The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases

First "published" in 1915, as World War I raged through Europe, The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases was for thirty years disseminated to doctors around the world in the form of loose-leaf carbon copies and photocopies. In 1945, London’s Chatto & Windus published the first formal edition of the Guide. Twenty editions later, the Guide was discontinued, but continued to be updated by Dr. Lambshead and his colleagues and privately printed by friends. From Freetown to Istanbul, Timbuktu to Ulan Bator, it has proven its worth under less than ideal conditions. When a doctor lost in the Congo rainforests with only a few antibiotics and feral pigmy elephants for company cannot diagnose his odd spinal condition, he reaches for his handy copy of the Guide. When a family practice doctor cannot understand why a patient of 30 years with no history of mental defect suddenly begins to mimic inanimate objects, she turns to the reliable Lambshead Pocket Guide.

Now that the Lambshead Pocket Guide will once again be publicly published, Dr. Lambshead, well over one hundred years of age, has decided to pass the editorship of the Guide on to the capable if rather young, in the good doctor’s opinion, hands of Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts. Although Dr. Lambshead will continue to monitor the influx of documentation regarding new diseases, he will leave the day-to-day editorial duties to VanderMeer and Roberts, both able doctors in their own right.

Confirmed Contributors:

• Alan M. Clark
• Alan Moore
• Andrew J Wilson
• Brendan Connell
• Brian Evenson
• Brian Stableford
• China Miéville
• Cory Doctorow
• David Langford
• Dawn Andrews
• Elliot Fintushel
• G Eric Schaller
• Gahan Wilson
• Gary Couzens
• Harvey Jacobs
• Iain Rowan
• Jack Slay Jr
• Jay Caselburg
• Jeff Topham
• Jeffrey Ford
• Jeffrey Thomas
• John Coulthart
• Kage Baker
• L Timmel Duchamp
• Lance Olsen
• Liz Williams
• Martin Newell
• Michael Barry
• Michael Bishop
• Michael Cisco
• Michael Cobley
• Michael Moorcock
• Mike O'Driscoll
• Nathan Ballingrud
• Neil Gaiman
• Neil Williamson
• Paul DiFilippo
• R.M. Berry
• Rachel Pollack
• Rhys Hughes
• Richard Calder
• Rikki Ducornet
• Sara Gwenllian Jones
• Shelley Jackson
• Stepan Chapman
• Steve Aylett
• Steve Rasnic Tem
• Steve Redwood
• Tamar Yellin
• Tim Lebbon

DIAGNOSIS: Confirmed Diseases

Bloodflower's Melancholia - Dr. Tamar Yellin.
"Since entering manhood the young Peter had manifested a distinguished gloom, which, on his achieving his majority, blossomed into a consummate mania. He shunned all active pursuits and dressed entirely in black. The sight of something as simple as sunshine or as innocent as a flower reduced him to tears of grief."

Bone Leprosy - Dr. Stepan Chapman.
"First the blackened bones of the fingers and toes would poke themselves bloodlessly through the skin and detach. Next the metacarpals and metatarsals disassembled themselves and emigrated. At this stage the victim could still walk on his ankles with the help of crutches."

Buscard’s Murrain - Dr. China Miéville.
"During postmortem investigations on the cerebellums of infected victims Buscard discovered what he thought were parasitic worms, which he named after himself. When a committee of aetiologists examined his evidence, they found that the vermiform specimens were made of cerebral matter itself. Buscard was denounced amid claims that he had made the ‘worms’ himself by perforating the brains with a cheese-screw."

Ceòlmhar Bus - Dr. Neil Williamson.
"Unsurprisingly, there turned out to be a strong correlation between acute dental problems and the leading brand of fizzy drink. Crucially, drinkers exhibited alarmingly accelerated rates of decay compared to those favouring other brands."

Chrono-Unific Deficiency Syndrome - Dr. Lance Olsen.
"The onset of symptoms is marked by frequent vague sensations of deja vu on the part of the patient, superceded by the realization that the episode he or she has apparently just re-experienced was in fact re-experienced recently by a loved one or close friend who had off-handedly narrated it to the patient a day or two previously."

Clear Rice Sickness - Dr. Michael Cisco.
"After attenuation of the shadow is total, it is noted that light not only passes through the subject (Verbiest was shown this property of the disease firsthand, and testifies that he saw the sun shining through An Yan 'as though he were a coarsely-woven blanket') but appears to be focussed by his body."

Delusions of Universal Grandeur - Dr. Rachel Pollack.
"In a recent development-disturbing, since it suggests the disease has mutated-some patients have developed an obsession with invisible, or "dark" particles. By the bizarre logic of the illness, the fact that they cannot see such particles assures that they must be there. Some even claim that these ultimate invisible particles are precisely what fills up the empty spaces in their ballooning giant universe."

Diseasemaker's Croup - Dr. Neil Gaiman.
"It is the Tertiary stage of Diseasemaker's Croup though, at which its true nature can be seen and a diagnosis confirmed. It is at this point that certain problems afflicting both speech and thought manifest themselves in the speech and writing of the patient - who, if not placed under immediate care, will rapidly find the condition deteriorating."

Emordny's Syndrome - Dr. Andrew J Wilson.
"According to the circumstances, this can be extreme in its extent and consequences: some individuals have been found fused to outcrops of rock, their newly brittle bodies crumbling under their own greatly increased mass, while others have dissolved in water."

Empathetic Fallacy Syndrome - Dr M.M. O’Driscoll.
"In 1968, Mrs Furriskey of Dublin, assumed the symptoms of her paranoid schizophrenic husband John. In doing so, she inadvertently burdened herself with the five separate personalities which had been identified as fighting for control of Furriskey’s mind. Tragically, one of these, the teetotal Kaminer, persuaded Mrs Furriskey to walk into the local Public House and kill eight people before turning John’s shotgun on herself."

Extreme Exostosis - Dr. Jeffrey Thomas.
"These were so prodigious as to have actually broken the skin - largely bloodlessly - extending out from the limbs, chest, and even brow like branching antlers, the greatest of these growths measuring two feet in length. Over the course of the next several days, the bone tumors continued to grow at an even more remarkable rate."

Ferrobacterial Accretion Syndrome - Dr. Brian Stableford.
"Symptoms: Chronic tiredness; congestion of the chest cavity or lower abdomen; abnormal sensitivity to magnets. In extreme cases, sufferers may be subject to new appetites which lead them to swallow pins, needles, crushed tin cans, items of jewellery and miscellaneous scrap derived from discarded cars, washing machines, refrigerators and nuclear warheads."

Internalized Tattooing Disease - Dr. Jeffrey Thomas.
"When upon death he was autopsied to discover the cause of the code-like pattern of internal drumming with which he had been afflicted since childhood, he was found to have a very elaborate tattoo of the Taj Mahal on his kidney. "

Logrolling Ephesus- Dr. David Langford.
"Dr. Daphne Longfort augurs that the Logorrheic Aphids syndrome is runcible for the case of patient E. Lear (1812-1888), who very pobble contracted it in 1845 from contaminated jobiskas. However, no other patient has exhibited Lear's additional symptom of bioluminescent penile growth (see The Guide to Psycho-tropic Balkan Disuse ed. Geraldine Carter, M.D., section heading "The Dong with a Luminous Nose"). "

Menard's Disease - Michael Bishop, M.D.
"Although no one but Borges could distinguish these pages from their counterparts in Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece, Menard held that reconstructing a novel that came spontaneously to Cervantes demanded more labor and greater subtlety than did its original composition."

Motile Snarcoma - Dr. Stepan Chapman.
"After a standard transcolonic approach to the postpubic oversum has been established, the first and third inguinal veins and the fontiform lymphatic spinkos can be distended ventrally using a pair of Vega’s lateral forceps, thus exposing the purple infoldings of the pylophancus or organ of Gorki. "

Ouroborean Lordodsis - Dr. Jeffrey Ford.
"By the time Harmon Creets was a young man of 25, his body had formed a perfect circle. He was discovered in an institution that catered to those with formative diseases of the spinal column by the famous entertainer, Miss Helen Oberstella, and given a place of prominence in her traveling show. "

Postal Carriers’ Brain Fluke Syndrome - Dr Stepan Chapman.
"The prefrontal glial matter of this corpse harbors hundreds of female flukes bearing egg sacs. These mother flukes drill their way through the optic fossae and congregate in the corneal fluid of the corpse’s eyes. Here the females swarm and die, releasing, as they do so, millions of free-swimming ciliated miricidia."

Samoan Giant Rat Bite Fever - Dr. Michael Moorcock.
"Four days later it escaped, was cornered by a one-legged costard-woman in Portobello Road, fixed its teeth inextricably in the oak of her false limb and was held there with nothing but a crutch and her natural odour until Captain Meadley turned up to deal with it."

Turbot's Syndrome - Dr. Paolo G. Di Filippo.
"A patient infected with Turbot's Syndrome exhibits wandering features and organs. For instance, eyes might migrate to the back of the head, nose might drift to the chest, genitals shift to the armpits, toes climb to the forehead, heart occupy the abdomen, or anus swap with navel."

Uxoria Oculitis - Dr. R.M. Berry.
"It is not until the late Renaissance that meticulously documented accounts of connubial sport within the court of the Louis Quatorze, the glorious Sunking, actually provide reliable data on the affliction’s progress. There the folk malady ‘Roman Eye’ runs rampant among the courtiers, all of whom profess perfect hindsight toward their past dalliances and a lively vision of the wives of others."

The Wuhan Flu - Dr G Eric Schaller.
"Briefly, many repetitive tasks within living systems are maintained by unconscious action (i.e. the autonomic system), breathing and the beating of the heart being two examples. Doctor Chen proposed that continued coherence of the body is also maintained by an autonomic system. The events at Xiaping could be explained by a sequence of words being capable of ‘short-circuiting’ this autonomic system, thereby leading to entropic disordering of the body’s atoms."

And many others...

Limited Edition Hardcover limited to 650 copies, signed by all contributors and sold out at the publishers.