I wanted to say somethign snippy, because condescension about language creation ("why don't they learn an endangered language" is an intellectually bankrupt, not to mention tiring, insult) really bugs me, but then I saw the well-placed "(relatively speaking)".

Wow, this article has great timing, I've been becoming progressively more interested in invented languages (or "conlangs" as their community refers to them) since I read Arika Okrent's book In The Land of Invented Languages. It's neat to know that the show went to the lengths of hiring somebody to create an actual…

I've always wanted to get into Machen. Thanks!

Now that I'm older and perhaps a little more patient, I'd really like to grab Bantam's collection of the Dream Cycle and immerse myself.

ST Joshi's annotated editions of Lovecraft are of the highest quality. The only other editions of Lovecraft's work that I, in my relatively limited but still fair experience of Lovecraft editions*, consider worthy are the Arkham House publications and Bantam Books' amazing collections of rarer Lovecraft work, his…

"The Turk" sounds like an iconic film character, which I suppose is fitting given the guy's work on blockbusters. Also, one of my nicknames for him (I do that for my friends all the time) would be "Turky-Tees".

This is really informative, thanks for sharing. I suppose Kevin McTurk isn't getting a whole lot of mention because of the value of the Henson family name (though it appears Heather Henson is some kind of leader, if not the only one, for the Handmade Puppet Dreams group).

After re-reading the introduction (this article /is/ a week old, and it was the first thing I'd heard about this book), I should amend my above statement to denote that the reviews don't necessarily reflect my opinion as it rather fetally exists at present, and that I will be ordering it promptly to feed my burgeoning…

I'm interested in this book. I went on Amazon to get it because my library has no copies, but there were reviews that said it was unsatisfyingly brief in its entries and didn't explore the nature of languages and linguistics very deeply, and one of them suggested instead Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages…

Well, there is the possibility that before the Klingons expanded onto so many worlds with space travel, they just killed/assimilated/probably killed all the Klingons who spoke a different dialect in a cultural war of total scope. That doesn't explain all the other species, though...

This reminds me of the superorganism that controlled the ocean moon in The Ellimist Chronicles. Anybody else remember that?

Who says I want the continuity to be replaced? I'm not talking about company reboots, I just think people shouldn't be downers about other folks toying around with concepts. I mean, it's not going to completely erase your favorite character's history if somebody on DeviantArt or Tumblr or somewhere wonders what they…

I've had enough of people being sourpusses about reinvention just because they can't stand somebody having fun with reinterpretation and exploration.

Oh neat, I like "Monster".

Pardon?

Tree shaping is a fascinating practice that needs to be more widely practiced. When it happens naturally, it's called inosculation, and I love looking for examples in the wild.

This is so amazing and beautiful. Thank you for sharing it, and thanks to Annalee for posting the article in the first place. I mean, I've read about tree fusion before, and thought of how cool it would be to do something like that, but this takes it to a whole new level.

You made a grave oversight by not identifying the fact that Pykrete was not, in fact, invented by Pyke. Rather, a scientific team improved on Pyke's original substance and named it in his honor.

I agree about welcoming differences, but I think the solution to that is teaching empathy and tolerance, and letting people show who they are on their own terms— "no privacy" easily translates to "privacy for as long as you can keep it up", and when you can't, the bringing-to-light of your personal information can be…

"What others might think" is a very misleading thing to call "violent social retribution" or "rejection" or "inconvenience" or "my coworker Steve is a real asshole and if he knew this piece of personal information about me he'd go out of his way to make it an issue when it's none of his fucking business". "Shame" is a…