I know that one would not normally associate Brian Aldiss with Ligotti but has anyone read the short story "Incentive"? I just read it in a collection entitled "The Canopy of Time" and I was taken aback by how Ligottian it's view was. And this was written some time in the late 50's.
It starts off as a quite conventional SF story about Earth being invited to join an advanced galactic civilization and a representative for an isolationist group in Earth meets up with an alien ambassador to discuss the pros and cons of Earth joining. The alien eventually gets the isolationist to experience a fragment of their galactic knowledge and understanding, and how all sentience is illusion, a shadow-play on the fabric of space, an attempt to distance ourselves as far as possible from the primordial beast within us all.
If any of you get a chance to read this, I would definitely recommend it.
It starts off as a quite conventional SF story about Earth being invited to join an advanced galactic civilization and a representative for an isolationist group in Earth meets up with an alien ambassador to discuss the pros and cons of Earth joining. The alien eventually gets the isolationist to experience a fragment of their galactic knowledge and understanding, and how all sentience is illusion, a shadow-play on the fabric of space, an attempt to distance ourselves as far as possible from the primordial beast within us all.
If any of you get a chance to read this, I would definitely recommend it.