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Phyl-Undhu: Abstract Horror, Exterminator
An expedition into the indescribable.
71 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 20, 2014
27 people are currently reading
817 people want to read
About the author
Nick Land
45 books766 followersLand was a lecturer in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick from 1987 until his resignation in 1998.
At Warwick, he and Sadie Plant co-founded the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), an interdisciplinary research group described by philosopher Graham Harman as "a diverse group of thinkers who experimented in conceptual production by welding together a wide variety of sources: futurism, technoscience, philosophy, mysticism, numerology, complexity theory, and science fiction, among others".
During his time at Warwick, Land participated in Virtual Futures, a series of cyber-culture conferences. Virtual Futures 96 was advertised as “an anti-disciplinary event” and “a conference in the post-humanities”. One session involved Nick Land “lying on the ground, croaking into a mic”, recalls Robin Mackay, while Mackay played jungle records in the background."
In 1992, he published The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Land published an abundance of shorter texts, many in the 1990s during his time with the CCRU. The majority of these articles were compiled in the retrospective collection Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, published in 2011.
Land taught at the New Centre for Research & Practice until March 2017,
One of Land's celebrated concepts is "hyperstition," a portmanteau of "superstition" and "hyper" that describes the action of successful ideas in the arena of culture. Hyperstitions are ideas that, once "downloaded" into the cultural mainframe, engender apocalyptic positive feedback cycles. Hyperstitions – by their very existence as ideas – function causally to bring about their own reality. Nick Land describes hyperstition as "the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies".
At Warwick, he and Sadie Plant co-founded the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), an interdisciplinary research group described by philosopher Graham Harman as "a diverse group of thinkers who experimented in conceptual production by welding together a wide variety of sources: futurism, technoscience, philosophy, mysticism, numerology, complexity theory, and science fiction, among others".
During his time at Warwick, Land participated in Virtual Futures, a series of cyber-culture conferences. Virtual Futures 96 was advertised as “an anti-disciplinary event” and “a conference in the post-humanities”. One session involved Nick Land “lying on the ground, croaking into a mic”, recalls Robin Mackay, while Mackay played jungle records in the background."
In 1992, he published The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Land published an abundance of shorter texts, many in the 1990s during his time with the CCRU. The majority of these articles were compiled in the retrospective collection Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, published in 2011.
Land taught at the New Centre for Research & Practice until March 2017,
One of Land's celebrated concepts is "hyperstition," a portmanteau of "superstition" and "hyper" that describes the action of successful ideas in the arena of culture. Hyperstitions are ideas that, once "downloaded" into the cultural mainframe, engender apocalyptic positive feedback cycles. Hyperstitions – by their very existence as ideas – function causally to bring about their own reality. Nick Land describes hyperstition as "the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
December 29, 2014
The term "Lovecraftian" is probably overused nowadays, but between his racism, overwrought prose, obsession with deep time and cosmology, dubious Continental influences, and panphobia, no one (for better or worse) can make a more legitimate claim to it than Nick Land. Knowing this you already know most of what there is to know about it. It isn't scary and doesn't really go anywhere, which is perhaps slightly damning in that it's attached to an essay (also following HPL) proposing to explain what makes stuff scary, but in spite of that, and the fact that you're probably making the world worse by giving money to Land, I rather enjoyed it. There are fun little vistas and discussions and infodumps, like a "proper" science fiction novel that had all the stupid character and plot development stuff stripped out in favor of what you (or I, anyway) actually read science fiction for.
May 31, 2017
Edit: while this is a competent story in the Lovecraftian tradition, the writer is also a racist in the Lovecraftian tradition, and I cannot in good conscience recommend supporting his work. I regret paying actual money to a neo-fascist.
November 11, 2020
The central story, the piece of fiction... it's great in that it starts off wonderfully and truly sucks you in. The prose is like a more refined Stephen King. You know how Stephen King doesn't care about flowery language and just wants to tell a good/scary story? This is maybe two steps above that. A lot of time is spent developing the characters in literally "show rather than tell" sequences, which is neat. I was a little surprised by how conventional the narrative felt, at first. Conventional in the sense that all of the (early on) exposition was totally making sense, from a craft perspective, and coming from Nick Land, this is totally unexpected (you know what I mean if you have ever read some of his non-fiction).
Where the story falls flat, is toward the end. The remaining 1/3 transforms into exposition/lore-city and honesty becomes a chore/absolute drag to read. Once again, in using a craft of fiction classroom example, had this been presented as part of a workshop, I would have asked that at least 80% of the ending be cut. It literally chokes the life out of the entire piece and the ending, honestly, ruins the entire experience. Still, overall, a neat little project with fascinating ideas (again, the first 2/3 are brilliant) but the ending really could have been something else.
Where this text shines, tho, are the two essays + appendix + notes, after the main piece of fiction is over. The first essay, "Abstract Horror", doesn't really bring any new ideas to the table (for me) in terms of why horror affects us the way it does and how films like Alien, the Thing and Terminator do a good job at it. What really affected me was the second essay, titled simply, "On the Exterminator". Man.
While writing one of my books (Arafat Mountain) I conducted a ton of research on the Fermi paradox and the Great Filter. Basically, a theory that attempts to explain why we have still never encountered any alien life. Considering human evolution and the formation of the entire galaxy, it is highly unlikely that we are alone. Land delves into this notion and goes extremely deep, essentially confirming that we are in fact being shielded from all outside forms of life, by some unknowable and inconceivable force that is so decimating that we cannot even fathom what it is or how it works. Just knowing that something out there is disallowing that any form of intelligent life might reach us (or that we leave our barrier to go seek out said intelligent life) is a crippling and chilling revelation.
Is there some invisible AI, millions of light years away, at the precipice of how far any human will ever be able to reach (it has been calculated) that, without question or hesitation, annihilates any and all forms of life that approach it (if so, who put that AI there)? Are we encased in some sort of invisible bubble? Are all other life forms plagued by their own version of the Great Filter? Are we in a simulation? Were there millions of lifeforms, prior to our existence and we simply have been unfortunate enough to exist at the tail-end of intelligent life? So many theories. I could keep going on, forever.
If you enjoy reading theory that actually makes you think and also might terrify you, this the greatest horror story ever told. I actually woke up in a cold sweat, last night, because of this essay. I sat there, for a good handful of minutes, pondering the (possible?) ramifications of all that could be happening to us, every moment of every day.
Where the story falls flat, is toward the end. The remaining 1/3 transforms into exposition/lore-city and honesty becomes a chore/absolute drag to read. Once again, in using a craft of fiction classroom example, had this been presented as part of a workshop, I would have asked that at least 80% of the ending be cut. It literally chokes the life out of the entire piece and the ending, honestly, ruins the entire experience. Still, overall, a neat little project with fascinating ideas (again, the first 2/3 are brilliant) but the ending really could have been something else.
Where this text shines, tho, are the two essays + appendix + notes, after the main piece of fiction is over. The first essay, "Abstract Horror", doesn't really bring any new ideas to the table (for me) in terms of why horror affects us the way it does and how films like Alien, the Thing and Terminator do a good job at it. What really affected me was the second essay, titled simply, "On the Exterminator". Man.
While writing one of my books (Arafat Mountain) I conducted a ton of research on the Fermi paradox and the Great Filter. Basically, a theory that attempts to explain why we have still never encountered any alien life. Considering human evolution and the formation of the entire galaxy, it is highly unlikely that we are alone. Land delves into this notion and goes extremely deep, essentially confirming that we are in fact being shielded from all outside forms of life, by some unknowable and inconceivable force that is so decimating that we cannot even fathom what it is or how it works. Just knowing that something out there is disallowing that any form of intelligent life might reach us (or that we leave our barrier to go seek out said intelligent life) is a crippling and chilling revelation.
Is there some invisible AI, millions of light years away, at the precipice of how far any human will ever be able to reach (it has been calculated) that, without question or hesitation, annihilates any and all forms of life that approach it (if so, who put that AI there)? Are we encased in some sort of invisible bubble? Are all other life forms plagued by their own version of the Great Filter? Are we in a simulation? Were there millions of lifeforms, prior to our existence and we simply have been unfortunate enough to exist at the tail-end of intelligent life? So many theories. I could keep going on, forever.
If you enjoy reading theory that actually makes you think and also might terrify you, this the greatest horror story ever told. I actually woke up in a cold sweat, last night, because of this essay. I sat there, for a good handful of minutes, pondering the (possible?) ramifications of all that could be happening to us, every moment of every day.
February 16, 2016
I'm an established fan of Nick Land's writing so there will be no surprises here. I found Phyl-Undhu to be a healthy dose of what I was expecting combined with a great mixture of new ideas to dwell upon. I do not read Nick Land simply for compelling prose, which is here in abundance. I read Nick Land for those logic bombs that send my mind off into unexpected directions of surprise and delight. Phyl-Undhu delivers on both counts.
January 2, 2018
The quality of the fictional prose in the central short story, "Phyl-Undhu", is laughably, amateurishly bad, unfortunately. It's a shame, because the story is otherwise an excellent phantasmsgorical romp. The difficulty in taking it seriously given the quality of the prose (outside of description and monologue) is a flaw, but really a minor one.
As for the essays, I don't know where Land got his reputation for being so fiendishly hard to understand, since these essays at least are reasonably straightforward and at most mildly interesting. It probably helps a lot that I've encountered almost all of these ideas before, in other contexts.
I think Land overstates some of the science in "Exterminator", and the thesis of "Abstract Horror" is not exactly a bolt of revelation (abstraction as Otherness and thus monstrosity, and then that applied to technocommercial structures).
The essays also, in a feature shared a little in "Phyl-Undhu", tend to race from point to point without really taking their time on anything. No wonder the book only came out to 71 pages.
Maybe I would have been more impressed if Land was my first exposure to all of these ideas, but I wouldn't *recommend* him as a first exposure anyway. Rated two out of five stars, since it was reasonably enjoyable and I didn't feel like I was wasting my time per se, but it really just wasn't all that good. Sorry.
As for the essays, I don't know where Land got his reputation for being so fiendishly hard to understand, since these essays at least are reasonably straightforward and at most mildly interesting. It probably helps a lot that I've encountered almost all of these ideas before, in other contexts.
I think Land overstates some of the science in "Exterminator", and the thesis of "Abstract Horror" is not exactly a bolt of revelation (abstraction as Otherness and thus monstrosity, and then that applied to technocommercial structures).
The essays also, in a feature shared a little in "Phyl-Undhu", tend to race from point to point without really taking their time on anything. No wonder the book only came out to 71 pages.
Maybe I would have been more impressed if Land was my first exposure to all of these ideas, but I wouldn't *recommend* him as a first exposure anyway. Rated two out of five stars, since it was reasonably enjoyable and I didn't feel like I was wasting my time per se, but it really just wasn't all that good. Sorry.
June 25, 2020
The last two appendices are the only parts worth reading. Land explaing that horror is ontologically built into our experience via the concept of the Great Filter is a chilling thought.
February 2, 2023
Ineffective horror
I came to this book from Sandifer's "Neoreaction a Basilisk", and even though that book is partly a commentary on this one, the commentary is in this case more interesting than its subject.
It may be that different people just have very different susceptibilities to horror, and that mine and Land's have little or no overlap. This brief story shows us two parents worried about their daughter, the three of them going into a somewhat interesting sensory-immersion video game together, and then coming out again (OR DO THEY??? [portentous orchestra hit]).
Even including that obvious final trope, nothing about it struck me as disturbing, scary, horrible, or anything else related to horror, although there were lots of multisyllabic words telling me how terror-inducing it all was. Okay, I guess? For some people?
Various promising elements introduced early on (a creepy stuffed animal, a classmate attempting suicide after the daughter said something mysterious to them) are dropped and never taken up again; perhaps the reader is supposed to fill those bits in, but I didn't see anything in the video game world that would have had much of an effect on a modern youth, except possibly to get them to try a free trial subscription.
Given that I didn't find any horror in the horror story, it's perhaps not surprising that I didn't find the analysis of horror in general, and the horror of Fermi Paradox in particular, especially convincing either. It seems to me that horror, to be effective, must be grounded in the concrete and visceral, even if has a significant component in the abstract and unknown. A fly-covered liver can be horrible by itself; the purely abstract idea that something we currently haven't thought of might remove humanity from the universe sometime, not so much.
I came to this book from Sandifer's "Neoreaction a Basilisk", and even though that book is partly a commentary on this one, the commentary is in this case more interesting than its subject.
It may be that different people just have very different susceptibilities to horror, and that mine and Land's have little or no overlap. This brief story shows us two parents worried about their daughter, the three of them going into a somewhat interesting sensory-immersion video game together, and then coming out again (OR DO THEY??? [portentous orchestra hit]).
Even including that obvious final trope, nothing about it struck me as disturbing, scary, horrible, or anything else related to horror, although there were lots of multisyllabic words telling me how terror-inducing it all was. Okay, I guess? For some people?
Various promising elements introduced early on (a creepy stuffed animal, a classmate attempting suicide after the daughter said something mysterious to them) are dropped and never taken up again; perhaps the reader is supposed to fill those bits in, but I didn't see anything in the video game world that would have had much of an effect on a modern youth, except possibly to get them to try a free trial subscription.
Given that I didn't find any horror in the horror story, it's perhaps not surprising that I didn't find the analysis of horror in general, and the horror of Fermi Paradox in particular, especially convincing either. It seems to me that horror, to be effective, must be grounded in the concrete and visceral, even if has a significant component in the abstract and unknown. A fly-covered liver can be horrible by itself; the purely abstract idea that something we currently haven't thought of might remove humanity from the universe sometime, not so much.
June 10, 2016
Delightfully horrifying. I've always loved the idea of Weird Fiction/Cosmic Horror, but very rarely has any one work managed to grab me the way it seems it should be able to do. Nick Land definitely has points in his favor with his actual descent into over-educated madness, and of course you'd hope that someone who could write a serious(!) book called Fanged Noumena would manage to render the uncanny, ineffable Other in a sufficiently terrifying manner. And it does. While rejecting any obvious, tangible touchstones on the Cosmic you might be holding: "You can imagine a world without tentacle gods? Get real." in favor of something constantly, oppressively around us but never real enough to see, The Noumenon encasing us so completely and with such familiarity that you legitimately have to go insane to see even its shadow.
June 7, 2018
truthfully a pretty good introduction to land's thought, if you're thinking about falling down that rabbit hole. that aside, it still succeeds as a work of deeply unsettling horror fiction. a new favorite.
July 20, 2021
The style is really pompous and it reads like amateur work
October 19, 2021
Absolute dogshit prose in the main story, with glaringly obvious typos at times. Could really use an editor and a creative writing mentor. The parts of the story are somewhat janky and do not fit together at times (chapter 9 anyone?), with parts of the story being rushed and other aspects being drummed up just to be cast aside. The second half of Phyl-Undhu devolves into what-feels-like-90s gothic cyberpunk, much in the same vein as Tsutomu Nihei's Blame!, but without conveying the sleekness and fetishistic appeals of humanity's surrender to technocapital, leaving it grasping for occultist and biblical references in order to mask the lack of depth in the setting. Also please keep old Nick from ever naming anything ever again.
The appendices are better than the main text, overall it's a rating of "Another banger Mr. Land" out of 10 from me.
The appendices are better than the main text, overall it's a rating of "Another banger Mr. Land" out of 10 from me.
July 9, 2021
Phil Undo
Shape-shifting Terminators are the telos of Capitalism, and I can't wait to meet them. Don't let the Annunaki return to a subservient planet.
Shape-shifting Terminators are the telos of Capitalism, and I can't wait to meet them. Don't let the Annunaki return to a subservient planet.
November 1, 2025
The words “Nick Land horror fiction” filled me with prurient curiosity and I came upon a totally legal free copy and dived in.
The story is pretty straightforward an academic couple (Cult Deprogrammer Psychologist Mom; Philosopher Dad) are called in to their tween daughters school because she’s talking about distressing philosophical contexts in class and it’s disturbing the other children.
The narrative follows the couple discussing the meeting before it happens and just talking about their days (i.e talking philosophy) which I honestly enjoyed quite a bit. Land can write good dialogue. After the meeting they kinda put together that their daughter is getting all of this from a strange video game so they dive in.
What follows is slightly less disturbing than the philosophical discussions they were having at the beginning of the book, if I’m being honest. The video game world is explained to them by their daughter as they go through it, which more so amounts to long discussions on Deep Time and what-have-you. I won’t say I truly understood all of it, but the vibes remained kind of odd and unsettling in a matrixey way.
After the story ends you get short essays on The Fermi Paradox and one on Horror from Land.
Overall I would say this was at the very least an interesting book, I didn’t really know what to expect. Glad I read it.
The story is pretty straightforward an academic couple (Cult Deprogrammer Psychologist Mom; Philosopher Dad) are called in to their tween daughters school because she’s talking about distressing philosophical contexts in class and it’s disturbing the other children.
The narrative follows the couple discussing the meeting before it happens and just talking about their days (i.e talking philosophy) which I honestly enjoyed quite a bit. Land can write good dialogue. After the meeting they kinda put together that their daughter is getting all of this from a strange video game so they dive in.
What follows is slightly less disturbing than the philosophical discussions they were having at the beginning of the book, if I’m being honest. The video game world is explained to them by their daughter as they go through it, which more so amounts to long discussions on Deep Time and what-have-you. I won’t say I truly understood all of it, but the vibes remained kind of odd and unsettling in a matrixey way.
After the story ends you get short essays on The Fermi Paradox and one on Horror from Land.
Overall I would say this was at the very least an interesting book, I didn’t really know what to expect. Glad I read it.
July 22, 2023
Phyl-Undhu: 3/5
Abstract Horror: 2/5
Exterminator: 5/5
As another review said, the first half of Phyl-Undhu is great. There's this family that is troubled by their child and they don't know what's wrong with her. Amazing, I'm hooked. Then, however, once they're actually in the [spoiler] it just loses me and while the ending picks up some of the horror that was in the first half, the story just ran out of so much steam that I was mostly left confused.
The two essays at the end are of varying quality. Abstract Horror is a bit whatever while Exterminator, on the other hand, I think is peak Land with its theory of the Great Filter and him connecting it to cosmic horror. Great stuff.
Grade: B (you can just read the last essay tbqh)
Recommended for: Nick Land completionists
Abstract Horror: 2/5
Exterminator: 5/5
As another review said, the first half of Phyl-Undhu is great. There's this family that is troubled by their child and they don't know what's wrong with her. Amazing, I'm hooked. Then, however, once they're actually in the [spoiler] it just loses me and while the ending picks up some of the horror that was in the first half, the story just ran out of so much steam that I was mostly left confused.
The two essays at the end are of varying quality. Abstract Horror is a bit whatever while Exterminator, on the other hand, I think is peak Land with its theory of the Great Filter and him connecting it to cosmic horror. Great stuff.
Grade: B (you can just read the last essay tbqh)
Recommended for: Nick Land completionists
December 4, 2023
No estoy muy seguro de qué creer sobre este libro. Land es infame por su prosa performativa, y sus ensayos producto del dios exánime de las metanfetaminas.
Debo decir, sin embargo, que me dio mucha risa su mofa del círculo postracionalista estribado en blogs como Slate Star Codex et plus. Fue una curiosidad. Lo dejé de lado porque, desgraciadamente, me dio algo de tedio, pero me alegra haberlo leído.
De ahora en más, creo que me enfocaré más en su obra filosófica. La literatura no es el fuerte de Land.
Debo decir, sin embargo, que me dio mucha risa su mofa del círculo postracionalista estribado en blogs como Slate Star Codex et plus. Fue una curiosidad. Lo dejé de lado porque, desgraciadamente, me dio algo de tedio, pero me alegra haberlo leído.
De ahora en más, creo que me enfocaré más en su obra filosófica. La literatura no es el fuerte de Land.
May 23, 2019
The story itself is ho hum "wut if yr mum ran on batt'ries" with a Lovecraftian twist, BUT Land's flights of incandescent prose are eerie and sublime, and well worth slogging through the bad dialogue. The two essays comprising the appendix, to put it mildly, are legitimately, spectacularly frightening.
June 29, 2019
Nick Land may be a huge dumbass with a lot of real, REAL bad ideas, but his horror is excellent and seemingly untouched by his political buffoonery. Lots of great ideas in here about the root of horror and fear. Appendices are better than the main book.
December 18, 2021
I didn't like it that much, but I'm giving it 5 stars to balance off all who say that Nick is racist.
It is kinda okish horror story. If you like Lovecraft, this is a pretty well refined modern take on the topic with a few very cool ideas.
It is kinda okish horror story. If you like Lovecraft, this is a pretty well refined modern take on the topic with a few very cool ideas.
September 13, 2022
Short and very cool, edgy fiction written by a guy who doesn't generally write fiction. Parents join their daughter in the simulated universe she's obsessed with. Not super original, but the tone makes it shine.
November 10, 2025
There are some interesting ideas in this short book, which could have, or rather should have, been expanded to a full book.
It shows a promising combination of ideas and themes by Lovecraft, Reynolds and King, infused with philosophical ideas, but it never really becomes its own story.
It shows a promising combination of ideas and themes by Lovecraft, Reynolds and King, infused with philosophical ideas, but it never really becomes its own story.
June 30, 2017
Good modern metaphysical horror. The first story has a vague beginning and ending but good dark atmosphere. The last story gave me the shivers.
December 28, 2018
Casi 4, pero el final fue dado sin fuerza. El impacto es inferior a la expectativa generada.
January 30, 2019
They’re Great!!!
Arise from the depths of infinite black seas, do you see it, mankind is impurity incarnate... Leave your shadows here, attest to the unattestable.
Arise from the depths of infinite black seas, do you see it, mankind is impurity incarnate... Leave your shadows here, attest to the unattestable.
April 29, 2019
Nice idea, short book
September 12, 2020
Passible horror and an interesting discussion of the Great Filter.
Read
September 5, 2021Nick Land, more like Nick Land you the smoke, do you accept it?
February 16, 2022
Liked this a lot.
December 22, 2022
more racist than HPL, or even Zero HP, and of a horror that is so incomprehensible and meaningless to me personally that it sucked eggs
November 12, 2023
Some interesting ideas and striking language, but not very effective as horror fiction.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews