The Book of the Damned

by Charles Fort

[1919]

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This is the first of Fort's four books. Fort discusses numerous unexplained phenomena, many of which would today be categorized as UFOs. Fort gives examples of many other strange happenings, rains of fish, blood, insects, and so on.

Fort attempts, almost tongue in cheek, to construct a cosmology which could explain these phenomena. He proposes that the Earth's gravity only extends about 20 miles out, and that there are vast 'lands in the sky' passing above us, normally unseen. Some of these lands trap objects,--the 'super-Sargasso,'--some are shaped like giant spindles or wheels, and others are huge sentient beings.

If there is life in the universe, how come we aren't visited by aliens? This is called the Fermi Paradox, proposed by Enrico Fermi in the 1950s. Fort gives a preemptive solution on page 163, where he states, famously, 'I think we're property.' Fort's solution is that earth was warred over in the distant past, and now is under the control of 'something'--"all other warned off." The reason that we never meet our 'owners' is that they have no interest in talking with their 'livestock.'

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