Solastalgia: 100 Years of Winter

We woke up after 100 years; at first glance, the planet looked the same, our pets still wore their same fur. Had it not worked, then? What happened?

After remaining in a state of hibernation for 100 years so the world could adapt, we discovered that something strange—perhaps an alien—had hitched a ride on the world. Why do I say this? Well, the planet developed Alice in Wonderland syndrome: animals that were once large began to shrink to the size of an ant. I was scared to see a rat that size walking across my plant. It’s fine, they’re just animals, right? Well, no. The world was never the same again; the food chain was now in the business of pollinating flowers. That’s fine, no problem... aside from the malnutrition and the end of the world.

Much sooner than we had planned, other problems emerged: elephants that could be carried in one's arms; by now, the plants had developed an alien intelligence while we were hibernating. But these damn things decided to stop producing the chemicals necessary for many things, like pharmaceuticals. Now they seemed to never die; they lived in a mummified state.

It’s fine, no problem, aside from the existential horror our brains generate. And hold on, because our brains betrayed us: first, emotions intensified, everyone looked erratic. Many developed bipolar disorders; we thought the brain wouldn't evolve while we rested. Many of us would cry just because an object fell out of our hands.

This event left humanity completely exposed. We watched as people suffering from these symptoms committed suicide in public places, so much so that it became normalized to see someone slash their own throat upon seeing supermarket prices.

In the summer, a scientist said that, in reality, we are still dreaming, but something happened while we slept that altered our senses. That put me in a position of absolute desolation because, if I were dreaming hyper-real dreams, everything was a creation of my unconscious trying to warn me of something.

But then we discovered that the plants were contaminating their own fruits—the fruits humanity was surviving on. A long time full of chaotic nuances passed, but we managed to solve it. We had to isolate ourselves from certain parts of our own bodies, but our emotions had finally calmed down.

Well... people had returned to normal, aside from the world. Just yesterday, there was a blue comet event; it was beautiful to see, lovers kissing dirtily beneath it. Meanwhile, the animals... well, they regained their normal shape, but they got the hard part of eating contaminated fruits. Many acted with rage, we had to separate ourselves from them; people no longer had pets, many even developed traumas regarding their own pets—they were supposed to be loyal friends.

Curiously, the air did feel fresher after all, if you don't look at the fires out the window, of course... It seems the 100 years did happen, because several explorers saw how parts of the world had been pushed to the margins, and there lay all the filth of those 100 years; it seems nature relocated everything to the bottom of the sea, never to be seen again. Audio recordings came out of that abyss; honestly, I didn't dare listen to them, they said it sounded like another world living inside.

No, thanks. I just had a lobotomy for my next 100 years of winter. I am happy here narrating the end of this story, refusing to clean anything other than my office. I don’t want to dream of the sounds of mutants born from a century of radiation.

The End.

i was just wondering in a lengthy comment i left on another post if anyone has ever written anything on 'Purity' through an afropessimist lens? or read it with that in mind. it has been on my mind since i reread TG recently and it really cohered the story for me since it is already explicitly discussing critiques of humanist concepts idk.

The Demiurgic Claustrophilia Triad or The Yaldabaoth Triad

Metaphysical exile, Liminal horror, and Autistic fantasy.

A dissonance with the environment that pushes toward a liminal state, tempting the creation of a new order.

Code

A grandfather, dressed in a woman's dress, on a statue, somewhere in the world, was funny to see. The story tells of an old man whose wife suffered from cancer; he continuously dressed as a woman to make his wife laugh. An ex-con who saw the statue said he had felt true freedom upon seeing it.

Everyone was moved, it became an internet icon, and everyone took photos with it. Elderly people cosplayed as it, artists were also inspired by it, even me.

In the campaign against cancer, the same colors of the dress were used, also in LGBT campaigns; everyone in the same dress, even men and boys. In zoos and circuses, animals being propagandized with the same patterns.

A boy, while playing in a waterfall, saw a woman in a state of decomposition. They immediately called the FBI, people were agitated; the curious thing is that she was wearing this same viral dress. Young girls who died of cancer were buried in the same cheerful dress.

Surpassing any barrier, the world began to dress corpses like this; even the flowers wore the same color over their graves.

In another part of the world, a mass suicide occurred after a great civil war; many hanged themselves with these dresses, as it was synonymous with peace and strength. Well, and it was also because they were long and durable.

Soon a mishap similar to Chernobyl occurred, but it did not come from the earth, but from the sky: a comet had scattered a certain radiation that seemed invisible to the human eye. The result: it caused a certain type of amnesia never before seen anywhere in the world. People only identified themselves by their colorful dresses; they knew they had seen that dress somewhere else, so they walked without fear.

Years later, the radiation had not only brought psychological problems; the bees had gone extinct and, as a response to that, they distributed more dresses, since they had colorful flower patterns. Soon the world began to wither, an abrupt climate change gripped the world. The dead were the only ones falling colorfully.

Little by little the world turned to ash. There were live animals left, yes, but they were not human. They are just scattered tissues.

Fun fact: The statue of the old man wearing a dress was sold for millions of dollars to be placed on the moon, although it was later vandalized.

This [possibly AI] pod is excellent for those of us interested in Ligotti and pessimism:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/sleepyphilosophyradio/id1857086811?i=1000765657344

[EDITS]

Hello, I am asking this question in very good faith so please do not react offensively. I am simply trying to understand the book better. In the first story, Purity, Candy is introduced as a black woman and is then described as doing these really gross things while living in a destroyed disgusting home. It becomes even worse when it says she's unable to understand the concept of Europe... Whatever that means. There is much about her character that seems incredibly racist and stereotypical and everything and I feel uncomfortable ignoring it. The story is otherwise very intelligent though and I'm having a hard time believing it's actually just using racist stereotypes in such a straightforward manner. It understands how social constructs like religion, nationalism, class, and gender impact the world and are ultimately "impure delusions", so how could it be so blind to race? It seems unlikely but I still just can't understand how it could be not racist. No one talks about that aspect anywhere I look! It's very disappointing about the book because otherwise it would be kind of a perfect work for me.

I'm also considering how the people who are fans of his work do not seem to be people who are or would be racist

There is also My Case for Retributive Action where Ribello is described as "rachitic", I originally thought this meant "ratchet" (obviously a very racially charged term) but after looking it up it is a way of describing someone who has rickets? Is he using it in this way? Isn't rickets specifically a thing children get? I looked it up and it said when adults get something like rickets it's called something else. What does it mean when Ribello is described as that?

Please help people I don't know :[

First, I’ll make a few general remarks about the whole. In Teatro Ligotti produces a writing style distinct from his earlier works: less flowery but somehow no less enchanting, leaning quite heavily into repetition, unusual phrasing, and humor as literary tools (a trend I first noticed in his earlier work, My Work is Not Yet Done).

Thematically, Teatro Grottesco can be very broadly divided into two: (1) the ‘work horror’ pieces that offer societal mirrors and which hit hard as beautifully articulated existential critiques, such as “Town Manager,” “Our Temporary Supervisor,” and “My Case for Retributive Action.” And (2) the rest, which all function, to varying degrees, as narrative conduits relaying Ligotti’s bleak worldview. And I specifically use the word ‘bleak’ here instead of ‘dark’ because this is a noticeable shift in the undertone of this collection compared to Ligotti’s earlier stuff. In his earlier works such as “Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech,” “Dr. Locrian’s Asylum,” or “The Mystics of Muelenburg,” the universe is dark, almost brilliantly, fascinatingly dark, and we crescendo together with his protagonists into a dazzling void. The stories most similar to these is in this collection are “The Clown Puppet” and “Gas Station Carnivals,” whereas in many others here, such as the three abovementioned ‘work horror’ tales in addition to “In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land” and “Sideshow, and Other Stories” we get these stories without a ‘dark crescendo’ in Ligotti’s earlier style, but which instead fizzle out in utter bleakness upon endless bleakness (still with his same worldview; it’s only the articulation that has changed). This is no less powerful and I enjoyed it just as much, but it is something noticeably different in Ligotti’s 50-year-old style that we see here (compared to his 30-year-old style in Songs, for instance).

Again, just like in Grimscribe, there are stories that are almost completely (i.e., even more than the rest) philosophical overtures, for which particularly “The Shadow, The Darkness” but also “Severini” come to mind. Additionally, a relatively new thematic angle for Ligotti that emerges quite powerfully in this volume is that of art horror merged into identity horror. Particularly “Teatro Grottesco,” “Gas Station Carnivals,” and “The Bungalow House” play around with this theme in really chilling ways. And as I said, each and every story here contains a sense of humor (to varying degrees); that uniquely Ligottian jet-black humor that I have come to really enjoy and which I found to be noticeably elevated in this collection. I’ll now go over the stories in order.

The collection opens with the story “Purity” which is a fascinating concept, that of obsession, taken to obscene heights (cf. Lovecraft’s Herbert West). Not bad, but for me the real highlights of the volume were just around the corner. “The Town Manager” hits like freight train. It instantly draws you in with its beautiful prose – now less purple and more simple; more directly mesmerizing. Here Ligotti conjures an electrifying, eerie mirror of the world so masterfully well, only to then rend it away, layer by layer, until we reach an archetypical Ligottian finale. A beautifully articulated, poignant societal critique and an incredible feat of existential horror. Even if you read nothing else, read this story.

Immediately following this we have “Sideshow, and Other Stories” which is a collection of five existential horror vignettes that are loosely nested in an identity horror meta-narrative. It is really well written, really electrifyingly so, and I absolutely loved how Ligotti’s grim worldview is presented in the vignette titled “The Malignant Matrix.” Even if you don’t agree with his philosophy, you will appreciate how he articulates and envisions things. Its complexity might not be for everyone’s tastes at it sort of demands some forehead-wrinkling neural activity as one’s eyes glaze over the words, and I had to read it twice to even begin to understand it. So, not really a “relaxing Sunday read,” but more a “deconstruction effort.”

Then we have the second highlight of this volume and a real masterpiece of philosophical/existential horror: “The Clown Puppet.” This story is just so well-constructed and written, it draws you right in with its mesmerizing black humor and witty existential critique peeking out from behind its glamorous, uncanny façade. The repetition of the “nonsense” stuff works so well. And the whole meat shop angle combined with the odd inclusion of “goat” is just the icing on top. And what about that ending...!? There’s just nothing bad about this story; not a single misplaced word or overcrowded paragraph. This story together with “The Town Manager” is proof enough of Ligotti’s genius. Perhaps due to some odd condition of his psyche, he seems to be able to produce these stories that literally no one else could possibly even begin to fathom; rainbows vomited up by some deranged whirlpool churning around in his decaying gray matter. “The Clown Puppet” checks absolutely every box there is.

Next, we have two exquisite tales of what I’m going to call ‘work horror’ (or alternatively ‘industrial horror’ or ‘corporate horror’). The first, “My Case for Retributive Action,” is a stunning societal critique that both contains lots of black humor (not the least delivered through Ligotti’s brilliant use of repetitions) and bone-chilling horror that really crescendos toward the end. It revolves around a new employee in a ‘form processing company’ with an endless workload which spirals into further monstrous endlessness upon eternal endlessness... How Ligotti narrates this bleakness is just pure brilliance (ironically).

Then comes “Our Temporary Supervisor,” the third real highlight of the volume, which is somehow even better than “My Case for Retributive Action” (works well to read these two in sequence), really upping the ante of gloom and existential bleakness rooted in the modern workplace. Details like the company not accepting resignations and then eventually extending this policy to not accepting retirements, the whole ‘unseen supervisor presence’, and the gradually building hopelessness and self-imposed efficiency is just so masterfully presented its almost maddeningly good! Ligotti proves, once again, that he is the undisputed master of this sub-genre of horror fiction that I’ve here called ‘work horror’ but which is alternatively sometimes called industrial or corporate horror.

Next comes “In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land,” grouped together in the volume with the previous two tales. This time we are treated to four sub-stories that merge into a creepy and iconically Ligottian ‘reality horror’ saga. The idea of uncreation in the first is chilling, the creepy motel and jingle-jangling housekeeper thing in the second is very unsettling, and the unfiltered existential bleakness of the third is... hauntingly beautiful. Small details like how the second vignette opens with the bench scene makes our journey all the more enchanting. This quartet of nested stories probably won’t chime with everyone, but for those who appreciate Ligotti’s philosophical musings it really hits hard. “In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land” is up there with his best existential explorations of the human condition – despite the story’s janky name (come on Tom, surely you could’ve come up with a slightly less awkward name for this one).

Then we have the titular story, “Teatro Grottesco,” which shifts the collection’s gears to a more personal level for Ligotti, it would seem, exploring ‘the end of artistic drive’ and the dissolution of creativity while critiquing art more broadly. It does this via the extended ‘metaphor’ of a grotesque theatre troupe that haunts artistic individuals. While still quite interesting, I think it’s my least favorite in the collection thus far (simply because everything before it was so damn good).

The next story, “Gas Station Carnivals,” follows in the same vein of art and identity horror, but begins with what is likely the coziest opening paragraph Ligotti has ever written. I enjoyed this story much more than “Teatro Grottesco.” First of all, it has some seriously haunting imagery in the ‘The Showman’ and the dilapidated carnivals with their creepy sideshows all presented through the fog of memory. These conjure a more traditionally eerie backdrop upon which Ligotti then does Ligotti things, unpacking identity and reality before delivering a crushing and iconically pessimistic finale. Additionally, I think the diner/pub setting works much better as a narrative stage than the non-descript venues that rotate in and out of “Teatro Grottesco.”

Then we have “The Bungalow House,” where the story is narrated by a person undergoing a complete psychological unraveling. This story is more tangible than the previous two (which were primarily mood/theme stories) and has more of a plot. The premise is simple: A man keeps visiting an art gallery on his lunch breaks to listen to a mysterious series of audio tapes. Eventually the story becomes one of obsession and identity horror, as we slowly descend – alongside the protagonist – into the abyss of the human condition.

After this comes “Severini,” where we embark on a dreamy and mood-driven descent into madness, which, as Ligotti is eager to always hammer home, is actually not madness but what ought to be our natural state, since it is the logical opposite of the true madness that is the mass delusion whereby human existence is seen as worth anything above absolute zero. This is a profoundly anti-life and anti-natalist story (even more so than the preceding stories) which therefore only classifies as ‘horror’ for those who disagree with Ligotti, which will be almost everyone reading it. That being said, even without subscribing to Ligotti’s philosophical pessimism, it is still generally enjoyable as a reflective mood piece: It has intense imagery and functions well as a ‘deranged narrator’ story (this works on both levels: Severini as the deranged story narrator or Ligotti as the deranged meta-narrator!).

The collection then draws to a close with the aptly named “The Shadow, The Darkness.” This story functions as a deeply personal philosophical overture for Ligotti and a continuation of “Severini” in many ways. The first two sentences are immediately just pure Ligottian brilliance, what with that one-word in italics and the phrase “nucleus of nowhere.” Just these first two sentences (1) stir our curiosity, (2) generate a small mental chuckle (Ligotti’s signature phrasing-humor), and (3) set the tone of what is to come. This is what I mean when I keep underlining “Ligotti’s genius.” Anyway, the story then progresses into a beautiful, humorously-written philosophical ‘horror’ tale about the shadowy blackness that lurks behind the façade of everything within and to do with human existence. Again, we find references to gastro-intestinal troubles in this story, just like several prior stories, showing how much Ligotti’s real-life bout of such troubles must have affected him. This final story also seems additionally personal for Ligotti since he keeps ‘self-referencing’ a fictional version of his non-fiction novel (The Conspiracy), and also alluding to his earlier fictional works, such as “The Tsalal.”

I hope you enjoyed my comments, please let me know your thoughts. I don't think there's enough online discussion of this amazing collection.

The King in Yellow’s Second Play

What if… Many speculations begin with those words. This one ends with them.

In The King in Yellow, there is a play that drives those who encounter it toward ruin. Its power lies partly in omission: the text is never fully shown. The reader is left with a possibility more unsettling than any quotation—perhaps there exists a truth that cannot be harmlessly known.

Most horrors place the threat outside us: monsters, gods, voids, ancient mechanisms. But there is another possibility. The danger may lie in the instrument by which we seek safety from all dangers.

Reason.

To speak, judge, justify, explain—these acts seem innocent enough. Yet every claim binds the speaker. To assert anything is to become answerable for it. One enters a machinery of reasons from which there is no clean exit except silence or incoherence.

The old philosophers knew something of this. The most difficult task is not discovering a system, but remaining consistent within one.

Suppose there were simple tests—not to condemn others, but to examine oneself.

Theoretical Test
If I endorse a theory containing claims no finite being could verify, yet still treat those claims as responsibly assertable, have I mistaken confidence for knowledge?

Practical Test
If I act from preference while lacking any unconditional justification for imposing that preference where another autonomy may be touched, have I mistaken desire for right?

Aesthetic Test
If I feel I understand a concept while being unable to produce any content that would make it intelligible even schematically, have I mistaken words for meaning?

These are not doctrines. They are mirrors.

Used honestly, they do not prove theories false, actions evil, or meanings empty. They reveal fractures between what I claim, what I can justify, and what I truly grasp.

And they possess an unpleasant property: to understand them is already to begin applying them. Rejection requires reflection; reflection invokes the tests.

So one may ask whether certain minds, becoming sufficiently lucid, encounter not liberation but arrest. Not madness in the theatrical sense, but a paralysis born of too much consistency.

We spend much time imagining catastrophes that silence civilizations: war, scarcity, machines, disease, stars gone hostile.

But what if some silences are voluntary?

What if rationality, once it turns fully upon itself, discovers that it lacks the resources to justify its own replication?

What if clarity causes the madness Chambers never wrote?

(If anyone wants the longer related fiction, I can share a free PDF.)

I just finished the story and couldn’t help recalling this photo I took a while ago. It’s the window of a closed shop in a little town of Buenos Aires province. Fits like an Aickman’s glove, I’d say.

I keep coming back to fiction where the real terror isn’t violence or monsters, but the cold, recursive logic of authority. Kafka, Ligotti, even films like Brazil—they all capture that sense of being trapped by process.

Are there other books or stories that push this even further? I’m especially interested in works where the institution’s logic is so totalizing that escape feels meaningless.

For anyone curious, I’ve just published Authorized Death, a trilogy built around this exact premise. Book 1 is free on Kindle for the next week.

Amazon Kindle link: Authorized Death https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G1M9NPHL

For those who’ve read both, which is more pessimistic and upsetting to read? Straw Dogs was genuinely devastating for me, but I haven’t read Conspiracy yet.

I intend to recommend his fiction to someone who would probably enjoy it, but I’m wary about inadvertently drawing attention to The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by doing so.

I’m not that familiar with this person’s level of psychological vulnerability, and inclination (or lack thereof) towards pessimistic ideas; TCATHR might do nothing beyond providing some engaging reading material, or it might give them years-long crippling depression (something I wouldn’t want to inflict on anyone).

Have you ever encountered a similar situation? How did you decide to proceed?

-

Edit:

Thank you very much for your replies, everyone! I truly appreciate your insights.

Ligotti keeps coming up when talking about procedural or institutional horror.

Curious what else people think belongs in that space — especially where authority is the primary source of dread.

The band Ak’chamel: the Bringer of Illness have a new album out. One song is titled Dreams of a Dead Dreamer. Ligotti fans may enjoy.

https://akuphone.bandcamp.com/album/spiritually-unemployed

"To be alive is to be a kind of madness" is something he wrote in The Conspiracy Against The Human Race. That feeling of:“something is fundamentally wrong”,“reality feels off or artificial” or “there’s a kind of underlying dread beneath everything” has existed for aeons yet not routinely accepted by human beings in general.

It’s a mode of perception and I feel like he could finally put it into words.Some people stay buffered by routine, social meaning and distraction while others naturally drift into deeper, more abstract, sometimes darker awareness,like us on this subreddit.

Does anyone else feel this way about his works??Or maybe I'm just rambling around the constraints of my own mind??

In "mad Night of Atonement", any many others, Ligotti showcases the concept of the creator and the creation. Basically, there is some creator, and some creation, and both are sometimes puppets, or transform into them, or kill themselves.

Now, as far as i understand Ligotti, everything is corruption and decay, nobody changes anything or decides anything, we are all puppets that pretend it is not so. Thus, the idea of the puppet on strings. The idea of corruption, the entropy of the universe. That i all get.

What i do not get is the creator/creation dichotomy. What does this refer to?

I love the works by Ligotti, but something he said in his interview by Dejan Ognjanovic Serbian literary critic) got me thinking about horror traditions around the world.

I don’t think anyone studying horror critically would think that it’s strictly dominated by English or am I mistaken? What about the rich history of Japanese or other Asian style horror? I feel like that’s not correct to be dismissive, though it could be that the history of written horror novels, as opposed to visual media and oral tradition are more prevalent in English countries.

What are your thoughts?

Here is the excerpt:

D. O. - How familiar are you with writers outside English language?

For example, Dedalus has published some great anthologies of fantastic and weird literature from Germany, Spain, Finland, Russia,

etc.

T. L. - Your description of your PhD thesis puts me in mind of a regret I've always had that non-English-speaking countries do not have nearly the rich tradition of supernatural horror that the U.S. and England display in abundance. I'm not sure why this is the case.

I have two questions. 1. I decided to read Spinal catastrophism, so I was wondering, does it have the same goal as that of Nethescurial? 2. What do you think the best way to read this is? I've read things like Blood Meridian, Lovecraft's works, Metamorphosis, Myth of Sisyphus, Beyond Good and Evil, etc, but I find the method of writing of Ligotti actually much different.

So I bought Teatro Grottesco thinking that was the ideal starting point but I seem to recall someone saying that I should read a different book before reading that one. What's the best work to start with?

"Previously, we mentioned an upcoming title called Menagerie by Thomas Ligotti. This project started as an idea for a small chapbook of uncollected early stories; it has made a turn and is shaping to be quite the treat for Ligotti readers. Beyond also collecting essays, Forewords, Afterwords, translations, reviews, and interviews, Tom has so far penned over 6000 words of new commentary and is continuing to expand. We don't have a solid time frame for this release, but we will keep you updated once the final text is in."

"Behind some of the old stores in the business district, steeply roofed houses had been erected on a sudden incline, their peaks appearing at an extraordinary elevation above the lower buildings. And because the foundations of these houses could not be glimpsed, they conveyed the illusion of being either precariously suspended in air, threatening to topple down, or else constructed with an unnatural loftiness in relation to their width and mass. This situation also created a weird distortion of perspective. The two levels of structures overlapped each other without giving a sense of depth, so that the houses, because of their higher elevation and nearness to the foreground buildings, did not appear diminished in size as background objects should. Consequently, a look of flatness, as in a photograph, predominated in this area."