Weird world
Fifty-one peculiar places to add to the discerning fortean taveller’s bucket list
Atlas of improbable places A Journey to the World’s Most unusual corners Travis Elborough & Alan Horsfield Aurum Press 2016 Hb, 224 pp, illus, £20.00, ISBN 9781781315123
Anyone who likes the Fortean Traveller feature in FT is going to love this book. It consists of 51 short essays on strange or wonderful places, most being four pages long, one page being the map, the rest well-written and informative text, and one photograph. The maps, in Alan Horsfield’s cartography, are stylish and very attractive.
The book is arranged into six chapters: ‘Dream creations’, ‘Deserted destinations’, ‘Architectural oddities’, ‘Floating worlds’, ‘Otherworldy spaces’ and ‘Subterranean realms’. Some of the places chosen are well-known and fairly predictable, such as Mt Roraima, the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World. But, for instance, I had never heard of Auroville before; a utopian settlement in SE India. And while I knew of the existence of Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia, I never knew its curious history.
It won’t take long to get through this book; it’s the sort of thing where you read one essay, and then say, “Well, I’ll just read one more” – and then one more, and so on. But part of the interest of this book is its potential as a starting point for more exploration. Latitude and longitude of each place are given, so it’s fun to put these into Google Earth and look around. (You do have Google Earth, right? Essential for any fortean. Even the Pro version is free now.)
Of course, with only 51 places selected, there are bound to be omissions, and everyone will have their own list. I would have included the village of Gibellina in Sicily, abandoned in 1968 and turned into what must be one the largest sculptures on the planet, and probably the most bizarre place I have ever visited myself.
The weakest part of the book is the photographs. I can live with the fact that they are all a rather blurry monochrome, but they often give a poor idea of what the places actually look like. The photo of Auroville, for instance, shows only a single building, where what one would like is a panorama. Cue Google Earth for lots more pictures and a virtual exploration. The picture selection is the only thing that has me deducting a point from the overall score, and I suspect it reflects what was available to the authors. I doubt if they actually journeyed to all the places featured.
I spotted a couple of slips. It would be remarkable indeed if the deserted Presidio Modelo prison in Cuba featured four 60-storey towers; they are six storeys high. And while I know it gets very hot in Southern California, I doubt if it reaches 120°C. But the overall message is: buy this book. It will grace any fortean’s coffee table.
Fortean Times Verdict
A Wonderful Selection Of Very Strange Places 9