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S'està carregant… Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplainedde Damon Knight
   Cap No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. 1   RandyStafford | Jan 9, 2014 |  Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya
Charles Fort devoted his life to attacking one of the modern world's most sacred cows: traditional science, with all its authority and presuppositions. His method was simple; he collected and published reliable accounts of events that science cannot explain.Fort's boldness, imagination, and conviction earned him the admiration of many of the leading thinkers of his day, and led to a completely new field of study: Forteana. Today, even scientists are beginning to explore the implications of Fortean material.This book is the first full-scale biography of Charles Fort. It is a lively, sympathetic, and thought-provoking portrait of a strange and brilliant man. In preparing this work, biographer Damon Knight, winner of the Hugo Award for science-fiction criticism, read every scrap of Fort's writing in existence, as well as recent accounts and commentaries on Fort and Fortean phenomena. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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1
A disappointing biography.
To be sure, there are some interesting details about Fort's early life, quotes from his sole novel, The Outcast Manufacturers, and some details about his later life. However, there is not much about his life from the publishing of his The Book of the Damned to his death in 1932, and Knight spends far too much time and space quoting from The Books of Charles Fort which might have been fine for newcomer to Fort but was boring to me since I just read them all. He also spends too much time trying to prove the "Prophet" of the title and talks about UFOs, cycles affected by astronomical events (though he admits that some of Fort's criticisms of astronomers in New Lands is embarrassing) and even the virtues of Velikovsky (probably more relevant in 1970).
He also spends a far amount of time talking about the history of Fortean magazines and societies (Fort refused to join the Fortean Society) up to the book's publishing, and he also talks about some science fiction influenced by Fort (and he admits his own famous story "To Serve Man" which, when you think about it, exemplifies Fort's famous quote: "We are property."). That part was interesting but not relevant to a biography. I suppose part of the problem is that most writers live a life of the mind -- particularly true of the library haunting and antisocial Fort -- and their external life is boring so you have to talk about their work. (