles Fort’s classic titles: Wild Talents; Book of the Damned; New Lands; and Lo!
Here’s what Tim has to say about the books:
“I first purchased a copy of one of Charles Fort’s books when I was about 13 years old. It was perhaps my first inkling that there were others who were interested in probing that which remains just on the other side of the unknown. I’m very proud to be able to present Fort’s works in a large print, large format edition, as I believe this will open up his works to a whole new audience.”
And as Tim also notes:
“Charles Fort was a collector of strange tales which he gleamed from dusty newspapers and out of print scientific journals. He spent over 20 years in public libraries in the UK and later in America where he combed the shelves of the NY Public Library in search of the strange and unknown. This resulted in 4 works of approximately 1,000 pages pertaining to the most unusual subjects you are likely to read about anywhere in any era. . .and the stories are well researched and documented.
“Fort’s works have long been sought after and were finally made available long after his death. We are proud to be able to present the following four volumes in never before presented large print editions. The books in this set are: 1. WILD TALENTS — 2. BOOK OF THE DAMNED — 3. NEW LANDS. 4. LO!
“In a breezy easy to read style Fort presents hundreds of episodic tales from the borderland of human understanding such as. . . Strange Disappearances. . . The Man Who Couldn’t Drown. . . Mysterious Cattle Rippers. . . Blonde Beast of Patagonia. . . Human Vampires. . . Lake and River Creatures. . . Bizarre Slayer of Sheep. . . Spontaneous Human Combustion. . . Mirages of Cities and Towns. . . Phantom Figures. . .THe Original Cat Burgler. . . Original UFOs and Airships. . . Submarine Objects. . . Possible UFOnauts. . . Fossils in Meteorites. . . AND MUCH MORE.”
Here’s the link to purchase the new editions. I strongly recommend them if you haven’t got them already. As Tim correctly notes, all of Fort’s books contain ufological gems - and some little-known ones too.
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on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 8:24 am and is filed under Alien Encounters, Animal Mutilations, Books, Breaking News, Close Encounters, Evidence, Eyewitness Accounts, History, Occult/Esoteric, Psychic Phenomena, Strange Creatures, The Redfern Files, UFO Sightings, UFOlogists, UFOlogy. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
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Sep 02 2008 
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Admittedly the last new release of the complete works in one edition bowled me over. I didn’t reread LO! (since I had already read it 3 times). I did read Wild Talents and New Lands but not as with much scrutiny as I had hoped — more like straggling along past the text. In that recent Tarcher edition, the editor (whose new biography of Fort I did read in detail) recommended NOT reading Book of the Damned first even though it was Fort’s first book. He argued that the style was too jarring — not enough prose and too philosophical. I disagree — I still think Book of the Damned is the best because Fort lays down his foundation, a broadside against science as a whole and even inductive and deductive reasoning. Fort’s method relies on induction (which most people latch onto so that it leads more to a listing of information) but Book of the Damned goes beyond that to logical inference of the source of reality.
Anyway glad to see there’s a large print edition since it’s dangerous to pack too much Fort in such a small area: Spontaneous Human Combustion is the obvious Fortean result. I look forward to another run for my money (better than trying to get the new high score in Donkey Kong!)
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
“For every five people who read Charles Fort, four will go insane,” Ben Hecht wrote (in the Chicago Daily News review) .