Thomas Ligotti's "Conspiracy" Still In Progress

It appears Thomas Ligotti's first major non-fiction work, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, will be published some time later than originally planned. As the recent updates from this thread on Thomas Ligotti Online indicate, Mr. Ligotti remains hard at work on sculpting his philosophical treatise into a definitive presentation. The book was originally planned for an appearance sometime in 2007, but may well not appear by 2008's end either. Through TLO's administrator, Dr. Bantham, Ligotti stated:

As for information on who is going to publish CATHR, I really have zero information to impart at this point except that various options are being considered and the publication date of the book depends on which option seems best to me. The most important thing as far as CATHR is concerned is that I've continued to work assiduously on the book. Not a day has gone by since it appeared on TLO--or since early 2006 for that matter--that I haven't put in quite a number of chain-smoking hours on it. I continue to run the book through my head all the time, and this leads to additions, deletions, and rearrangements in the text. When CATHR was on TLO, I didn't realize how much it was still a work in progress.

Ligotti, known best for his existential horror fiction, seeks to make his Conspiracy a promulgation of his underlying philosophy, which lies firmly in the historically small school of pessimist thinkers. An early draft of this work was posted on TLO last summer for a limited time, though it is now unavailable. I had the privilege of reviewing it, along with many other members of TLO, and it is definitely worth the wait. However, as this is a philosophical work, it may not quite appeal to everyone on the periphery of Thomas Ligotti's traditional fan base. By all indications, it will hold great interest for those interested in the deeper roots of the weird. Ligotti devotes significant time to the bleak terror of existence, an impetus responsible for the uniqueness of his own fiction, and a trait he also observes in others like H.P. Lovecraft. Additionally, some highly cerebral commentary on the creation of horror literature is set to appear.

Interested readers can catch a glimpse of this ongoing work soon. The British philosophical journal "Collapse" will publish an excerpt of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, as well as a new essay on Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction in their May issue.

-Grim Blogger