#Thomas Ligotti

[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.

[funeral]

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.

Thomas Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: I Want to Believe

Stephen King: hey did you hear that thomas wrote an x files episode? Barker: what? which one? King: oh i think King: i think it was called King: 'thomas ligotti is from outer space' or something Barker: Barker: yeah i don't think it was called that

King: i heard you wrote an x files episode Thomas Ligotti: hm King: you know, i once wrote an x files episode myself Ligotti: hm King: it was about an evil doll Ligotti: did the evil doll represent the existential void of an indifferent universe King: King: uh no King: it was the regular kind

Ligotti: they never actually made my episode Ligotti: they said it was too depressing Barker: damn! whoa! Barker: you? depressing? Barker: get outta town! Poe: clive Barker: i'm just as shocked as you are!

Barker: so thomas this depressing x-files thing you did Ligotti: hm Barker: did it have mannequins Poe: clive Ligotti: yes Barker: whoa! really defying stereotypes today huh tom?

Barker: wait wait Barker: i'm on a role Barker: i'm about to use my AWESOME PSYCHIC POWERS to make another prediction Barker: was there a ventriloquist dummy in it? Ligotti: yes Barker: whoa! 2 for 2! Koontz: are you really psychic? Poe: no dean Barker: yes dean Barker: yes i am

Barker: damn thomas i am totally SHOCKED that you'd write about ventriloquist dummies Barker: i am just so COMPLETELY SURPRISED because that's Barker: like Barker: SO out of character for you Jon Padgett: s-shut up Padgett: leave him alone Padgett: just shut up!

Ligotti: a ventriloquist dummy is a cosmic doppelganger, real and yet not real, a mocking caricature of the spark of life, a reminder of the cruel joke the universe played on mankind that is sentience RL Stine: yeah and also Stine: what if one had a knife?

Ligotti: so mulder and scully face the truth that we are all just in a cosmically indifferent universe, specks upon the tides of fate, subject to unknowable forces beyond human ken that our blinkered minds cannot ever hope to fathom Ligotti: the truth is NOT out there

[bowelflies]

“The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product – Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price – Everything. This market strategy would then go on until one day, among the world-wide ruins of derelict factories and warehouses and office buildings, there stood only a single, shining, windowless structure with no entrance and no exit. Inside would be – will be – only a dense network of computers calculating profits. Outside will be tribes of savage vagrants with no comprehension of the nature or purpose of the shining, windowless structure. Perhaps they will worship it as a god. Perhaps they will try to destroy it, their primitive armory proving wholly ineffectual against the smooth and impervious walls of the structure, upon which not even a scratch can be inflicted.”

― Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done

[the-insect-is-awake]

Not sure where I screenshot this interview with Thomas Ligotti. Will update with source later, if I remember.

[epilepticsaints]

[titleknown]

Hot Take: I think deconstructing Lovecraft is the easy mode of deconstructing cosmic horror, because it's just so obvious what his deep biases are and easy to knock him down.

If someone wanted to deconstruct Thomas Ligotti or Peter Watts, now there would be a feat, given how much more difficult it is to find the "weak points" in their views of cosmic dread...

[ravenkings]

All that was left to us was to wonder: who knows all that is innate to this world, or to any other? Why should there not be something buried deep within appearances, something that wears a mask to hide itself behind the visibility of nature?

–Thomas Ligotti, “The Shadow at the Bottom of the World”

[flanaganfilm]

What are your thoughts on cosmic horror like Lovecraft's work, The Thing, Annihilation etc?

That's absolutely my jam. THE THING is one of the greatest films ever made, I adored the Southern Reach Trilogy (and thought they did a really good job with the ANNIHILATION movie as well).

I'm really high on Thomas Ligotti these days, I can't believe none of his work has been adapted yet. I may try my hand at it if he lets me.

Lovecraft is wonderful stuff, but challenging. It's tough to do right. Personally I would give an appendage to see Guillermo Del Toro's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, if anyone can do it right it's him.

Cosmic horror is profoundly disturbing, and I think makes people uneasy. There's an odd comfort in ghosts, and vampires, and more humanoid horrors... but existential cosmic horror, and facing terrors that we cannot truly understand or comprehend, is some of the most effective and affecting horror out there.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[blurrymerzsblog]

“Sometimes you just have to keep some distance between yourself and reality, even if it means becoming a little less human.”

—Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer

Photographer: Inoxlord

[funeral]

Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Large Adult Son

Eric Stenbock: hello midnight society Stenbock: i'm Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock Stenbock: [producing life-size mannequin] and this is my son le Petit Comte Thomas Ligotti: Ligotti: Ligotti: Ligotti: Stephen King: you're uh King: really staring at that mannequin kinda intently there, tom Ligotti: hm

Eric Stenbock: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the true story of the vampire Stenbock: one sec, let me just get le Petit Comte comfortable first Stenbock: how are you doing le Petit Comte Stenbock: Ligotti: Stenbock: Ligotti: Stenbock: Ligotti: Stenbock: he says he's doing good

RL Stine: hey does your puppet talk Stine: my puppet talks Stenbock: does my what talk? Stine: your puppet Stenbock: Stenbock: you mean my son? Stine: yeah your puppet there Stenbock: Stenbock: never speak to me or my son every again

RL Stine: i just wanted to know if le petit comte talks RL Stine: [producing ventriloquist dummy] cuz knothead here talks RL Stine: especially when i drink a glass of water RL Stine: watch he'll sing the old gray mare Stenbock: how dare you

Stenbock: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the true tale of a vampire Stenbock: it's the story of carmilla Sheridan Le Fanu: Stenbock: not THAT carmilla Stenbock: a totally different carmilla

Stenbock: this carmilla story is not to be confused for sheridan la fanu's carmilla Stenbock: for one thing, this isn't a lesbian vampire story Stenbock: it's a gay vampire story Stenbock: extremely gay Bram Stoker: oh no Anne Rice: oh yes

Stenbock: so carmilla lives in a castle with her sexy brother gabriel and their dad Stenbock: and she's narrating this story so Stenbock: she's all "hey its me carmilla, let me tell you what i look like" Stenbock: "i'm just an average girl, but i think i'm pretty hot" Stenbock: "but boy my brother, damn what a smoke show" Stenbock: "pouty youthful mouth, tangled blonde locks, the whole deal" Stenbock: "you know how it is"

Stenbock: "so my brother was so kind and gentle, filled with nothing but love" Stenbock: "just loved animals" Stenbock: "and animals loved him" Stenbock: "he was a delicate cinnamon bun too good for this cruel bitch of a world"

Stenbock: "anyway this vampire comes to our castle" Stenbock: "and he's always hanging out with my brother" Stenbock: "but my brother is suddenly all sick and pale and doesn't have as much blood as usual" Stenbock: "suspiciously vampiric"

Stenbock: "anyway then my brother died and the vampire left, the end" Stenbock: what do you think of that Ligotti: Ligotti: Ligotti: King: thom it's not going to move, it's not real Ligotti: hm

[aspyrbabes]

[der-unverantwortliche]