This volume appears to be in print now, the Portuguese edition of The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, a unique fantasy anthology compiled in 2003 by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts. The new edition is published by Saida de Emergência and translated by Luís Rodrigues, João Seixas and Vítor Morta. I didn’t design this cover with its eccentric kerning but I did design the original edition for Night Shade, to date still one of my most elaborate and detailed book designs, too elaborate for the larger publishing houses, in fact, who either dropped or amended the deliberately diseased title spread for their paperback editions. You can see some of the original pages below. I sent the Portuguese publishers all the artwork and layouts but since I haven’t seen a printed copy of the book I don’t know how the interior looks. I don’t even know whether my name appears on the cover as it does here since other examples online show a different design. However, it’s often the case these days that cover designs get sent out prematurely for marketing purposes before things have been finalised.
Title spread.
Contents spread.
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• Pasticheur’s Addiction
Very cool.
Now I’m acquainted with your Wunderkammer pages I can see how you’d like this!
John: The Portuguese edition interior is left untouched, except for the translation (naturally) and the addition of a section devoted to diseases written up by Portuguese authors. I’ll be happy to send you a few shots of the book later.
Also, I can’t for the life of me fathom why they put my name first in the list of translators. I only worked on two pieces in the book — Neil Gaiman’s “Diseasemaker’s Croup” and Stepan Chapman’s “Postal Carriers’ Brain Fluke Syndrome” — and everything else was translated by João Seixas and Vitor Morta, who deserve full credit for the work they’ve done.
Hi Luís, and thanks, I thought you might comment. If I don’t see a copy of the book I’d love to see some samples. I’m always curious about translations of unusual books like this, it can’t have been easy. Lots of unusual words, slang terms, jargon, neologisms, etc.