Robert Stikmanz Q&A (+ newsletter and blog)

A link to the September Stikmantica newsletter is HERE. A link to Robert’s most recent blog entry is HERE.

Following are actual questions asked of Robert at Stikmantica dealer tables during cons or expos. No warrant is made that answers given here bear any resemblance to anything he said at the time.

Q: Has anyone from the government contacted you about your language?

RS: An early purchaser of Dvarsh, An Introduction was an old college friend recently retired from the EPA. His purchase was with personal funds. At one event I visited with a linguist retired from the NSA, but he declined to buy a book. His line was ultra-Chomskyist, so no sell was not surprising.

Q: Has anyone, like the Defense Department, contacted you about using Dvarsh as a code?

RS: No. Its usefulness as a code may have been compromised when the grammar and lexicon were made public.

Q: Have you contacted any university linguistics departments about Dvarsh?

RS: The point this question misses is that the Dvarsh language is not the accomplishment. It is a mechanism of the accomplishment. This is one reason it’s frustrating for people who ignore Dvarsh, An Introduction to congratulate me on having created a language. For that book, the language is the leap into the looking glass, not the world on the other side. I’m incredibly proud of Dvarsh. I am even prouder of the uses to which I put it.

Q: What are your thoughts about the Parousia?

RS: I absolutely do not discriminate based on allegory of origin. All else being equal, if your guy shows up with legal tender, we can probably do business.

Q: Did you have a twin growing up, or someone like a twin where the two of you shared an imaginary world?

RS: No.

Q: Are you sure? Most people who do this sort of thing had a twin.

RS: I’m sure. No twin. I do have a history of talking to myself, and I am my own second cousin by marriage.

Q: Can I get these as audiobooks?

RS: Not yet. That’s another entire area of production still to open up. It will happen when priorities allow. As stated before, Stikmantica is an operation designed for a staff of twelve or so, and every position is active. Currently, I fill all of them. This slows down every process.

Q: Have you thought about a Kickstarter?

RS: I am convinced that Nod’s Way is a project absolutely suited to crowd funding, but I cannot see the way forward. What I find impossible to constitute is how to package products of my imagination in ways people will want. I can make endless graphic works and objets dvarsh, but I have no idea how to plug them into tiered valuations. What I really need is a partner in both pain and gain to organize the parts of a campaign that baffle me. If you have a serious proposal, I’d like to see it.