Remarkable Luminous Phenomena in Nature by William R. Corliss

However, Richard Baum wrote a mostly positive review, stating that it was an objective work and 'his reviews are concise and well-referenced, and if on occasion his examples are questionable we do at least have the benefit of the bibliographies which will be useful to historians.' In a review for a book that documented astronomical anomalies, the astronomer Joseph Veverka wrote that Corliss had shown negligence of the scientific literature for more than a decade and made incorrect statements.

Instead of giving new access to genuinely mysterious observations, it only buries a few of them in a clutter of confused esoterica. Grossly incomplete, naively uncritical, supplied with inaccurate sketches (many of them fictitious, like the illustrations in old novels), and lacking an author index, it is no handbook at all. is particularly prone, to classify things as 'unexplained' even when a good explanation is available. He explains, 'Corliss more interested in unusual weather, ball lighting, geophysical oddities, extraordinary mirages, and the like - in short, anomalies that, while important in their own right, are far less likely to outrage mainstream scientists than those that delighted Fort, such as UFOs, monstrous creatures, or other sorts of extraordinary events and entities.' In his book Unexplained!, Jerome Clark describes Corliss as 'essentially conservative in outlook'.

Similarly, Corliss's uses a rating of '1' for anomalies that cannot be explained by existing scientific theories, while a '4' describes phenomena that are unusual but do not challenge scientific theories.Ĭorliss wrote many other books and articles, notably including 13 educational books about astronomy, outer space and space travel for NASA and a similar number for the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Science Foundation. Well-documented reports from credible sources are ranked as a '1' while entirely unsubstantiated reports are rated as a '4', with '2' or '3' representing intermediate reports. In some of his later Sourcebook efforts, such as the mid-1990s Biological Anomalies series, Corliss added his evaluation of both the reliability of the claims, and their ranking as anomalies.

Corliss quoted all relevant parts of articles (often reprinting entire articles or stories, including illustrations). Unlike Fort, known for his idiosyncratic writing style, Corliss initially offered little in the way of his own opinions or editorial comments, preferring to let the articles speak for themselves. Many of the articles in Corliss's works were earlier mentioned in Charles Fort's works. Corliss was inspired by Charles Fort, who decades earlier also collected reports of unusual phenomena. Each volume was devoted to a scientific field (archeology, astronomy, geology, et cetera) and featured articles culled almost exclusively from scientific journals. Starting in 1974, Corliss published a number of works in the 'Sourcebook Project'.

Remarkable Luminous Phenomena in Nature by William R. Corliss