WHAT THE DAEMON SAID: Cover, TOC, and Publication Date

Today I received word from Hippocampus Press that my nonfiction collection What the Daemon Said: Essays on Weird Fiction, Film, and Philosophy is scheduled for publication on April 26. Preorders are available now. The beautiful cover is by Dan Sauer.

Click to order.

BLURBS:

“For my money, Matt Cardin is the most interesting voice in horror criticism of our time. His investigations into the intersection of religion and horror get to the root of what makes this literary mode so potent and so profound. This book belongs on the shelf of every reader who cares about the human mind, creativity, and how they relate to this bleak and beautiful literature.”

— Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters and Wounds

“A fine, wide-ranging exploration of the deepest wellsprings of nightmare and chthonic revelation; of the roots of the monstrous and mythopoetic. A look at the bases and the underpinnings of our deepest fears and some of our finest dark literature. Mystagogic initiation from Matt Cardin.”

— John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars

“Matt Cardin has long been a formidable presence in the field and his latest simply reinforces that fact. What the Daemon Said is a treasure trove for fans and scholars of weird fiction.”

— Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

“A crucial deep dive into some of the darkest, most important corners of the horror genre, by one of the field’s most invaluable thinkers.”

— Brian Keene, author of The Rising and Ghoul

“Matt Cardin has evolved into one of the most intelligent and perceptive writers and scholars of the modern weird in fiction. His is a name I associate with quality in our field.”

— Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual and The Reddening

“A feast for the psyche. Cardin empowers his readers with startling new means of perceiving horror, theology, and the art of writing. This is a profound and magnificent book.”

— Richard Gavin, author of grotesquerie and The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis & the Monstrous Soul

“Cardin displays an intuitive understanding of how horror works as he illuminates and elucidates the meaning behind the genre’s darkest imagery and ideas. His insights never fail to open up new understandings of the texts he covers. An essential tome for the horrorists among us.”

— Simon Strantzas, author of Nothing Is Everything and Burnt Black Suns

In these essays, articles, and interviews on horror, which complement and extend his unsettling fiction, Matt Cardin undertakes a project that is as urgent as it is subversive. The subject is spirituality, a term which the popular imagination has smothered in thick coats of comforting, inoffensive colors. Cardin’s writing is spiritual turpentine. His goal is to restore the spirit to the lustrous primal darkness whence it first emerged.”

— J. F. Martel, author of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice and co-host of the Weird Studies Podcast

“Matt Cardin’s critical essays bring both a rich understanding of religion and a personal spiritual urgency to bear on things like rotting flesh, pestilence, crazy drug trips, night terrors, depressing stories, and the dreadful meaninglessness of existence and all our ideas about it. His essays are not just elegant and intellectually rich, but evidence of the daemonic force that animates the best criticism. Cardin’s dark thoughts illuminate.”

— Erik Davis, author of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies

“For more than two decades, Matt Cardin has been exploring the interstices and intersections between horror narratives and theology, sometimes from one direction, sometimes from the other. The result has been a fascinating intellectual voyage. Leavened with autobiographical reflections and meditations that add an unexpectedly personal dimension to its discussions, this is critical writing of the best kind.”

— John Langan, author of Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies

“The ultimate handbook for anyone with an interest in horror. More specifically, it’s about how horror, philosophy, and religion have combined to create an ever-evolving tapestry of our existence on planet earth, a layer of human consciousness that Cardin peels apart like a celestial onion with an army of dark gods hidden at its core. He explains how the most respected horror minds of the past and present communicate with the greatest philosophers and the global swath of religious myths. This book is a mind-blowing mandala that will take you by the hand and show you wonders and secrets you never could have imagined. Matt Cardin is one of the genre’s greatest minds, and this collection is essential reading for every writer and reader in the field.”

— Philip Fracassi, author of Beneath a Pale Sky

“Matt Cardin’s powers of deep thought and philosophical complexity and synthesis, his unique way of putting disparate ideas and thought forms together, the way his mind effortlessly draws connections in a simultaneously challenging and cogent way, are on full display in this magnificent, hefty tome. We’re lucky that Matt exists in our world at this particular time and place, in which the weirdness of our day-to-day reality is in dire need of his deeply humanistic criticisms, ideas, suggestions, and presence.”

— Jon Padgett, author of The Secret of Ventriloquism

“Cardin’s work is marked by an academic thoughtfulness viewed through the kaleidoscope lens of a learned dreamer, and is both inspiring and frightening. Without question, Cardin is one of our finest writers, and one of our most important thinkers, pushing forward the ‘speculative’ nature of speculative fiction every time he puts fingers to keys.”

— T. E. Grau, author of I Am the River