" "The men of my islands are all a bit mad," William said proudly. "Let us look in the other case."
   "Virgil."
   "What is he doing here? What Virgil? The Georgics?"
   "No. Epitomae. I've never heard of it."
   "But it's Virgil of Toulouse, the rhetorician, six centuries after the birth of our Lord. He was considered a great sage..."
   "Here it says that the arts are poema, rethoria, grama, leporia, dialecta, geometria. ...But what language was he writing?"
   "Latin. A Latin of his own invention, however, which he considered far more beautiful. Read this; he says that astronomy studies the signs of the zodiac, which are mon, man, tonte, piron, dameth, perfellea, belgalic, margaleth, lutamiron, taminon, and raphalut."
   "Was he crazy?"
   "I don't know...those were times when, to forget an evil world, grammarians took pleasure in abstruse questions." "

--Th* Nam* of th* Ros*


Th* Oth*r China Mi*vill*.


Distant Dark Stars.


"The real war is in the air, civilian. We're just skirmishing on the macrolevel."

--Gr*gory F**l*y, Th* Oxyg*n Barons (1996)


"...his favorite foods are apples, yams, corn, and peppers."