The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists

Weird shit A sprawling museum of impossible things, of magical and mechanical oddities straddling the real. The postmodern enthusiast with a fantastical imagination will find much to wonder at. The objects are as fascinating as the stories created around them, drawn from an arensal of speculative subgenres: clockwork inventions, Tesla's dabblings, modern sculpture, artefacts of mysterious possibly occult origin, and others too weird for any adequate explanation. I liked the latter-most best, showing-rather-than-telling, gesturing to weirdness, the signs, left to glint in the dark room of the imagination, lets the reader linger spellbound there longest, testing the waters of fiction in this meta-work that prods at our reality. The stories are immensely varied, a good sample of styles and approaches. Most of them are descriptions or accounts relating to an obscure find from the (probably fictional, but I take no chances) Dr Lambshead's cabinet, others are intellectually stimulating. They are a few which are so theoretical and philosophical that it places this collection firmly on the 'for adults' shelf and even I wondered if I understood anything at all (see the article on the 'gallows-horse'). My favourites were the more tantalising stretches of imagination, including: St. Brendan's Shank, Relic, Pulvadmonitor: The Dust's Warning (by China Mieville, no less; was really anticipating this one), the Castleblakeney Key.