The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredi...

â Imagine if Monty Python wrote the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, and you sort of get the idea. Afraid youâ re afflicted with an unknown malady? Finally you have a place to turn!â â Book SenseYou hold in your hands the most complete and official guide to imaginary ailments ever assembledâ each disease carefully documented by the most stellar collection of speculative fiction writers ever to play doctor. Detailed within for your reading and diagnostic pleasure are the frightening, ridiculous, and downright absurdly hilarious symptoms, histories, and possible cures to all the ills human flesh isnâ t heir to, including Ballistic Organ Disease, Delusions of Universal Grandeur, and Reverse Pinocchio Syndrome.Lavishly illustrated with cunning examples of everything that canâ t go wrong with you, the Lambshead Guide provides a healthy dose of good humor and relief for hypochondriacs, pessimists, and lovers of imaginative fiction everywhere. Even if you donâ t have Pentzlerâ s Lubriciousness or Tian Shan-Gobi Assimilation, the cure for whatever seriousness may ail you is in this remarkable collection.

From Publishers Weekly

The talented and prolific VanderMeer (Veniss Underground) and co-editor Roberts have here created perhaps the oddest theme anthology in the history of fantasy literature. The heavily illustrated volume does exactly what its title implies, collecting short, fictional medical descriptions of such diseases as Ballistic Organ Syndrome, Delusions of Universal Grandeur and Razornail Bone Rot. Each disease receives a carefully laid out history, list of symptoms and cure (although many seem to be invariably fatal). The Thackery T. Lambshead of the title, a sort of medical Indiana Jones, supposedly published the first edition of the guide more than 80 years ago, and the book also includes a series of short "essays" outlining his many outrageous adventures. The volume's own rather outrageous list of contributors, nearly 70 strong, includes such esteemed physicians as Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, China Mieville, Michael Bishop, Kage Baker, Cory Doctrow and Brian Stableford. Though occasionally uneven, this is on the whole an amazing book. Not for the faint of heart, the easily shocked or those who see fantasy fiction primarily in terms of warring elves and interminable quests, VanderMeer's anthology plays delicious postmodernist games that are sure to delight the discerning (and slightly warped) reader.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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