Weird Fiction is a legitimate genre and Thomas Ligotti is its best author. He is better than Lovecraft ever was

>I have a special plan for this world

Well what is it you rumbling lunatic?

The Holocaust

The genre is much broader, and older, than most casuals realize. Do yourself a favor and pick up the Ann & Jeff VanderMeer's recent anthol. "The Weird." It runs to over 1000 pages of top notch short fiction.

p.s. Algernon Blackwood and Robert Aickman are its true masters, not HPL or Ligotti (as much as dig them both).

He kill hisself

I gave a copy of that book to friend as a wedding present last year

bump

There's always The King in Yellow. Robert S. Chambers is considered to be one of Lovecraft's major influences, and a few of the stories in the collection make you feel like there are centipedes crawling across your brain.

Aside from that, I dunno.

Ambrose Bierce did some weird fiction, among other things - his most famous one is probably An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, which got a Hitchcock adaptation, but everything in Can Such Things Be is pretty solid. Guy vanished during the Mexican Revolution, too, no one knows what happened.

He's not visionary and is just standing on HPL's shoulders. Lovecraft was inferior to writers he tried to ape stylistically, like Poe and Blackwood and Dunsany but he was a true visionary and his work holds much more meaning than those preceding him, except for of course Poe.

Ligotti is a good writer but I see nothing special in his work, he's comfy in how cold his fiction can feel but he's especially weak when trying to veer into the philosophical side of the street, I remember being dismayed at how his book about nihilism became progressivelly more like a car crash.

>no one knows what happened

He died in the fucking desert, what do you think fucking happened?

Spooky scary sombreros

I agree

I'm reading House on the Borderland right now, by William Hope Hodgson, supposedly an influence on HPL and it shows.

This shit is weirder than anything I've read from Lovecraft though. Large chunk of the book gets very esoteric. Maybe not the right word, but unmoored from any reality we know.

>Lovecraft was inferior to writers he tried to ape stylistically, like Poe and Blackwood and Dunsany

Funnily enough, I've never seen a post on Veeky Forums that conclusively makes or breaks the case for Lovecraft's prose style, only assertions intended to be taken as self evident. What in particular makes those writers better in your opinion?

How was Lovecraft a visionary? He basically just repeated what Chambers did with The King In Yellow

Eh, I feel Blackwood's prose is a bit dull and he's got no themes to his work. Certainly the Willows is impressive for how it makes you feel but The Frolic, Dream of a Mannikin and Nethescurial make you shudder.

Id disagree. Most approach Weird with the world and life itself being apathetic; in Ligottis work it's actively hostile. More than just human existence, he discusses things like imagination, consciousness and uses asiatic as well as Western ideas and creatures to fuel it.

In particular, I like how he uses Buddhism and the idea of an onryo in My Work Is Not Ye Done. Plus, his prose is an utter ensure to read and his work can be genuinely funny.

The problem I think with preLovecraft writers luke Blackwood, Chambers and Machen is they come up with these weird interesting ideas but they're still based in tradditional concepts and have no real purpose or overarching scheme to them.

Well, for the first part they didn't resort to painful gimmicks characteristic of the lowest tier genre fiction Lovecraft did aka the punchline is in the very last line. They are far more subtle and unarguably better dialogue writers (there's a good reason Lovecraft stayed away from writing dialogue in most of his books). The core difference is in subtlety Lovecraft only later managed to convey with more skill, it is well know that he barely did second draft and it shows in most of his work, it's very roughshod. As someone continuing their line of outworldly, menacing prose he is pretty rigid.

The method itself is certainly not his own, there are more novels that could present the theme earlier, like Hodgson in The House on the Borderland but Lovecraft managed to squeeze out a glimpse of an entire universe, and pull along tons of writers happy to drown their own voices in the edifice he built. Including Ligotti to an extent.

I still haven't read most of the stuff Ligotti wrote, but I noticed a lot of despair in his work, perhaps more menace than outright hostility, or a psychological pressure, oppressive nature of the very... nature, if you will.

>The problem I think with preLovecraft writers luke Blackwood, Chambers and Machen is they come up with these weird interesting ideas but they're still based in tradditional concepts and have no real purpose or overarching scheme to them.

I agree, Lovecraft was a pragmatic simpleton and that gave him visionary qualities. They would probably consider that sort of theme development prosaic.

I absolutely loved House on the Borderland, however, Hodgson's other works leave much to be desired (such as his rather formulaic Carnaki Ghost Finder stories).

Why do you feel 'Conspiracy Against the Human Race' was a car crash?

Because it discussed infantile philosophy in an infantile manner. At least Cioran had good sense to use aphorisms and not try to actually argue for cessation of life.

It's common for short stories to have a pay off at the end The Willows does the exact same thing with the revelation of what would have happened to the heroes, the great God pan literally ends with the main character turning into a monster, don't even get me started on Clark Ashton Smith.

Yes, lovecraft couldn't write dialogue well. But his efforts are no more laborious then the work you'd see coming from the previously mentioned authors. Also, if he only had to write two drafts, it worked quite well considering how he was excellent at tension (At The Mountains of Madness, The Outsider and the Innsmouth chase scene) and description (The music of Eric Zaha, the shadow out of time)

If you haven't read much of Ligotti's work I would suggest you stop discussing it. He doesn't talk about other world's or alien God's or faeries or monsters and the like. His work is quite different in scope and construction of and as seen by his "lectures on horror", the frolic, Alice's last adventure and les fleurs, he's quite good at using multiple voices. The chymist and drink to me with only labyrinthine eyes are quite good to.

Ligotti refers to Zapffe and Schropauer in his work and expands on theirs; his work is as infantile as there's and if you're going to dismiss a philosophical argument not based on merit but on topic, you're just wasting your time and everyone else's who read your post.

>Ligotti refers to Zapffe and Schropauer in his work and expands on theirs
He really doesn't.

>If you haven't read much of Ligotti's work I would suggest you stop discussing it. He doesn't talk about other world's or alien God's or faeries or monsters and the like.

I read like 40 percent of hist stories and already know what you said isn't true. There's a surreal story about a factory that 's one of his best known.

The red tower is surreal but it isn't fantastical in the scope of the other books. I'm not saying the stories are realistic but they aren't the same kind not weird and odd as others.

I'd also bug a but skeptical of you reading 40% of his work; a lot of it is a pain in the ass to acquire.

The entire opening of the book is based off the four ways humans distract them selves as outlined in the last messiah.

Im quite clearly a fan of him so if you want to dismiss my point for that reason, please do so but his books have lovely reading for the prose alone .

What do people here think of ramsay Campbell?

>The red tower is surreal but it isn't fantastical

Please nigger

But I'll do you a favor... wait, can't find it. Anyway there's an epub/mobi fan made file with all stories he wrote collected in chronological order.

It was probably on KAT

It's literally about a tower that's a factory that makes stuff and breaks down, depicting how creativity isn't natural to the universe.

Now, how is that comparable to The Great God Pan, The Willows, The Beast of Avoirgne, The Mask of the Red Death and The Festival?

Industrial Gothic

I'm not familiar with this style, unless it's a joke.

Canpbell is great and his career raised the standards of an arguably refined modern horror, but I lament that his choice of subtle themes kind of puts him in the background as a writer. This, despite his crapload of awards, and it results in him being plagiarized left and right. It kind of sucks that his The Tugging has such a tepidly quotidian title, which underrepresents its flashes of brilliant imagery, blatantly stolen with Futurama's Yivo, or Junji Ito's Hell Star Remina.

fucking modern gothic, how hard is that to notice? Like Giger is a gothic artist.

What the fuck are you calling gothic, there's nothing mauldin or overtly emotional in Giger's work. Christ, there's nothing in Giger's work suggesting romance or death or darkness either. Everything's just bio-mechanical.

>there's nothing in Giger's work suggesting romance or death or darkness either
wat

>genres can't evolve

Yeah, I didn't read his nonsensical post to the end before I started replying. Giger literally drew his dead love.

Yes, a single piece of art proves me wrong. Giger had dozens, probably hundreds of pictures in that style. Death is not a consistent factor in them and stop pretending it is.

I'm asking how he thinks it's evolved. I want to know what he means by "industrial gothic".

>What do people here think of ramsay Campbell?

Started out as an HPL imitator, albeit one of the best. Certainly one of the better novelists working in the genre--stretching weird out to novel lengths is exceedingly difficult and he does an admirable, if uneven, job of it. At the top of his short fiction game, as good as anyone in the business.

>Death is not a consistent factor in Giger's work

>I want to know what he means by "industrial gothic".

the fucking setting

A single piece of art does prove your statement that "there's nothing in Giger's work suggesting romance or death or darkness", yes. There are plenty more examples too, you're an idiot.

But that just proves my point that it's not the thrust of his work. I'm not saying he doesn't do any art about death but its not what the Giger aesthetic about now is it.

>the fucking setting
This means nothing unless you elaborate it. HOW is it industrial gothic and WHAT does that imply about the setting. Jesus lad.

can you just do the obvious and take usual tenets of a haunted castle and transport it into a factory? granted it won't mimic walpole down to every trope you're accustomed to but you're bound to find some similarities.

also

>>there's nothing in Giger's work suggesting romance or death or darkness either
>I'm not saying he doesn't do any art about death but its not what the Giger aesthetic about now is it.

Expand upon that. Why do you find the end of human existential suffering to be infantile?

His work isn't suggestive of darkness I always though. I saw that as more the style he was painting in. Sleek, black metal sturctures reminescent of exoskeletons. I guess that's just up for debate. Romance, I've never seen myself. It could be there but I haven't seen it.

Also, about your first question, no. I wouldn't think. Gothic has implications of romance and is every idealistic and emotional. His work isn't like that. Likewise, industrial...I'd have always considered that a music genre and have never seen it applied to books.

Because you can't dabble with any artistic pursuit without appreciating the agency given to you by life to do so. True nihilists, like Weininger did themselves in without purple words.

He's a pessimist not a nihilist and that point you mentioned is addressed within the first fifty pages of the book, if not ten.

I've a feeling you haven't read it or Zappfe.

I read about a third of it before putting it down, it claims to be a philosophy book but it's just new age fiddling with Kierkegard lite. I can't discuss it properly because I found nothing worth of discussion, the only thing I got from the book that Ligotti has some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder conditioning him to endlessly drone about simple concept such as death.

>Gothic has implications of romance and is every idealistic and emotional.

You're pretending as if 19th century prose never happened. Poe alone turned Gothic romance upside down, it's pornographic twist contained in Giger (for example, can't think of literary paragons right now) is logical.

>Sleek, black metal sturctures reminescent of exoskeletons

Might as well be cathedrals. I mean, Warhammer 40k setting literally has cathedral spaceships floating in space, and unless you want to be architectural prude and point out it's baroque - it's gothic.

You've offered nothing but insulting throwaway remarks referencing other philosophers work without addressing a single argument made in the text and attempting a refutation either by applying your own logic or referencing someone else's in anything but a dull-witted namedrop.

Also, its fitting you find something like death to be a simple concept because it's obvious you've spent exactly zero time in your life considering it beyond a surface level. It might surprise you to realize other philosophers have devoted their entire body of work to delving into 'simple' concepts like death, goodness, or the existence of god.

But Warhammer hasn't any gothic themes and isn't a literary work. It's just stealing the aesthetic. If that's what your crieteria is, fair enough but, eh.

Also, I always felt Poe only strengthened Gothic Romance, what with The Fall of the House of Usher, the Raven, the Mask of the Red Death. Most of his protagonists are people of high renown who are intelligent and well read. Most of his villains tend to be similar. All of them are highly emotional figures who are easily deranged by the world itself.

Look, if you can't even address how Ligotti literally opens his books explaining about the remedies of panic then I don't know why you're pretending you read the book. New age fiddling? He spends the opening of the book dismantling such thoughts like the pessimistic "Cosmic Will" which intentionally causes pain and misery.

This is just sad.

>insulting

More like offhand ridicule, nihilism is the most poseur of philosophies and only works within confines of art, like in Cioran.

>It might surprise you to realize other philosophers have devoted their entire body of work to delving into 'simple' concepts like death, goodness, or the existence of god.

Yes, and thankfully Witgenstein revoked their p-card nearly a century ago.

>Warhammer hasn't any gothic themes

>Look, if you can't even address how Ligotti

Listen, I can't discuss it because I don't keep shit I found ridiculous in my thoughts for long. I'm telling you what I remember about it in terms of phenomenological approach, as a reader. My main take is that it's good for him to keep his prose obfuscated and horrors only hinted at because when he tries to develop a concept in earnest he looks amateurish. I'm not gonna go back to it just so I can copy paste you paragraphs and give notes I have about them.

We're clearly at an impasse, so I'll thank you for answering and satisfying my curiosity.

>Witgenstein

Oh god, not this meme again.

The fact you keep insisting that a work, which only discusses pessimism and uses pessimistic works, with the writer even outright stating "I'm not a nihilist" makes this just sad really because you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

Also, that picture has nothing to do with the themes of the setting. It's an arbitrary name. Or do you think that the setting is all about Classical Mythology because it had a system called "Epic"? Or truth seeking because it had another system "Inquisitor"? I'm certain necromunda is teeming with thematic significance.

Apropos of nothing, but my first encounter with P&P roleplaying games was HeroQuest. I just recently came to understand that they used the Warhammer Fantasy universe for that game.

It's only a meme if you want to discuss philosophy outside the modern scope. Which would make you a historicist at best and metaphysicist at worst. Good for essays, bad for discussion.

If you look closely, it's a horizontal cathedral. I assure you, it's not arbitrary. And I'm too lazy to start posting pictures of costumes.

And I think it's fairly obvious that Ligotti's focus on death makes him a nihilist far more than his outlook on nature makes him a pessimist.

You know, it's funny that people think Warhammer's name comes from Ghal maraz when it's actually Harry The Hammer who's the reason it's called that.

Death isn't inherently nihilistic and pessimism/optimism can be applied to any topic. Also, you must have missed my point where I said aesthetics =/= theme.

>aesthetics =/= theme

I must have missed it but then again I mostly read books for the style rather than plot. In fact in most works I like theme can be gauged from the aesthetics.

I read them for plot, style and characters. Aesthetics can be part of the plot, taht's a fact; Ligotti's own The Greater Festival of Masks is a good example of that.

Or Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock" but >play

Yes, I oversimplified that. I don't think there's a key to literature so maybe I'm a pessimist as well. No, I just adhere to phenomenology when approaching any work.

Here it is:

weirdfictionreview.com/2011/12/the-red-tower-by-thomas-ligotti/

>The entire opening of the book is based off the four ways humans distract them selves as outlined in the last messiah.
Yeah I wouldn't call that expanding his ideas. Honestly from what I recall he rejects Schopenhauer's metaphysics on the premise that he doesn't believe in metaphysics. I can't see how Ligotti could expand the ideas of a systematic philosopher who's entire system of thought he rejects. Ligotti just digs up old pessimistic arguments and when they align with his worldview he praise them. When they don't he dismisses them or cherry picks what he likes. I recall he brings up Cioran and pretty much just says "In his opinion life is not worth living" and just ends it there. Like wow, so insightful. I like his short stories fine but honestly outside of a brief outline of pessimistic thinkers I got nothing out of his philosophy. When I found out he had really bad health problems his book made tones of sense. I like pessimism fine but I'd pass if he tried writing philosophy again.

He expands off of the four rememidies against panic and he doesn't dismiss Schopenhauer; he says his work is quite (as it inspired Zappfe) but it seems to, at the end of his book, suddenly contradict itself and become much more optimistic for no reason whatsoever. I didn't notice what he said about Cioran so I will refrain from commenting on it; given he at least discusses all of his references in at least some detail, I think you may have forgotten some bits and portions.

I will say this though. I read him for his fiction, not his philosphy book. It's nice but people overstate how life changing it is, in my personal opinion. Like that one book reviewer.

Send chanclas down your spine
Sleepy siestas suffuse your soul
Someone was collecting Ambroses.

He died of asphyxiation. Roses are red, Ambroses are blue.