Read The Martian Falcon (Lovecraft & Fort) for Free Online

background.’
    Oh, Jesus , thought Fort.
    ‘For this reason, for the sake of my art, if you will forgive the presumptuousness, I have made just such studies over many years.’
    ‘Is that a fact?’ said Fort, taking off his glasses and polishing them with his handkerchief. In spite of his caution, a tiny smudge of Penny’s lipstick found its way onto one of the lenses. He tutted and polished anew.
    ‘Yes, Mr Fort, it is. In fact, I would have to say that I believe myself to be just the man for whom you are looking…’
    ‘Do you always speak the way you write?’
    ‘I… I’m not sure I understand.’
    ‘Never mind.’
    In spite of the man’s awkwardness, Fort found himself warming to Howard Lovecraft. He seemed so completely and utterly… inoffensive , not to mention polite; and politeness in New York City was about as rare as a plutonium sandwich.
    Fort finally got the lipstick off his glasses, put them back on and saw that Lovecraft was gazing in unabashed curiosity at the enormous bank of file cabinets. He glanced at his host and gave a quick, nervous smile.
    ‘Do they pertain to your cases, Mr Fort?’
    ‘Some. Most are what you might call private research.’
    ‘May I enquire along what lines?’
    ‘The same as my professional work: unexplained events, strange phenomena… weird stuff, if you like.’
    ‘Really?’
    Fort nodded. ‘In my spare time, I collect accounts of such things…’
    ‘Which things in particular?’ asked Lovecraft, leaning forward a little.
    ‘I’ve made a careful examination of pretty much every field of human enquiry – astronomy, biology, chemistry, sociology, psychology, history, geography, exploration, you name it – looking for the phenomena that don’t fit…’
    ‘That don’t fit?’ echoed Lovecraft. ‘That don’t fit into what?’
    ‘Our view of the way the world works – or should work. Put it this way: we know that the supernatural exists; we see it every day. Ghosts, zombies, vampires, demonic entities, angelic entities, spontaneous teleportation, strange lights in the sky, all the things that shouldn’t exist according to the rules of science, but exist nevertheless. Science is unable to explain them, so it ignores them. I believe that’s a narrow-minded approach.’
    ‘I would have to agree,’ said Lovecraft, ‘although science has been struggling towards a unified theory of the supernatural for two hundred years…’
    ‘And it’s come up with doodly-squat so far. It’s like Einstein and the unified field theory. You can talk about quantum mechanics, and you can talk about gravity, but you can’t talk about them together. It’s the same with the natural world and the supernatural world: no one can find a way to make them fit together. There’s a new paradigm of reality out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered, and science has given up on finding it.’
    ‘But you haven’t,’ said Lovecraft.
    Fort looked at the bank of file cabinets. ‘No… at least, not yet. But sometimes I wonder if I’m wasting my time. I’ve spent half my life in the world’s greatest libraries, collecting data from newspapers and scientific periodicals, not to mention the notes I’ve made on the phenomena I encounter in my day-to-day work. I call it the “science of anomalistics”, when I’m in a good mood.’
    ‘And when you’re not in a good mood?’
    ‘I call it damned data.’
    ‘Damned?’
    ‘Excluded. Ignored. A procession of the damned: livid and rotten. Battalions of the accursed, you might say. Things that don’t fit. Phenomena that shouldn’t exist, but do.’
    ‘But is it entirely true that science ignores such phenomena?’ countered Lovecraft. ‘Many universities have supernatural faculties: Harvard, Princeton, Miskatonic here in America; Oxford and Cambridge in England; the Sorbonne in Paris; the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. There is work being done on the problem of the paranormal.’
    ‘Yeah, but like you said, that