To coincide with an increased awareness of Ligotti’s works following the Penguin Classics reprint of Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe, and more recently, the new Penguin edition of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, we at Manchester Metropolitan University decided that the time was right to present Ligotti, his fiction and his ideas, to the wider public in the best way we know how. Detecting Pessimism: Thomas Ligotti and the Weird in an Age of Post-Truth, was an opportunity for academics, creative practitioners and the wider public to come together and revel in the weird and the wonderful fictions and the provocative, sometimes controversial philosophies of an author who, ironically, has always eschewed such attention. Underlying the day’s creative and research-driven activities was, at heart, a speculative attempt to follow in Ligotti’s footsteps: a concern with uncovering a means of rethinking about ourselves and the world around us, through a greater appreciation and awareness of our fundamental weirdness and horror...

Following all our forays into darkness and hopelessness, it was fitting that the final scene of the first series of True Detective brought proceedings to an end, yet raised debate as to the continued potency and necessity of pessimistic philosophy. While the ardent pessimists in attendance were dismayed at Rust Cohle's conclusion that despite the almost-all-encompassing darkness of the sky above, the light is still winning, it was fitting that we ended with a scene that highlighted the extent to which pessimism remains unacceptable within our culture and society. Though, as the symposium demonstrated, pessimistic and weird fiction and the fiction of Thomas Ligotti provides a means of articulating and understanding our most heartfelt despondency. From this point, through our provocations and interventions throughout the day into critical theory, politics, philosophy, literature and art, the consensus emerged that perhaps we can still negotiate a more acceptable way through life – whether our actions are ultimately futile or not.