Steampunk maker Jake von Slatt built a “Mooney & Finch Somnotrope” as part of the promotion for The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (the followup to The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, a collection of fictitious and whimsical illnesses); writer Charlie Jane Anders wrote a “microfiction” (see below) to accompany it. You can win the von Slatt original by buying a copy of the book.
Contributors include Holly Black, Greg Broadmore, Ted Chiang, John Coulthart, Rikki Ducornet, Amal El-Mohtar, Minister Faust, Jeffrey Ford, Lev Grossman, N.K. Jemisin, Caitlin R. Kiernan, China Mieville, Mike Mignola, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, James A. Owen, Helen Oyeyemi, J.K. Potter, Cherie Priest, Ekaterina Sedia, Jan Svankmajer, Rachel Swirsky, Carrie Vaughn, Jake von Slatt, Tad Williams, Charles Yu, and many more.
Mooney & Finch Somnotrope – These sleep simulators have become rare artifacts–even though they were mass produced in the Mooney & Finch Sheffield facility, each one of them emerged as a unique object due to the pressures of the oneiric centrifuge. However, they were only sold for three months, prior to the first reports of somnambulance addiction and peripatetic insomnia. The idea of experiencing four or five hours of sleep within a mere few minutes held almost unlimited allure for the world’s busiest captains of industry and harried matrons. But few were prepared for the intoxication of the Somnotrope’s soothing buzz, the sheer pleasure of watching its central piston raise and lower, gently at first and then with increasing vigor, until your mind flooded with dream fragments and impression of having sailed to the nether kingdom and back, all in a few minutes. It only took a few unfortunate deaths for the whole line to be recalled. (Charlie Jane Anders)
Lambshead Cabinet: Win Jake von Slatt’s Mooney & Finch Somnotrope!
(Thanks, Jeff!)