The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide To Eccentric & Discredited Diseases
Page 34
Dr. Tamar Yellin developed her interest in obscure psychological diseases after a bout of severe depression in her houseman year was misdiagnosed as African Horse Sickness. Her reputation was established when she was invited to copy edit Geraldine Carter’s Guide to Psycho-tropic Balkan Diseases (second edition) for a fee of fifty dollars. (She has still not been paid.) In 1999, she gave the address at the Brontë Society AGM entitled “Death and the Brontës: Love and Sputum in a Cold Climate.” Her magnum opus, Six Cases of Madness in the Same Family, though universally praised for its fine prose style, remains as yet unpublished. Dr. Yellin lives in the North of England, where she writes poetry in her spare time and raises Jack Russell terriers.
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank everyone who contributed to this anthology; the sheer quality of imagination on display made it a delight to work on the Guide. Special mention must be made of three individuals without whose creativity the Guide would not be what it is today: Stepan Chapman, Michael Cisco, and John Coulthart. Thanks to Stepan and Michael for their fanatical devotion to the Guide, and for their willingness to write new material at a moment’s notice. Thanks to John, mad genius designer, who actually volunteered to find an illustration for every disease, and whose creativity has enriched the Guide immeasurably. Thanks also to Ann Kennedy for much copy editing, proofreading, and advice. Thanks to Forrest Aguirre and Ellen Datlow for help when the project was in its infancy. Thanks to Dr. Lambshead for his continued inspirational example. Finally, John Coulthart would like to thank Michael Moorcock for letting him abuse his words in the pursuit of period fidelity.
“QUEA PROSUNT OMNIBUS, ARTES!”
Notes
1 Editors’ Note: Other highlights of the party included Dr. Jay Lake’s juggling of three-foot-long parasitic African worms, Dr. Rachel Pollack’s internal organ tarot card readings, and Dr. L. Timmel Duchamp’s hysterical impressions of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche.
2 Editors’ Note: In this particular case, we feel the need to explain the “discredited” nature of Chronic Zygotic Dermis Disorder. No one can possibly dispute the claims Dr. Fintushel makes with regard to the alien nature of skin. The veracity of Chronic Zygotic Dermis Disorder has never been in doubt. However, some of the anecdotal evidence used to support the validity of the disease has come into question. For example, “R. Drexler” is not listed as a passenger aboard the Archimedes, the geophysical survey vessel that rescued the Probosciis. Our investigation into the true identity of “R. Drexler” is ongoing—as is our investigation as to why Dr. Fintushel might wish to hide his source’s true identity.
3 Editors’ Note: In some extreme cases, we discredit a disease and designate it infectious and quarantine it. In the case of Ebercitas, the longing for the beautiful Eber is not a disease, but a completely natural condition. However, the disease writer does have a condition caused by Eber, which does seem infectious. We now love Eber (for example!).
4 Editors’ Note: Untrue!
5 Editors’ Note: In a very odd “doubling” or “mirroring” situation, it would appear that Dr. Andrew J. Wilson has contracted Dr. M.M. O’Driscoll’s Empathetic Fallacy Syndrome, while Dr. O’Driscoll has contracted Dr. Wilson’s Emordny’s Syndrome—thus forcing us to quarantine both parties, although not for the usual reasons. We are also endeavoring to keep Dr. Wilson and Dr. O’Driscoll from coming into contact with one another, as this may create a mutated syndrome resistant to any cure. (For this reason, we have not cross-referenced the two diseases.)
6 Editors’ Note: In a very odd “doubling” or “mirroring” situation, it would appear that Dr. Andrew J. Wilson has contracted Dr. M.M. O’Driscoll’s Empathetic Fallacy Syndrome, while Dr. O’Driscoll has contracted Dr. Wilson’s Emordny’s Syndrome—thus forcing us to quarantine both parties, although not for the usual reasons. We are also endeavoring to keep Dr. Wilson and Dr. O’Driscoll from coming into contact with one another, as this may create a mutated syndrome resistant to any cure. (For this reason, we have not cross-referenced the two diseases.)
7 Editors’ Note: Dr. Ford has also published a hypothetical case study of this disease via the Web site Scifi.com/scifiction, edited by Dr. Ellen Datlow. Please refer to “The Emperor of Ice Cream” on that site. Dr. Ford’s claim to have “stumbled across” Figurative Synesthesia takes modesty to new extremes.
8 Editors’ Note: A chance meeting with Dr. Gwenllian Jones confirmed that the condition still exists today.
9 Editors’ Note: To help our learned readers distinguish between biased and unbiased disease reporting, we do, as you will have noticed, assign a status of “Quarantined” to those diseases whose reporting doctors appear to have contracted the disease in question. In the case of Dr. Slay, the truth appears to be more complicated—or, at least, muddied. When we noticed that Dr. Slay never signed his letters in other than black ink and that none of the various corroborating photographs he sent were in color, we suspected infection. When, in attempting to follow up, we asked him if he owned a color TV and he answered in the negative, our suspicion intensified tenfold. Finally, we called him into our offices and forced him to watch a Technicolor print of Gone With the Wind. Although nervous, Dr. Slay appeared to pass this test. However, just before this book went to press, we received a telephone call of a disturbing nature from Dr. Slay’s assistant. The assistant indicated that Dr. Slay had worn special contact lenses to bleed the color from his vision. Although we cannot confirm this accusation, neither can we deny it.
10 Editors’ Note: Some evidence suggests that the infamous “Algerian Printer” incident of 1934, which resulted in the death of all contributors to the Guide other than Dr. Lambshead, may have been due to Printer’s Evil.
11 Editors’ Note: In fact, residue found on bound galleys in mid 2003—issued by such independent publishers as @tlas, Dedalus, Golden Gryphon, Ministry of Whimsy, Prime, Small Beer, and Subterranean—tested positive for traces of Papyroplasmapora infestans, suggesting a nascent resurgence. Books from Savoy, on the other hand, tested positive for many communicable diseases, but not for this particular strain of mold.
12 Editors’ Note: Dr. Lambshead himself has requested we “discredit” Dr. Redwood’s disease. Although we asked for evidence, Dr. Lambshead could not provide any. He just said, “There is no way that anyone, living or dead, can suck a black hole through their nostril. It’s insane. I won’t stand for it. I just won’t have it. And if that’s not a good enough reason for you, then, as some of my American colleagues are fond of saying, you can blow it out your—.”
13 Editors’ Note: There is one impulse at work in us that wants to slap a “Quarantined” or “Discredited” label on Dr. Calder’s meticulous account. Another, competing impulse tells us that you cannot discredit or quarantine a memory. We would note, however, that eyewitnesses place Dr. Lambshead in England at the time of the supposed encounter. Alas, we cannot stop the good doctor from entering the modern-day mythology. Alleged sightings of the doctor, as well as impersonifications of him, have become an almost weekly occurrence. Whether created out of whole cloth or based on a vision, or representing the manifestation of some unknown disease, Dr. Calder’s account at the very least confirms the extent to which Dr. Lambshead has entered the popular (and unpopular) culture.
14 Editors’ Note: The following correspondence from the notorious Dr. Wexler (please see Dr. Chapman’s History of the Guide) constitutes an inadvertent reminiscence. It also exemplifies the extraordinary number of odd letters received by Dr. Lambshead from around the world. In fact, Dr. Wexler has written to Dr. Lambshead more than 560 times during the past six decades. Each letter assumes a different level of familiarity with Dr. Lambshead. Each is more absurd than the last, although to date we have been unable to pin a disease to Dr. Wexler. As for Dr. Wexler’s claims, Dr. Lambshead’s only comment was, “Never been to Tasmania.”
15 Thwack Note: Dr. Couzens has deleted part of this account, which records that at her post mortem Miss Y— was f
ound not to be virgo intacta.
16 Great Adventures That Changed Our World, ed. Peter Lacey, Reader’s Digest, 1978.
17 SVIP has since been shown to be identical with Buscard’s Murrain. See the article by Dr. Miéville in this volume.
18 Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla, John J. O’Neill, Angriff Press, 1944.
19 Lon Chaney: The Man Behind the Thousand Faces, Michael F. Blake, The Vestal Press, 1990.
20 See Dr. Jeffrey Thomas’s piece on Extreme Exostosis in this volume.
21 The rodent is best known as a disease vector. See Dr. Moorcock’s articles on the subject.
22 LSD, My Problem Child, Albert Hofmann, J.P. Tarcher Inc., 1983.
23 The German Atomic Bomb, David Irving, Da Capo Press, 1967.
24 These radiographic plates still exist at the British Museum, and copies can be viewed on the Institute For Further Study archive ship Useless, anchored west of Maui. Only serious historians need apply.
25 As for the undescended testicle thing, it’s really none of our business.
26 The Nazis, Robert Edwin Herzstein, Time-Life Books, 1980.
27 The Cola Wars, J.C. Louis and Harvey Z. Yazijian, Everest House, 1980.
28 A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy, Thomas C. Reeves, The Free Press, 1991.
29 See my article in this edition on the Motile Snarcoma, a closely related cancer.
30 The Race: The Complete True Story of How America Beat Russia to the Moon, James Schefter, Doubleday, 1999.
31 Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon, James Harford, John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
32 “The People with Holes in Their Heads,” Eccentric Lives & Peculiar Notions, John Michell, Sphere Books Ltd., 1984.
33 See Smack, Crack, and Whack In Haiti: An Historical Survey, Dr. Mark Roberts, Greenfont University Press, Toronto, 1974.
34 Lives of the Popes, Richard P. McBrien, Harper Collins, 1997.
35 And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts, St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
36 See the entry by Dr. Cisco in this volume.
37 See the entry by Dr. Stableford in this volume.
38 The Innovators, John Diebold, Dutton, 1990.
39 Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Health Care, Laurie Garrett, Hyperion, 2000.
40 Ibid.
41 The Trimble Fisheries Philanthropic Foundation, however, is still active in fund-raising for charitable causes. The foundation recently organized the well-received Kwasi Fela Pan-African HIV Sweepstakes. The grand prize was ten thousand American dollars’ worth of discounts on the AIDS drugs produced by the sponsoring drug companies. A second sweepstakes is planned for 2004.
42 Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Health Care, Laurie Garrett.
43 Anti-Diseases and Anti-Therapies: New Worlds of Pathology, Dr. Michael Cisco
Painless Sterilization For the Hobbyist, Dr. China Miéville
I Live In Hell: My Battle With Lipogranular Splanchnodiastasis (reprint), Dr. Brian Evenson
Calisthenics For Chest Cases, Dr. Gahan Wilson
101 Things To Do With Used Tongue Depressors, Dr. Michael Bishop
T Is For Tumor: An Alphabet Book For Estranged Adults, Dr. Shelley Jackson
44 As a Guide contributor, I am sometimes asked why the title includes the word pocket. It’s been about 70 years since a current edition would fit in one’s pocket. Dr. Lambshead informs us that he retained the word pocket because it reminds him of the days of his youth—those golden bygone days when he’d eat beans from a can for breakfast and then go scrounging around Calcutta for a hectograph machine.
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Analog
‘Editors Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts have produced what should by all rights become a bedside classic, beloved by insomniacs and hypochondriacs of every stripe and spot’
Realms of Fantasy
‘The disease guide is a reflection of our attempts to understand ourselves or our society, especially when something goes wrong, especially something that has no name’
Review of Contemporary Fiction
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Creative Loafing
‘A first-rate publication. I recommend several readings a day!’
Green Man Review
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Modern Word
First published 2003 by Night Shade Books
First published in Great Britain 2004 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2014 by Tor
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www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-7642-5
The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases
Copyright © Jeff VanderMeer & Mark Roberts 2003
Introduction originally published by BookSense, 2005. This revised and updated edition published by Tor 2014
The Personage (Likeness, Description, etc.) of Dr Thackery
Copyright © Jeff VanderMeer & Mark Roberts 2003
The individual contributions to this book copyright © 2003 by their authors, as credited in this book
The following contributions, not credited in the book, are copyright © 2003 as follows:
Foreword, Introduction, and all Editors’ Notes, Jeff VanderMeer, with the exception of “The Malady of Ghostly Cities”, a collaboration between Nathan Ballingrud and Stepan Chapman.
All biographical notes written by the relevant contributor, except Rikki Ducornet’s biographical note (Jeff VanderMeer) and Alan Moore’s biographical note (John Coulthart).
Obscure History photo captions by Stepan Chapman and Michael Cisco.
All other incidental text, John Coulthart, Mark Roberts, Jeff VanderMeer.
“The Putti” by Shelley Jackson first appeared in Conjunctions 26, spring 1996.
“Menard’s Disease” by Michael Bishop © 2001 by Bookspan for its appearance in QPB Calendar of Days 2002.
Interior illustration and design by John Coulthart.
Additional illustrations: Dawn Andrews, pages 78, 100, 187; Alan M. Clark, page 86; Mark Roberts, pages ix and 220; Michael Cisco, page 264; some images © 2003
www.clipart.com.
All other illustrations from non-copyright sources.
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