American writer (1874-1932) who spent decades cataloguing anomalies excluded by the sciences. The Book of the Damned (1919) opens the tradition that carries his name: falls of objects, airship waves, and the property thesis, “I think we’re property.” His Super-Sargasso Sea, his Trickster-inflected reading of anomalies, and his “Dominants”, entrenched belief structures deciding what counts as real, are the presiding framework of Jason Reza Jorjani’s Closer Encounters, which argues Fort anticipated Kuhn and Feyerabend on how sciences exclude embarrassing data.
Notable work
- The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), Wild Talents (1932)