#(thomas ligotti)

[yourteresia]

Me core

[nousrose]

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there”cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it.

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Thomas Ligotti

[charnel-grounds]

“The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone.”

― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[funeral]

Thomas Ligotti, "Professor Nobody's Little Lectures On Supernatural Horror (1985)", Songs of a Dead Dreamer

[charl0ttan]

Thomas Ligotti cover art

[foeter]

David Tibet interview by Thomas Ligotti (Esoterra Issue #8)

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Cosmic Horror

HP Lovecraft: what if you you saw a cosmic horror and it made you go crazy

August Derleth: what if you saw a cosmic horror and HP Lovecraft wrote it

Robert W Chambers: what if you saw a really off-putting shade of yellow

Stephen King: what if you saw a cosmic horror and it was a clown

Thomas Ligotti: what if you saw a cosmic horror and actually you were the clown all along

Frank Belknap Long: what if you saw a cosmic horror in the corner

Ruthanna Emrys: what if YOU were the cosmic horror

Theodore Sturgeon: what if you saw a cosmic horror and it was a teddy bear

Robert Bloch: what if you saw a cosmic horror and actually the real darkness was inside the human heart the whole time

Ramsey Campbell: what if a you saw a cosmic horror and it was english

Victor LaValle: what if you saw a cosmic horror and it was a metaphor for racism

Caitlin Kiernan: what if you saw a cosmic horror and racism was good actually

Nick Mamatas: what if Jack Kerouac saw a cosmic horror thats like telling gene krupa not to go boom boom bam boom boom bam bam boom boom bam boom

Brian Keene: we can't stop here this is cosmic horror country

Laird Barron: what if you saw a cosmic horror and you could punch it

Brian Lumley: what if you saw a cosmic horror and you could shoot it with a gun

Robert E Howard: what if you saw a cosmic horror but you despised sorcerers and all weavers of the black arts so you killed it and took its treasure (+10 gold coins, +12 experience points)

William Hope Hodgson: ohhhhh what if you saw a cosmic horror in a pineapple under the sea

Arthur Machen: what if you saw a cosmic horror that your nanny warned you about

Hailey Piper: what if you saw a cosmic horror and it was gay

Drew Huff: what if you saw a cosmic horror and it was a bimbo

John Langan: what if you didn't see a cosmic horror

[figcatlists]

Contemporary weird fiction reading list

A chart of New Weird books and other bizarre, unsettling, and uncanny literature published in the last 30 years or so. This is a follow-up to my previous chart of classic weird fiction and another selection from my list of over 200 works of weird literature.