The Conspiracy against the Human Race

August 1, 2018
A writer of supernatural horror stories illuminates the darkest horror of all in this nonfiction affirmation of negativity.An award-winning cult favorite, Ligotti (The Spectral Link, 2014, etc.) doesn't write horror simply to scare readers. On the basis of this unsettling tract--which draws from philosophy, metaphysics, neuroscience, literature, and literary criticism--his horror fiction proceeds from a deep belief that existence itself is a horror show and that procreation is at best an illusion and at worst a crime against humanity. The author's viewpoint is uncompromisingly bleak; he finds seemingly kindred spirits such as Nietzsche to be a little too sunny. "Existence," writes Ligotti, "is a condition with no redeeming qualities." He understands that most philosophers and readers will disagree with him and that his position that life has no meaning is impossible to prove, just as anyone claiming to have discovered the meaning of life is suspect. Yet he sticks to his guns throughout. Life is suffering, and "human suffering will remain insoluble as long as human beings exist." And the sooner human beings cease to exist, the better. But why does he write this, and what is the "conspiracy" of the title? It all stems from the self-knowledge that we do our best not to acknowledge: the fact that we alone of all living creatures know that we are going to die. As with Eve's apple or the snake in the Garden of Eden, "human existence [is] a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness--parent of all horrors." In other words, we act as if we lack "the knowledge of a race of beings that is only passing through this shoddy cosmos." Originally published in 2010, this reissue includes a new preface.For Ligotti fans and fellow pessimists, here's affirmation that "their only respite is in the balm of bleakness."

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September 20, 2010
Ligotti (Songs of a Dead Dreamer), one of his generation's most original writers of horror fiction, explores the theme of philosophic pessimism in his first book of nonfiction. Citing the work of a formidable array of thinkers that includes Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and especially 20th-century Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zappfe, Ligotti dissects the curse of consciousness that compels humankind to ponder the futility of existence and to seek solace from its angst-inducing nihilism in strategies that include diminishing its importance, anchoring it to metaphysical avatars such as God and Natural Law, distracting oneself from its depressing inevitability, and safely sublimating it into works of fiction. Indeed, much of the book's best commentary examines how this bleak philosophy informs the best writing of H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and other masters of the uncanny tale. Though his subject is weighty and sometimes ponderous, Ligotti nimbly covers a great deal of territory and offers many provocative and accessible insights. Fans will relish this book for the light it sheds on Ligotti's own dark fiction.