Charles Fort: Dogma be Damned
by Skylaire Alfvegren
Continued...
Fortean Times enjoys continued popularity, reinforcing the idea that weird shit happens, and happens continuously; somewhere in the world, at any given moment, someone might be chased by a creature that doesn’t exist, or witness something inpossible blazing through the sky. The magazine holds an annual UnConvention in London, where the Charles Fort Institute is being created as an “archival entity to preserve Fortean material.” It will feature an online library, encyclopedia and database, as well as a virtual and physical museum.
Fort’s complete works — scientific and philosophical allusions aside — remain a colossal collection of anomalies, and are available from Dover Publications.
“It’s very difficult to upset a Fortean,” notes one anonymous INFO member. “We’re used to seeing the strangest stuff going, or at the very least, we’re equipped to believe in the possibility of it.”
In his introduction to Damon Knight’s biography, Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained, polymathic thinker Buckminster Fuller wrote, “I think that the total data recorded by Charles Fort may prove of great scientific worth. Above all this, there is something extremely inspiring about Fort’s interest in his universe. His interest is very romantic. It isn’t written in romantic terms at all, but the man is full of dreams—dreams of signifigance… Fort, like humanity, was looking for signifigance in experience… [he was] a man who, with humor and tenderness, tried to show the irreversible evoluting scenario of the universe.”
