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Rating: 
Summary: A Brilliant Expedition
Review: Charles Fort seems to have regarded all events as morally neutral, or at least morally equal, and so he might have regarded this altogether admiring and swashbucklingly wide-ranging account of his life and thought as excessive. Still, I think Fort would have ended up loving Colin Bennett's book, which explicates with wonderful, pan-dimensional clarity Fort's notion that, in the words of the author, "science was a new form of social control whose object was to conceal the fantastical nature of the universe by means of editing out paradoxes, contradictions, miracles, paranormal events--anything that was unusual or which did not fit into a set scheme of things." Recommended to all the universes.
Rating: 
Summary: PU
Review: I confess I bought this for 2 reasons, I treasure my copy of Damon Knight's proto-bio of Fort from the 70's, and wanting to see a contemporary re-examination of Fort's life & work; and the chance to read some new John Keel writing with the foreword. I had then 2 realizations, Damon Knight's bio still stands as the only legitimate bio on Fort (who is worthy of far better than this mishmash) and a paragraph by Keel is often more insightful than entire books by others. I'd read Bennett's "Looking for Orthon" and enjoyed it, an adept descriptive travelog of the saucer mania in the 1950's. But this alleged study of the life, work & ideas on Fort is a travesty. This book is more about Bennett's fortean awakening, his political education and his various axes he wishes to grind in public. All in all, it's more about the author and less about Fort. My conclusion- don't bother. Get Knight's book through inter-library loan or out of print book services.
Rating:
Summary: PU
Review: I confess I bought this for 2 reasons, I treasure my copy of Damon Knight's proto-bio of Fort from the 70's, and wanting to see a contemporary re-examination of Fort's life & work; and the chance to read some new John Keel writing with the foreword. I had then 2 realizations, Damon Knight's bio still stands as the only legitimate bio on Fort (who is worthy of far better than this mishmash) and a paragraph by Keel is often more insightful than entire books by others. I'd read Bennett's "Looking for Orthon" and enjoyed it, an adept descriptive travelog of the saucer mania in the 1950's. But this alleged study of the life, work & ideas on Fort is a travesty. This book is more about Bennett's fortean awakening, his political education and his various axes he wishes to grind in public. All in all, it's more about the author and less about Fort. My conclusion- don't bother. Get Knight's book through inter-library loan or out of print book services.
Rating:
Summary: Anomalist Book Award 2002 -- Best Biography
Review: If Thomas Pynchon had any interest in Charles Fort, this is the kind of book that might result. It's far more than a biography (Damon Knight already did that), but a literary study of Fort the writer, as well as a postmodern rant on the illusory nature of facts and reality in the light of Fort's philosophy. Bennett, like Fort, sees "explanations," especially those provided by science, as a superficial means of understanding. Even more than in his previous book, Looking for Orthon, Bennett does battle with modern skepticism, which he sees as a debilitating contemporary illness. This is a great, big, heady stew of a book full of references to literature, arts, philosophy and more-much, much more. Bennett takes Fort and runs for the goalposts--I don't think anyone else could have done him justice. This book is a monster, a raised fist at the orthodox prison of the mind that is contemporary culture.
Rating: 
Summary: Heady and masterfully conceived
Review: In a world of books about anomalies, very seldom does one come across a title that is, itself, an anomaly in its aptitude and outspokenness. Colin Bennett's "Politics of the Imagination," a heady examination of the life, work, and ideas of paranormal heavyweight Charles Fort, is a rich and singular book in which Bennett's postmodern sensibilities are brought to bear on one of the 20th century's most radical thinkers. Fort, an intellectual outcast who viewed science as so much socio-mythological advertising, has become synonymous with the unexplained. Bennet argues that "Fortean" phenomena such as UFOs, inexplicable artifacts, and falls of live fish reveal cracks in the buttresses of Big Science's illusory (and ever-fashionable) rationalism. Bennett, like Fort, views reality itself as an anomaly to be held in constant question; "explanations," if available at all, are only a superficial means of understanding. Bennett grabs hold of the enigma that is Fort's iconoclasm and doesn't let go. Summoning a mass of scientific and literary esoterica, he writes with impeccable wit, pursuing his quarry with impressive dexterity. "Politics of the Imagination" is a high-calorie intellectual banquet of a book: challenging, learned, and incredibly fun. As long as Bennett is writing, Western empiricism can run, but it can't hide. With a foreword by John Keel, author of "The Mothman Prophecies."
Rating:
Summary: Heady and masterfully conceived
Review: In a world of books about anomalies, very seldom does one come across a title that is, itself, an anomaly in its aptitude and outspokenness. Colin Bennett's "Politics of the Imagination," a heady examination of the life, work, and ideas of paranormal heavyweight Charles Fort, is a rich and singular book in which Bennett's postmodern sensibilities are brought to bear on one of the 20th century's most radical thinkers. Fort, an intellectual outcast who viewed science as so much socio-mythological advertising, has become synonymous with the unexplained. Bennet argues that "Fortean" phenomena such as UFOs, inexplicable artifacts, and falls of live fish reveal cracks in the buttresses of Big Science's illusory (and ever-fashionable) rationalism. Bennett, like Fort, views reality itself as an anomaly to be held in constant question; "explanations," if available at all, are only a superficial means of understanding. Bennett grabs hold of the enigma that is Fort's iconoclasm and doesn't let go. Summoning a mass of scientific and literary esoterica, he writes with impeccable wit, pursuing his quarry with impressive dexterity. "Politics of the Imagination" is a high-calorie intellectual banquet of a book: challenging, learned, and incredibly fun. As long as Bennett is writing, Western empiricism can run, but it can't hide. With a foreword by John Keel, author of "The Mothman Prophecies."
Rating:
Summary: not worth your time
Review: Like the previous reviewer, I am a fan of Fort who greatly enjoyed Damon Knight's biography as well as Fort's work. I also found this book to be a wretched, worthless, and unreadable book of post-modern gibberish--I couldn't get past about the first 30 pages, though I did skim the rest, which appeared to have little to do with Fort. If you would like more insight on Fort, I recommend Knight's book and the pieces that have been published on him throughout the years in magazines such as Fortean Times by authors such as John Michell, Mark Chorvinsky, and Mike Dash, which I cited in my entry on Fort in Gordon Stein's Encyclopedia of the Paranormal.
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