The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

The

Thackery T. Lambshead

Cabinet of Curiosities

Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists

Edited by

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Dedication

Dedicated to the memory of Kage Baker,

a wonderful writer and a good friend of Dr. Lambshead.

You are not forgotten.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction: The Contradictions of a Collection: Dr. Lambshead’s Cabinet

Holy Devices and Infernal Duds: The Broadmore Exhibits

The Electrical Neurheographiton—Minister Faust

St. Brendan’s Shank—Kelly Barnhill

The Auble Gun—Will Hindmarch

Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny—Ted Chiang

Honoring Lambshead: Stories Inspired by the Cabinet

Threads—Carrie Vaughn

Ambrose and the Ancient Spirits of East and West—Garth Nix

Relic—Jeffrey Ford

Lord Dunsany’s Teapot—Naomi Novik

Lot 558: Shadow of My Nephew by Wells, Charlotte—Holly Black

A Short History of Dunkelblau’s Meistergarten—Tad Williams

Microbial Alchemy and Demented Machinery: The Mignola Exhibits

Addison Howell and the Clockroach—Cherie Priest

Sir Ranulph Wykeham-Rackham, GBE, a.k.a. Roboticus the All-Knowing—Lev Grossman

Shamalung (The Diminutions)—Michael Moorcock

Pulvadmonitor: The Dust’s Warning—China Miéville

The Miéville Anomalies

The Very Shoe—Helen Oyeyemi

The Gallows-horse—Reza Negarestani

Further Oddities

The Thing in the Jar—Michael Cisco

The Singing Fish—Amal El-Mohtar

The Armor of Sir Locust—Stepan Chapman

A Key to the Castleblakeney Key—Caitlín R. Kiernan

Taking the Rats to Riga—Jay Lake

The Book of Categories—Charles Yu

Objects Discovered in a Novel Under Construction—Alan Moore

Visits and Departures

1929: The Singular Taffy Puller—N. K. Jemisin

1943: A Brief Note Pertaining to the Absence of One Olivaceous Cormorant, Stuffed—Rachel Swirsky

1963: The Argument Against Louis Pasteur—Mur Lafferty

1972: The Lichenologist’s Visit—Ekaterina Sedia

1995: Kneel—Brian Evenson

2000: Dr. Lambshead’s Dark Room—S. J. Chambers

2003: The Pea—Gio Clairval

A Brief Catalog of Other Items

Artist and Author Notes

Story Contributors

Artists

Catalog Contributors

About the Editors

Acknowledgments

Credits

Other Books by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction:

The Contradictions of a

Collection: Dr. Lambshead’s Cabinet

By the Editors

A photograph of just one shelf in Lambshead’s study displaying the “overflow” from his underground collection (1992). Some items were marked “return to sender” on the doctor’s master list.

To his dying day, Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead (1900–2003) insisted to friends that he “wasn’t much of a collector.” “Things tend to manifest around me,” he told BBC Radio once, “but it’s not by choice. I spend a large part of my life getting rid of things.”

Indeed, one of Lambshead’s biggest tasks after the holiday season each year was, as he put it, “repatriating well-intentioned gifts” with those “who might more appropriately deserve them.” Often, this meant reuniting “exotic” items with their countrymen and -women, using his wide network of colleagues, friends, and acquaintances hailing from around the world. A controversial reliquary box from a grateful survivor of ballistic organ syndrome? Off to a “friend in the Slovak Republic who knows a Russian who knows a nun.” A centuries-old “assassin’s twist” kris (see the Catalog entries) absentmindedly sent by a lord in Parliament? Off to Dr. Mawar Haqq at the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. And so on and so forth.

He kept very little of this kind of material, not out of some loyalty to the Things of Britain, but more out of a sense that “the West still has a lot to answer for,” as he wrote in his journals. Perhaps this is why Lambshead spent so much time in the East. Indeed, the east wing of his ever-more-extensive home in Whimpering-on-the-Brink was his favorite place to escape the press during the more public moments of his long career.

Regardless, over time, his cabinet of curiosities grew to the point that his semipermanent loans to various universities and museums became not so much philanthropic in nature as “acts of self-defense” (LIFE Magazine, “Hoarders: Curiosity or a New Disease?,” May 19, 1975). One of the most frenzied of these “acts” occurred in “divesting myself of the most asinine acquisition I ever made, the so-called Clockroach”—documented in this very volume—“which had this ridiculous habit of starting all on its own and making a massacre of my garden and sometimes a stone fence or two. Drove my housekeeper and the groundskeeper mad.”