The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ve known of Ligotti’s work for a couple of decades now, but pre-Amazon it had been pretty hard going to find some of his stuff where I lived. Eventually, I collected some of his fiction and I enjoy it very much – he’s very much in the Lovecraft side of the weird. You know, the sort of Radcliffe-but-stronger feeling of the innate horror of the universe. Understandably, the guy’s a recluse.

He’s currently receiving a bit of attention thanks to the claims that True Detective‘s most interesting character’s worldview was plagiarised from this text by that series’ writer, Nic Pizzolatto. Personally, I don’t buy the accusation, and fall more on this side of the fence.

This text is non-fiction. It’s a distillation of thought about pessimist philosophy (actual, extinguish-the-world pessimism rather than “It’ll probably rain on me because life’s shitty” pessimism) coupled with some meditations on supernatural literature. (more…)