Heaven preserve me from linking to Slate, but this article on the re-printing of John M. Ford's work is news too good not to share.

But I reconnected Ford’s family and editors at Tor, and after a year of delicate back-and-forth spearheaded by Beth Meacham, Tor and the family have reached an agreement that will gradually bring all of his books back into print, plus a new volume of stories, poems, Christmas cards, and other uncollected material. First up, in fall 2020, is the book that introduced me to Ford, The Dragon Waiting. Then, in 2021, Tor will publish—at long last—the unfinished Aspects, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Now if we can see a full re-print of Cordwainer Smith, and if Pamela Dean ever gets that last Secret Country book out....

From a Clerk of Oxford:

this series of talks given recently in Oxford (in connection with the Bodleian Library's exhibition Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth) on the subject of the medieval languages which interested and influenced Tolkien. There were lectures on Old and Middle English, Medieval Welsh, Gothic and Old Norse (my contribution)

Late to the party but unabashed.

This is fantastic!

FRAGMENT OF A GREEK TRAGEDY

by A. E. Housman

CHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
...
CHORUS: Go chase into the house a lucky foot.
And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good,
And do not, on the other hand, be bad;
For that is very much the safest plan.

That μέν/δέ right there is just the best. This is Prawne family level stuff.

From Twitter, someplace.

IF Comp 2018 Review: Tohu wa Bohu

IF Comp 2018 Review: DreamLand

IF Comp 2018 Review: Bogeyman

In vengeance, Peculiar:

Some Limericks.

He must be a quintessential fool who does not realize that the following fifty limericks are a document of enduring value. And I beg leave to say that the collecion has been made not for such people, but for those who can appreciate its significance.

... 

I shall quote none of them. Caveat lector asinum.

The Tatooine Cycle.
There was once a great queen of Alt Da Rann and Leia was her name. War had sprung up between her people and those of Da Thféider. She sent messengers to ask for aid from the wildman, Cenn Obi. He lived in the wilderness far to the west. These were the messengers she sent: Síd Tríphe Óg, who knew all the languages of man and beast,(2) and the dwarf, Artú.
(ht)

As on many things I like, I tend to glut myself on Interactive Fiction, then ignore it for months on end. But Bee is well worth anyone's time.

UPDATE: new link.

On Things I did not Know Existed: An epic poem on syphilis. The author was apparently one of the more influential early proponents of the contagion theory of disease. My Latin does not permit me to translate; here you may find some englished excerpts.

Slowly a caries, born amid squalor in the body's shameful parts, became uncontrollable and began to eat the areas on either side and even the sexual organ. Then the symptoms of this defilement betrayed themselves more clearly. For as soon as the clean, kindly light of day had retreated and brought on the melancholy shades of night, and the innate heat, which at night usually makes for the deep internal parts, had abandoned the surface of the body, and no longer nursed the limbs now covered in a thick mass of humors, then the joints, arms, shoulder-blades and calves were tormented by intolerable pains.

It is worth remembering that syphilis dropped off sharply in virulence, kill rate, and agonizing pain after its initial introduction into Europe; previously, it certainly earned its name of the "Great Pox".

Written? Kitten.

Hence. Now we need "Written? Crytozooid."