On The King in Yellow, the strange book behind "True Detective"

John Brownlee reviews The King in Yellow, the mysterious real-life book posed at the heart of True Detective's fictional mystery, and why the two are linked.

"In short, The King in Yellow has gone viral. But why? It's all due to the powerful creative draw of the weird mythos, stories which create, in the words of H.P. Lovecraft, a shared literary universe defined by an "unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces" and "the daemons of unplumbed space." And that effect is very definitely by design."

The now public-domain text is free online. Kevin McFarland reviews the show here at Boing Boing every week.