Stacks Image 5

How to Tame a Dragon


Defining fantasy is just as tricky as taming a dragon. In the last decades, the genre of “high fantasy” has been crowded out by a host of other genres, sub-genres, and micro-genres: “dark fantasy”, “urban fantasy”, “romantasy”, “steampunk”, et cetera. Even the borderline between science fiction and fantasy, hotly contested in times past, doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Formerly a genre for a limited audience, fantasy has become part of the mainstream – and more prominent than ever: in books, movies, games, and multimedia apps.

High Tech vs. High Touch


I have been involved with fantasy throughout my life – as a reader, as an illustrator and designer, as a linguist and literary scholar, as a professional editor, translator, and author. On the other hand, I have been fascinated by the possibilities of the digital age in text, art and moving image. After working full-time in publishing for more than thirty years, both in print and digital media, I retired in 2015. Now I am pursuing my personal interests as a freelancer. My long-time fascination with all things fantastic, including invented languages, is reflected in this website.

As they say in Middle-earth: »Speak ›Friend‹ and enter!«
flexible
The Elvish Code

J.R.R. Tolkien's Elven languages from The Lord of the Rings are both a work of art and, as an early critic put it, "a 'model' (in the scientific sense of the term) for the relationship of language to action, to values and to civilization".

DAS GROSSE ELBISCH-BUCH (‘The Book of Elvish’, trade paperback, 891 pp., Bastei Lübbe 2009) provides a comprehensive analysis of Tolkien's imaginary languages. Now in its fourth printing, the book is available from Amazon and other internet sales platform – as well as any bookstore featuring German books.