Jeff VanderMeer

Mark Roberts

In a humorous compilation of imaginative short stories, masters of speculative fiction--including Cory Doctorow, Kage Baker, Richard Calder, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and others--provide detailed descriptions, symptom guides, complete histories, and suggested treatments for a marvelous assortment of fantastical diseases, ranging from Pentzler's Lubriciousness to Printer's Evil. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, 83rd Edition

(Bre)anne✨

Others posit that the Malady of Ghostly Cities had afflicted humankind for thousands of years, that we have in fact made homes of the corpses of its victims, and that what we perceive as ghosts are the world’s true citizens, the ones left here by the memory of the dead.

What linguistic paradigms, I ask myself, does a stomach have, and to what extent are they shared by humans?

Should we not explore, not discover, leave the leaves unparted, as it were?

Creets, himself a man of singular wit, was once quoted as saying that if one suffered from this disease, it was “only a matter of time before you will simply kiss your ass goodbye.”

Possessed by a sudden and acute agony, Oliver undertook his first attempt at vocalization. Instead of the intended expletive, however, he was astounded to observe a grapefruit-sized ball of mottled, mossy green pop from his mouth and roll down the lane, where it made short work of the 7-10 split that had been plaguing him all evening.

The possibility that the disease is the ultimate source of the human aesthetic impulse, and that all unafflicted artists are merely trying to compensate for their internal adequacies, cannot be entirely discounted, although it does seem rather remote.

and one current English sufferer subject to the not-uncommon delusion that he is a reincarnation of King Arthur, has sworn to "cough up Excalibur or die trying." The latter is the likelier eventuality.

And what is the physician's role in all of this? Physicians encounter death on a daly basis—is it too bold to suggest that all of the members of our society it is the doctors' optimism which is the most compromised? If Espectare progresses at its current rate, is my own profound pessimism concerning our ability to heal in turn seriously compromising my patients' health? Am I, in fact, killing my patients one disappointment, one bad day, one moment of professional despair at a time?

It would be foolhardy to dismiss Emordny's syndrome out of hand since it is a condition that holds up a mirror to our definition of the self, even if we are not pleased with what we see reflected in it.

We are faced with the "I Am Legend" paradigm. When the majority of the world population suffers the same condition, does it become the "new normal"?

Forward-imagine, for instance, the last alert look your lover will pass to you from his or her deathbed, how she or he will meet your eyes from behind a face that has become a blanched papier-mâché mask, how all language but the language of that look will be forgotten in that instant like an aphasic searching for the right word, because no matter what you did yesterday, what you do today, or what you might do tomorrow, you will come to inhabit some variation of that scene while continually being shocked that you are inhabiting it.

To be on the safe side, transfer their tastes from soft drinks to hard liquor as soon as is practicable.

Jonathan Crowe

Secret history in the form of a medical guide? Non-traditional fictional narratives? This sort of thing IS my bag, baby.

The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, 83rd Edition

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