Tag Archives: Suzette Haden Elgin

Suzette Haden Elgin Medical Status

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A full update about Suzette Haden Elgin’s medical situation by her husband, George has been posted. In part it says:

Suzette has developed a Fronto -Temperol Dementia. A condition that develops more rapidly than Alzheimer’s disease, and does not respond to any form of treatment or medication. Somedays, for hours at a time, her behavior is almost normal. Most of the time she has no problem with filling up her day. She reads all kinds of books, and sometimes reads them over and over again. We are fortunate in living near a used book store, that has a vast assortment of titles that I can buy for 26 cents apiece. I’ve been buying 30 to 40 every 2 or 3 weeks. She reads them all! Then I pass them on to anyone who wants them.

When we first moved here, 15 months ago, I bought her a new Macintosh iMac computer. She started off using it daily, and said she was writing a new science fiction story. After a few months she stopped working on the story, and then stopped using the computer altogether. Now She won’t use it even to read or answer her email.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Wooster’s Comments on Invented Languages Book

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By Martin Morse Wooster: I finished Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages (Spiegel and Grau, 2009). The book mentions sf fandom in several places. She attended a Lojban conference that was held at the 2006 Philcon. She also discusses Suzette Haden Elgin’s feminist language Laadan, and discusses Wiscon’s role in promoting discussion of this language. She also says that Lojban adapted some of Laadan’s features, and did so because of Lojban founder Bob LeChevalier’s connections with fandom. Finally, there are several chapters about Klingon, and the work of Lawrence Schoen’s Klingon Language Institute is discussed.

I wouldn’t say that artificial language fandom is something that spun off of sf fandom (except for Klingon) but rather that artificial languages are something that fans are interested in.

Diana would want to know that Tolkien is discussed, including his creation of Quenya. But I thought the Tolkien discussion was rather slight.