Editing Charles Fort (section)

===Fort's writing style===
Fort suggested that a Super-[[Sargasso Sea]] exists, into which all lost things go,<ref name="ReadersDigest"/> and justified his theories by noting that they fit the data as well as the conventional explanations. As to whether Fort ''believed'' this theory, or any of his other proposals, he himself noted, "I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written".<ref name=":1" />

Notable literary contemporaries of Fort's openly admired his writing style and befriended him. Among these were: [[Ben Hecht]], [[John Cowper Powys]], [[Sherwood Anderson]], [[Clarence Darrow]], and [[Booth Tarkington]], who wrote the foreword to ''New Lands.''

After Fort's death, the writer [[Colin Wilson]] said that he suspected that Fort took few if any of his "explanations" seriously, and noted that Fort made "no attempt to present a coherent argument". He described Fort as "a patron saint of cranks"<ref>[[Colin Wilson|Wilson, Colin]], ''Mysteries'', Putnam ({{ISBN|0-399-12246-X}}), p. 199.</ref> while at the same time he compared Fort to [[Robert Ripley]], a popular contemporary [[cartoonist]] and writer who found major success publishing similar oddities in a syndicated newspaper panel series named ''[[Ripley's Believe It or Not!]]''

Wilson called Fort's writing style "atrocious" and "almost unreadable", yet despite his objections to Fort's prose, he allowed that "the facts are certainly astonishing enough." In the end, Fort's work gave him "the feeling that no matter how honest scientists ''think'' they are, they are still influenced by various ''unconscious'' assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to ''believe'' in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need ''not'' to believe in marvels."<ref>Wilson, Colin: ''ibid.'', p. 201 (emphasis in original).</ref>

By contrast, [[Jerome Clark]], wrote that Fort was "essentially a [[Satire|satirist]] hugely [[skeptical]] of human beings'—especially scientists'—claims to ultimate knowledge".<ref>[[Jerome Clark|Clark, Jerome]]: "The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in the Early UFO Age" in ''UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge'', edited David M. Jacobs, University Press of Kansas: 2000 ({{ISBN|0-7006-1032-4}}), p. 123. See [[Pyrrhonism]] for a similar type of skepticism.</ref> Clark described Fort's writing style as a "distinctive blend of mocking humor, penetrating insight, and calculated outrageousness".<ref>Clark, Jerome: ''The UFO Book'', Visible Ink: 1998, p. 200.</ref> Fort was skeptical of sciences and wrote his own mocking explanations to defy scientists who used traditional methods.<ref name="ReadersDigest"/>

In a review of ''Lo!'', ''The New York Times'' wrote: "Reading Fort is a ride on a comet; if the traveler returns to earth after the journey, he will find, after his first dizziness has worn off, a new and exhilarating emotion that will color and correct all his future reading of less heady scientific literature."<ref name="shipley"/>