Blurb, Description, Reviews, Articles, Interviews
THINK TO NEW WORLDS: THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF CHARLES FORT AND HIS FOLLOWERS
June 2024 will see the University of Chicago Press releasing my book on the Forteans. Details can be found here.
How a writer who investigated scientific anomalies inspired a factious movement and made a lasting impact on American culture.
Flying saucers. Bigfoot. Frogs raining from the sky. Such phenomena fascinated Charles Fort, the maverick writer who scanned newspapers, journals, and magazines for reports of bizarre occurrences: dogs that talked, vampires, strange visions in the sky, and paranormal activity. His books of anomalies advanced a philosophy that saw science as a small part of a larger system in which truth and falsehood continually transformed into one another. His work found a ragged following of skeptics who questioned not only science but the press, medicine, and politics. Though their worldviews varied, they shared compelling questions about genius, reality, and authority. At the center of this community was ad man, writer, and enfant terrible Tiffany Thayer, who founded the Fortean Society and ran it for almost three decades, collecting and reporting on every manner of oddity and conspiracy.
In Think to New Worlds, Joshua Blu Buhs argues that the Fortean effect on modern culture is deeper than you think. Fort’s descendants provided tools to expand the imagination, explore the social order, and demonstrate how power was exercised. Science fiction writers put these ideas to work as they sought to uncover the hidden structures undergirding reality. Avant-garde modernists—including the authors William Gaddis, Henry Miller, and Ezra Pound, as well as Surrealist visual artists—were inspired by Fort’s writing about metaphysical and historical forces. And in the years following World War II, flying saucer enthusiasts convinced of alien life raised questions about who controlled the universe.
Buhs’s meticulous and entertaining book takes a respectful look at a cast of oddballs and eccentrics, plucking them from history’s margins and spotlighting their mark on American modernism. Think to New Worlds is a timely consideration of a group united not only by conspiracies and mistrust of science but by their place in an ever-expanding universe rich with unexplained occurrences and visionary possibilities.
384 pages | 10 halftones | 6 x 9
History: AMERICAN HISTORY
HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Religion: RELIGION AND SOCIETY
How a writer who investigated scientific anomalies inspired a factious movement and made a lasting impact on American culture.
Flying saucers. Bigfoot. Frogs raining from the sky. Such phenomena fascinated Charles Fort, the maverick writer who scanned newspapers, journals, and magazines for reports of bizarre occurrences: dogs that talked, vampires, strange visions in the sky, and paranormal activity. His books of anomalies advanced a philosophy that saw science as a small part of a larger system in which truth and falsehood continually transformed into one another. His work found a ragged following of skeptics who questioned not only science but the press, medicine, and politics. Though their worldviews varied, they shared compelling questions about genius, reality, and authority. At the center of this community was ad man, writer, and enfant terrible Tiffany Thayer, who founded the Fortean Society and ran it for almost three decades, collecting and reporting on every manner of oddity and conspiracy.
In Think to New Worlds, Joshua Blu Buhs argues that the Fortean effect on modern culture is deeper than you think. Fort’s descendants provided tools to expand the imagination, explore the social order, and demonstrate how power was exercised. Science fiction writers put these ideas to work as they sought to uncover the hidden structures undergirding reality. Avant-garde modernists—including the authors William Gaddis, Henry Miller, and Ezra Pound, as well as Surrealist visual artists—were inspired by Fort’s writing about metaphysical and historical forces. And in the years following World War II, flying saucer enthusiasts convinced of alien life raised questions about who controlled the universe.
Buhs’s meticulous and entertaining book takes a respectful look at a cast of oddballs and eccentrics, plucking them from history’s margins and spotlighting their mark on American modernism. Think to New Worlds is a timely consideration of a group united not only by conspiracies and mistrust of science but by their place in an ever-expanding universe rich with unexplained occurrences and visionary possibilities.
384 pages | 10 halftones | 6 x 9
History: AMERICAN HISTORY
HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Religion: RELIGION AND SOCIETY
The Cultural History of the Forteans
Seated to the left are Theodore Dreiser and Charles Fort. Most everyone knows Dreiser--at least recognizes his name, if never having read Sister Carrie. Comparatively few are familiar with Fort. Which is a shame.
There are a resilient few, though, who have taken up Fort's cause. They call themselves Forteans.
Charles Fort spent years in the New York Public Library reviewing old newspapers and scientific journals for what he came to called "damned" facts--events reported in good faith yet which have no ready explanation. Rains of frogs. Telepathy. Unaccountable objects in the sky. He collected these in four books.
The Forteans took up the torch, focusing on the world's oddities, its unexplained, and seemingly inexplicable, happenings.
The backbone of the Fortean community through the middle third of the twentieth century was writer and adman Tiffany Thayer. He ran the Fortean Society, along side the science fiction author Eric Frank Russell, setting an agenda for Forteanism. As Thayer (and, to a similar extent Russell) saw it, Forteanism's aim was to challenge all forms of authority, scientific, religious, economic, and political. His was an acidic skepticism, melting everything in his purview. He opened the Society to all manner of fringe, from communists to fascists, from astrologers to Theosophists to cryptozoologists to those who had invented their own sciences.
However, while Thayer attempted to set an agenda, not all followed. There was a constant back and forth--a fight between the Society and the Forteans over what Forteanism should be. Thayer regularly excoriated the Forteans, and they regularly bemoaned his vision.
But Forteanism was not all lost in this contentiousness. It shaped American culture in a number of ways. The book enumerates three:
First, Forteanism shaped science fiction. Forteanism was deeply intertwined with post-Wolrd War II science fiction, unshackling the imagination, providing resources for science fiction authors to uncover universal operating principles, and helping (some) trace the way power moved through the universe.
Second, Forteanism played a role in literary Modernism. Fort himself was influenced by Modernism, and found fans among the Modernists--Thayer himself was deeply impressed by a number of Modernist writers. Authors like Henry Miller, Malcolm Lowry, and William Gaddis all were influenced by Fort. So were the Surrealists. Once more, Fort provided these Forteans with a way to expand the imagination. And, once more, Forteans looked to Fort for ways to understand the way society worked--in this case finding not universal operating principles, rather ways to stand against the modern determinisms and standardizing forces of science. Some Fortean Modernists also constructed a conspiratorial theory of how power worked.
Finally, Forteans were foundational in the establishment of UFOlogy. Forteans shaped the early UFOlogical imagination--flying saucers were not just aerial phenomena, but extraterrestrial craft. Forteans argued that these crafts showed the organization of the universe: that the craft were controlled by the earth's owners--Fort wrote, "I think we're property"--who might either be Space Brothers or dangerous demons. And Forteans argued what this meant for who had power.
By the 1960s, this version of Forteanism had reached its end. Thayer was dead, Russell no longer interested. The book concludes with a gloss on the Forteanism that emerged in the 1970s. It is not encyclopedia, but suggestive, the better to sharpen what came before.
There are a resilient few, though, who have taken up Fort's cause. They call themselves Forteans.
Charles Fort spent years in the New York Public Library reviewing old newspapers and scientific journals for what he came to called "damned" facts--events reported in good faith yet which have no ready explanation. Rains of frogs. Telepathy. Unaccountable objects in the sky. He collected these in four books.
The Forteans took up the torch, focusing on the world's oddities, its unexplained, and seemingly inexplicable, happenings.
The backbone of the Fortean community through the middle third of the twentieth century was writer and adman Tiffany Thayer. He ran the Fortean Society, along side the science fiction author Eric Frank Russell, setting an agenda for Forteanism. As Thayer (and, to a similar extent Russell) saw it, Forteanism's aim was to challenge all forms of authority, scientific, religious, economic, and political. His was an acidic skepticism, melting everything in his purview. He opened the Society to all manner of fringe, from communists to fascists, from astrologers to Theosophists to cryptozoologists to those who had invented their own sciences.
However, while Thayer attempted to set an agenda, not all followed. There was a constant back and forth--a fight between the Society and the Forteans over what Forteanism should be. Thayer regularly excoriated the Forteans, and they regularly bemoaned his vision.
But Forteanism was not all lost in this contentiousness. It shaped American culture in a number of ways. The book enumerates three:
First, Forteanism shaped science fiction. Forteanism was deeply intertwined with post-Wolrd War II science fiction, unshackling the imagination, providing resources for science fiction authors to uncover universal operating principles, and helping (some) trace the way power moved through the universe.
Second, Forteanism played a role in literary Modernism. Fort himself was influenced by Modernism, and found fans among the Modernists--Thayer himself was deeply impressed by a number of Modernist writers. Authors like Henry Miller, Malcolm Lowry, and William Gaddis all were influenced by Fort. So were the Surrealists. Once more, Fort provided these Forteans with a way to expand the imagination. And, once more, Forteans looked to Fort for ways to understand the way society worked--in this case finding not universal operating principles, rather ways to stand against the modern determinisms and standardizing forces of science. Some Fortean Modernists also constructed a conspiratorial theory of how power worked.
Finally, Forteans were foundational in the establishment of UFOlogy. Forteans shaped the early UFOlogical imagination--flying saucers were not just aerial phenomena, but extraterrestrial craft. Forteans argued that these crafts showed the organization of the universe: that the craft were controlled by the earth's owners--Fort wrote, "I think we're property"--who might either be Space Brothers or dangerous demons. And Forteans argued what this meant for who had power.
By the 1960s, this version of Forteanism had reached its end. Thayer was dead, Russell no longer interested. The book concludes with a gloss on the Forteanism that emerged in the 1970s. It is not encyclopedia, but suggestive, the better to sharpen what came before.
Reviews
D. C. Maus, Choice, November 2024.
Michael Ledger-Lomas, "‘After the Flying Saucers Came’, ‘Think to New Worlds’ and ‘How to Think Impossibly’ review," History Today, 10 October 2024.
Colin Dickey, "The Scholar Who Inspired a Legion of Cranks: The vexed legacy of Charles Fort," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2024
Kirkus, March 15, 2024
Jason Colavito, Jason Colavito's Blog, May 8 2024
Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review), June 3, 2024
Justin Mullis, AIPT, June 29, 204
Jesse Walker, Reason, July 2024
John J. Miller, Wall Street Journal, 1 July 2024
Michael Shermer, Nature, 8 July 2024
Michael Shermer, Skeptic, 10 July 2024
Colin Dickey, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16 2024
Articles
"Tiffany Thayer versus the Flying Saucers," Fortean Times June 2024, 38-41 (excerpt).
Interviews
"Anomalies, Conspiracies, Scientology," Michael Shermer Show, Episode 460, 24 August 2024.
"Charles Fort and the Forteans with Joshua Buhs," Hermitrix June 12, 2024
