- This edition includes the following editor's introduction: The importance of Charles Fort's "The Book of the Damned" as a precursor of pseudoscience
Originally published in 1923, “New Lands” is the second nonfiction book of the American author Charles Fort.
There are many books that tell of sightings of ghosts, aliens, and strange animals, but Charles Fort's "New Lands" is perhaps the only book in which whole continents, geographies, and, indeed, planetary systems themselves are seen in the same uncertain twilight of perception. "New Lands" deals primarily with incredible astronomical anomalies.
Fort expands in “New Lands” 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.