Des espions venus d'un autre monde—des émissaires célestes—pourraient se balader sur Terre, planifiant la destruction de l'Homme, l'annihilation de sa civilisation et l'annexation de son globe !
Les lourds navires célestes de mondes rivaux ont vogué dans l'air de la Terre, et même traversé ses mers, dit Charles Fort
, auteur du "Livre des Damnés."
Qu'est-il plus probable, alors, qu'ils aient envoyé des enquêteurs ici pour travailler et examiner un plan pour le moment où l'invasion aura lieu ?
Fort ne présente aucun argument, n'a aucune propagande et ne prétend avoir aucun objectif
autre que de faire douter la science. En 500 pages il présente les faits prétendus de supposés
phénomènes que la science, maintient-il, n'a jamais expliqué de manière satisfaisante.
Ce sont les "faits maudits." Ils sont "maudits" parce qu'ils sont exclus par la science. Fort les fait marcher dans une parade de fous, du sol au plancher et partout alentour, et
chacune des pages défie la science de les expliquer.
There have been, says Fort, and offers the dates and accounts of reputable scientific
journals—
Falls from the sky of stones, frogs, ice, blood, oil, metal, birds, strange plants and unidentified substances.
Huge wheeled chariots or luminous fire, seen by mariners at sea.
Dark bodies—small worlds of magnificent celestial transports—between the sun and the earth and the earth and the moon even.
Curious markings made on the surface of the earth and curious markings on stones that have fallen.
"Pipe dreams?"
Science has blithely explained the strange "falls" with its axiom—"all that comes down must have gone up." It has said that if stones actually fell they must have been carried into into the aid by a volcano or a cyclone.
Of the mysterious and luminous shapes that sailors report scholars have said are "opticcal halucination," which is a scholar's way of saying—"pipe dreams." Nevertheless—the reports have been numerous and have been made by trustworthy sea captains and their crews.
But on the "dark shapes between the sun" matter. Fort rather "sticks" his opponents. Astronomers have seen such shapes and pondered and wondered and finally "given it
up."
So—Fort summarizes—it is easier to believe than it is not to believe, that—
Great worlds have come close to ours.
Leviathans of the ethers, carrying passengers and huge freight cargoes, have sailed within our atmosphere; been wrecked occasionally in ice fields of the upper strata and their fuel and the contents of the pantries dumped on earth.
By some unexplained means the inhabitants of another planet have contrived to mark ou earth with "cup marks" and strange hieroglyphics on rocks—not for our edification, but for the instruction of their spies left here by the great skyships.
Regardless of whether Fort can convince us of the truth of his beliefs of the meanings of
things, the "Book of the Damned" does make one stop to wonder if science really reads the language of Earth happenings
accurately.