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

Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases is not the sort of book that one sits down and reads in a continuous fashion. It is best read in small doses, and is most effective if read while seated on that special chair we all favor for such reading material. In fact, there should be a warning to the effect that if too much is read at one time, the reader may contract Lambsheadadosis, or what is also commonly known as Thakery’s Syndrome.

This affliction is caused by the reader absorbing too many of the chronic contagious catarrhs chronicled by the medical staff in the preparation of the Guide. Obvious symptoms of persons so infected will include an extreme fascination with medical literature pertaining to obscure diseases and the ability to find them rather commonplace and in abundance, to find such diseases on a regular basis and, failing that, treat every subtle rash, congestion and malady as a newly discovered pox that threatens the very existence of mankind. In more advanced cases, the sufferer of Thackery’s Syndrome will have adopted a pseudo-Victorian dialect with overtones of having a quasi-medical background and pronounced use of arcane linguistic phraseology, although it is only in rare cases, that they actually sound like a duck.

Doctors Jeff VanderMeer, Mark Roberts, Neil Gamin and the rest of the contributing staff are to be highly complimented for this collection. Without their collected knowledge, I would have never realized what maladies I am capable of suffer from. Four stars and my highest compliments. ( )

From the first time I heard about this book and it’s contributors (Ford, VanderMeer, Gaiman, Bishop, Moore, to name but a few) I knew I had to get my hands on it. Reading China Miéville’s brilliant entry on Buscard’s Murrain (a disease that infects anyone who pronounces it’s true name correctly) in his collection Looking for Jake strengthened my resolve. And once I finally got it, it was in the form of a nice, heavy trade paperback with a beautifully tacky design. I decided to save it for summer.

Yes, my expectations were kind of through the roof with this one, I’m afraid.

Basically, what the Guide is about is giving the assignment to a horde of writers of speculative fiction to invent imaginary diseases, and a version of the world (with a number of key works, rogue scientists, alliances and enemies) to place them in. The result is possibly one of the weirdest books I’ve read in long time. And there IS brilliance in here. Quite a bit of it, actually. Among the highlights for me are Alan Moore’s Fuseli’s disease (dealing with an infection that takes place entirely in dreams), Lance Olsen’s CHRUDS (in which a patient’s memories are moving further and further back in time) and Shelly Jackson’s Burroughsesque description of the tiny humanoid parasites the Putti – who can be dried and smoked…

But for the last third or so, a definite case of over-satuation occurs for me, and as I’m finishing the book up, with a fictive history of the Guide itself and twelve pages of absurd biographical data, I’m sad to say I’m duty reading a little bit.

So, a tricky one for me to rate, this. Of course, the many short descriptions of the diseases were always going to be an uneven ride, and especially a few sexual ailments of the “arf arf” variety drag the book down a bit. But mostly it’s the feeling of back heaviness and repetition that leave me feeling slightly, slightly disappointed. Then again, I don’t think this book was intended to be read cover to cover as I have. As a book to visit in snippets (say, in the bathroom), leafing back and forth as you want, I would very much recommend it – if you have the stomach for some serious weirdness, that is. ( )

Book Description: San Francisco: Nightshade Book, 2003. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine, new, crisp, unread and immaculate first printing

The one good entry? Rachel Pollack’s Delusions of Universal Grandeur. Sufferers’ symptoms include "the severe delusional belief that the universe is ever more gigantic" and "typically is accompanied by the belief that the universe is vastly old". But I imagine that if I proposed this as a funny disease to my friends, they’d think I was being obscure much as I think the rest of this book is just too obscure.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

I love the idea of this book a lot more than I love the book itself. As with any anthology, some parts are better than others, but any part of it can provide a few moments amusement. As a book for dipping into, Guide is wonderful. And there really are some storming ideas in here, as long as you are willing to embrace its terrible oddness. ( )