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Extracts from Charles Fort’s long assault on the tidy-minded scientist are fascinating and salutary. In a reprint of the classic Book of the Damned (John Brown, London, £9.99 pbk, ISBN 1 870870 53 0), you’ll find the tale of the stones from the heavens. Accounts of stones falling from the sky were dismissed by scientists from the 18th century onwards. They ignored the evidence of witnesses and fragments of meteorites because they knew without doubt that stones did not fall from the heavens. Fort devoted his energies to collecting tales of the obscure or inexplicable, not only for the sciences. But it may come as a shock to read the chunks of prose that frame the anecdotes and evidence: his style resembles Emily Dickinson on speed and theosophy.