H.P. Lovecraft wrote:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

One of the themes (and for me, the most fascinating) of Lovecraftian fiction is the idea that there are some truths that are too terrible to know. In my view, much of weird fiction can be summed up as “things are not as they seem.”

Richard Cox is certainly not a “Lovecraftian” writer, but in my opinion he’s a writer of weird fiction. His books are hard to classify, but if you too are interested in those themes, the nature of reality, and particularly the work of Philip K. Dick, I think you’ll enjoy his work.

He is the author of The Boys of Summer, Thomas World, and other books — and he’s our guest on today’s show!

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