This book was another on the library’s new acquisition shelf to draw my eye. Actually, the publisher caught my eye, as I tend to enjoy Zer0 books but they rarely make their way into libraries. Then the blurb began, ‘The world is increasingly unthinkable - a world of planetary disasters, emerging pandemics, and the looming threat of extinction.’ How could I possibly resist? I was to find, however, that ‘In The Dust of This Planet’ (a glorious title) dwelt more in the past than the present. It con...

What would it mean to speak of a ‘horror of philosophy’ instead of a 'philosophy of horror’? With this question, Eugene Thacker begins his weird and wonderful romp through the hallowed halls of horror, from the nine circles of Dante’s hell, to the living dead of contemporary cinema, topped off with some mediations on murderous mists and ominous ooze for good measure. But why this gallery of gruesome? Well, Thacker suggests, it’s because horror is uniquely suited to expose the limits of thought,

This book made my skin crawl and my mind expand. It's a dense, sometimes impenetrable work of philosophy that discusses the Unthinkable, so obviously it's not going to work very well as beach reading. But if you give it your attention and an open mind, there are some seriously creepy-cool concepts about the Universe to be gleaned here.I heard about this book through a fascinating Radiolab episode about the book's improbable underground cult status. Thomas Ligotti has heaped praise on it, and the...

I was attracted to this book by a glowing quote from Thomas Ligotti, one of my favourite modern horror writers, who described it as: ‘an encyclopedic grimoire instructing us in the varieties of esoteric thought and infernal diversions that exist for the reader's further investigation, treating us to a delightful stroll down a midway of accursed attractions that alone are worth the ticket of this volume’. This description is a little misleading to say the least, since the author doesn’t aim at an...

Whether my disappointment in this will prove a function of my expectation, only time and renewed reading-neither of which I am at present prepared to invest-will tell. Much of the subject matter is compelling, but Thacker's treatment of that subject matter is made in the most awful kind of academic prattling. This book reads like your buddy's PhD dissertation he thrust on you, by which I mean that it is not alive. This is philosophy not in the wild, but philosophy confined to a zoo.

"Thy mind o man! . .must search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity- thou must commune with God."-Joseph Smith (or was it H.P. Lovecraft?)I kept thinking of that quote as I read this book. it is both beautiful and horrific. An adult prostrates himself before God the silent mountain. In awe and reverence. He communes vs attempts to communicate. God sits with him like a father sits with his dying cancer riddled child. His silence does not denote an absence but...

An interesting look at some philosophical themes -- essence, reality, negation, alterity, myth -- with horror and occult themes used as a framework. The work deserves a star, simply for its ambition, given its experimental structures and unconventional ways of organizing its ideas. There are compelling conceptual turns and clever treatments, so it's certainly worth a shot, especially for fans of horror and theory, speculative realism, etc.I would have rated this work higher, but the ideas didn't...

I have no idea what this was about but I liked it

To call it "philosophy" is frankly misleading. In fact, its arguable companion piece, Ligotti's Conspiracy Against the Human Race, despite it being the work of a literary author, offers something far closer to a systematic philosophical system than Thacker does. Thacker simply wants to show the complex ways in which the unknowable other manifests itself in thought, whether through contemporary genre fiction, or through the midnight nail-bitings of Saint John of the Cross. While it's not bad -- I...

Numerous typos? CHECKCloying pedagogical tone that assumes extreme ignorance on the part of the reader? CHECK Throw away references to Kant, Hegel, the book of "Revelations", et al? CHECK A superficial take on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche? CHECKA paradoxically "deeply superficial" view on negativity and negation as such? CHECK A refusal to see if the more "traditional" sources of thought (theological, philosophical, and political) already conform to or support the author's argument? CHECK A pander...

This turned out to be more about mysticism (what ET intriguingly describes as a "dark mysticism") than I first thought it would. A turn that has now happened with more than a few books I've read in the past year, and in the end a pleasant alternative to some of the directions Dust might have gone from the starting provocations.Some of the early sections are rough around the edges, as I believe some reviewers mentioned. They read like preparatory notes toward some more extensive work, which I loo...

Thacker's knack for arcana and esoterica can be a little much here, as other reviewers have noted, a passing knowledge of middle demonology helps. Thacker's use of horror as a entry way into the the profoundly unhuman, and a good means against anthropocentrism. His use of Lovecraft and Bataille is quite admirable and while the neologism can be a little clear, they are much more interesting than a lot of the Derridian philosophy of the 1980s/1990s. Furthermore, for a philosophy book, this book is...

“On the one hand we as human beings are the problem; on the other hand at the planetary level of the Earth’s deep time, nothing could be more insignificant than the human.”Was going towards 3 stars as the meat of the book wanted to link magic circles and occult stuff that doesn’t interest me personally, but really picks up around the final third of the book. I might continue the series. Thacker was really good and linking points to each other and everything was cohesive like an adequately mixed

An odd book, and it certainly starts in a peculiar manner, debating the meaning of "black" in "black metal". A topic I would struggle to devote genuine interest. Nonetheless as it progresses, and perhaps as the reader develops a familiarity with Thacker's rhythm, some great insights emerge."...in occult philosophy today the world simply reveals its hiddenness to us.""...an era almost schizophrenically poised between religious fanaticisms and a mania for scientific hegemony...""What if "horror" h...

It was when Thacker dipped significantly into (and then stayed in) the subject of Black Metal that I realized I needed the next and final volumes rather than this one. While I did enjoy it, some of the connections were a little thin/thinly constructed. I noticed the same sort of comment from another reader--the references to some stunningly esoteric ideas were interesting, but he more often than not failed to make tight connections between those references, his examples, and the larger positions...

This is the third book I've read that was in some way connected to True Detective, but it was actually hearing it endorsed by Warren Ellis and listening to an episode of Radiolab (http://www.radiolab.org/story/dust-pl...) about the strange story around the book's cover ending up in a Jay-Z/Beyonce video that pushed me over the edge.Only a few pages in, I pulled out a highlighter and a pen to make notes along the way. This is a great book, but it's also a very dense one that makes little attempt

I have made periodic commentary as I read each section of the book. I broke it up into four sections so that I could manage this intellectually. Otherwise, it would have been just a bunch of words without meaning. There is nothing easy about this book. It is hard from the concepts posed as well as the prose employed. Sometimes it read like a thesis (Sections 1 and 3). Other times it was quite readable (Sections 2 and 4). Eugene Thacker brings to focus what is normally fleeting thoughts for most

Review the unreviewable. Rate the unrateable.This is an incredibly ambitious book of philosophy, in that it is quite literally trying to "think the unthinkable," or to establish a kind of mysticism / belief system that is without any human (anthropocentric) basis whatsoever. In other words, to create a framework for interpreting reality from an increasingly remote point of view... that of the planet, of the cosmos, of nothingness itself-- which is nothing, therefore it cannot even be an 'itself,...

The "Cosmic Pessimism" expressed in this book is a lot like the ideas explored so eloquently in Thomas Ligotti's "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race." In fact I doubt most readers would really need to read both. I would personally recommend Ligotti's book over this one, it's going to be more interesting, to-the-point and frankly makes a bigger impact on the reader. But Thacker's work tackles a lot of the same issues from different angles.The basic idea of "Cosmic Pessimism" as I read it, is t...

Redundant as philosophy (Mostly reheated Conspiracy Against the Human Race leftovers), somewhat interesting as literary criticism, wonderful as a catalog of weird books, essays, etc.