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New Lands

Name: New Lands
Author: Fort, Charles
ISBN: 9781612030524

by Fort, Charles

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Overview

New Lands was the second nonfiction book of the author Charles Fort, written in 1925. It deals primarily with astronomical anomalies.

Fort expands in this book on his theory about the Super-Sargasso Sea - a place where earthly things supposedly materialize in order to rain down on Earth - as well as developing an idea that there are continents above the skies of Earth. As evidence, he cites a number of anomalous phenomena, including strange "mirages" of land masses, groups of people, and animals in the skies. He also continues his attacks on scientific dogma, citing a number of mysterious stars and planets that scientists failed to account for.

Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena. Today, the terms Fortean and Forteana are used to characterize various such phenomena.

About the Author, Fort, Charles

"Charles Hoy Fort (6 August 1874 - 3 May 1932) was an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena.

Jerome Clark writes that Fort was "Essentially a satirist hugely skeptical of human beings' - especially scientists' claims to ultimate knowledge". (Clark 2000, 123) (see Pyrrhonism for a type of skepticism strongly reminiscent of Fort's). Clark describes Fort's writing style as a "distinctive blend of mocking humor, penetrating insight, and calculated outrageousness". (Clark 1998, 200)

Writer Colin Wilson describes Fort as "a patron of cranks" (Wilson, 199), and also argues that running through Fort's work is "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." (Wilson, 201; emphases his)

Fort's books sold well, and remain in print. Today, the term Fortean or Forteana is used to describe various anomalous phenomena."