In the Dust of This Planet

Before science and reason became widespread, the forces of the supernatural were everywhere. We may now think of horror only as a genre of fiction, but it used to be one of mankind's only tools for understanding the incomprehensible. In this book, Eugene Thacker guides us through a history of the occult and its ties to philosophy throughout the ages. What do our darkest fears tell us about nature? How can we use this knowledge to confront the unknown and unforgiving nature of the universe?

I picked up this book after it had been referred to by both True Detective's Nic Pizzolatto and Planetary's Warren Ellis, two writers I highly respect, and it's easy to see where this book influenced True Detective. I am highly fascinated by this topic, but I'll admit it's not an easy read. In order to discuss the unthinkable, the author constructs a new vocabulary at the beginning and references his new words throughout the rest of the book. He apparently is capable of guiding a reader through impossible topics because I only felt lost once during the final chapter dedicated to the analysis of an anonymous poem, which I will probably revisit later. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the deeper meanings of horror, or those looking for more depth on topics that have been touched on by writers such as James Blish and H.P. Lovecraft.

Near the end of the book, the philosophical melding of Lovecraft, Zen Buddhism and Schopenhauer and its meditation on a cosmic nihilism capable of erasing the relative nihilism that afflicts our contemporary lives made me begin to wonder if perhaps just as physicists have postulated that the universe moves inevitably towards a heat death, perhaps human consciousness moves inevitably towards a thought death, in which the piecing together of disassociated knowledge is the genesis of the new Dark Age. Which I guess isn't much of a review, and is something inspired by the book instead of taken from it. Still, if the above intrigues you, I suspect the book will as well.