Christopher Priest on The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, a comedy of erroneous terms, in The Guardian:
It was, as expected, a long read, comprising a large number of etiologies of diseases, some lurid, some disgusting, some surreal, all invented and diagnosed by a range of writers, from “Rev Michael Moorcock” to “Dr China Miéville”.
Each etiology has the same format: a description of the origin of the disease, then its symptoms and history, and finally its possible treatment or cure. Almost all of them are written in the same sort of style: a deadpan, passive-voice, cod-serious discourse, backed up with pseudo-academic paraphernalia, the joke being the knowing voice of mock seriousness.
More here.