Two Thomas Ligotti Titles Back in Stock

Pictures of Apocalypse and Paradoxes from Hell, two volumes by Thomas Ligotti, have proven to be among the most popular titles we've offered by other publishers in recent memory. We're happy to have this set back in stock, ready to ship!

Paradoxes from Hell

In Paradoxes from Hell, the legendary Thomas Ligotti breathes fresh life into three of his rarest pieces.

The opening section, “I Have a Special Plan for This World,” is a metaphysical poetry cycle in which its visionary protagonist is driven by his loathing of existence. His plan, which seeks no less than the unmaking of the universe itself, seeks to “envision a darkness/That was long before the dark of night/And a strangely shining light/That owed nothing to the light of day.” This remarkable piece is unveiled here for the first time since its original limited publication by Durtro in 2006.

The second section offers up “This Degenerate Little Town,” another poetry cycle likewise out of print since 2006, which represents the titular town as an allegory for human consciousness. Ligotti paints a vivid picture of a universe in endless decline, a realm where “diseased faces that gaze/Behind the glass of grimy windows” are as inescapable as the town’s “decaying ground and rotting sky.”

The concluding sequence, “Paradoxes from Hell,” is an array of prose vignettes featuring a decayed mystic, a stricken philosopher, a deranged poet, and a complete madman. Solely featured in Grimoire Magazine in 1983 and virtually unknown to most Ligotti readers, these dread-inducing yet often humorous prose reflections are a treasure trove of existential exploration.

This latest edition of Paradoxes from Hell boasts not only elegant, new formatting but an even more extensive collection of original art by Jonathan Dennison, adding another dimension of depth to Ligotti’s eerie prose. The result is a work that is as visually stunning as it is thought-provoking, a testament to Ligotti’s stature as a singular maestro of horror genre.

Pictures of Apocalypse

Chiroptera Press is proud to publish Pictures of Apocalypse, a new work by horror legend Thomas Ligotti. A stylistic successor to previous efforts such as I Have a Special Plan for This World and This Degenerate Little Town, this volume is a cycle of lyric and narrative poems that share the common theme of what Ligotti designates as the Great Going from both individual and collective perspectives. In his introduction to the forenamed collection, Ligotti considers what purpose is served when we “wallow” in representations of the end of things—as, of course, we have throughout our existence as a sentient species—a query that complements that posed in his book The Conspiracy against the Human Race, namely, “Is being alive all right?” Richly illustrated throughout by Jonathan Dennison, Pictures of Apocalypse expands upon and updates a signature theme that is developed throughout Ligotti’s writings, one which may be justly described as the wrongness of being.