Caslon Old Face, used for the body text of “The Book of Ambergris” is artfully structured, with classic textures and aromas. Redolent of fine leather, sandalwood, and cinnamon, Caslon is dry yet velvety, its gossamer qualities offset by enough backbone to satisfy even aficionados of such terse fonts as Nicean Monk Face and Cinsorium Ironic. Elena Caslon created Caslon Old Face during the reign of Trillian the Great Banker, while working in Frankwrithe & Lewden’s Morrow print shop. Arguably, the most famous book ever set in Caslon is Slothian’s grotesque Gorngill Awakened.
“Times New Roman,” a font foreign to the Southern Cities, and not currently registered with the font guild, was used by X for his manuscript “The Release of Belacqua.” Although some printers feared that this blunt intruder might gain a fonthold in Ambergris, the rejection of “Belacqua” by more than forty of the city’s foremost editors is widely seen as a comment on this “pest font” as Sirin has dubbed it, rather than on the quality of X’s prose. “Times New Roman” combines the coarse ambiance of a tough steak with the structure of a potato, its flinty bouquet mixed with a moist texture.
Garamond and its constituents, used for “King Squid,” contain a hint of orange peel and white pepper, toast and sprinkled chocolate, with an aftertaste of trellised violets and orchids planted in minerals and black earth. Created in the Court of the Kalif by the master Font Vizer Kullart, Garamond has proliferated in the Southern Cities almost as rapidly as the telephones, guns, and cheese graters that are the most visible signs of the Kalif’s cultural imperialism.
Officina Sans, which is not a disease although it resembles one, has been used for “The Hoegbotton Family History.” Officina Sans has a bouquet of dry leaves and cold earth. The nice black pepper kick to its finish is best expressed by the dots that live inside its 0’s. Developed by committee courtesy of the Morrow Department of Naturalization, the font has since been perfected by the Ambergris Department of Broadsheet Licensing, which has added two variants: Officina Deluxe and Officina Tertiary. Officina Sans graces most of the bureaucratic documents produced in Ambergris.
Palatino, the preferred font of Hoegbotton & Sons for such fictions as Sirin’s Details of a Tyrant & Other Stories (including “The Cage”) has a rich, gamey quality that combines the essence of smoked cherry, pepper, and dark chocolate. Brooding and dusky, Palatino reflects the obsessions of its creator, the Truffidian monk Michael Palatino. Palatino spent 20 years in the silence of Zamilon, studying texts buried in basements and subterranean tunnels accessible only by air ducts or crawl spaces. Palatino eventually emerged from the darkness, trailing behind him enlightenment, several rare religious books, and a font he had developed while lost in a cave. Originally called “Palatino Lost,” the name was changed to “Palatino” by a font guild already reeling from such previous melodramatic attempts as Venturi’s Folly, Bosbane’s Glory, and Flounder’s God Send.
Bookman Old Style, used for “In the Hours After Death” and all other body text in the arts journal Burning Leaves, has a bouquet of dates, figs, herbs, yellow squash, plums, and blackberries. It can be pleasantly earthy, both rich and mellow, with a hint of entangling vines. Created by a printer during the waning days of the Saphant Empire, Bookman Old Style conjures up all the grace notes and subtle decay of that period and remains a reminder, primal yet profound, of that civilization’s continued grasp upon the collective imagination. (It is worth noting that this font was not the first choice for the body text of Burning Leaves. The first three issues of the magazine were set in Porfal Erogenous, a font developed by the eccentric inventor Porfal. The editors were at first ecstatic to have found a font as decadent as the material they planned to print. In Porfal Erogenous, tiny nude figures form the letters. Some letters, such as “H”, “M”, and “O” are pornographic, while others, like “t”, “r”, and “i” are merely erotic—until set in combination with one another, whereupon certain words create depictions of graphic sexual acts. As a result, the editors soon found that readers ignored the stories, instead fixating on individual letters or words, often with a magnifying glass and a handkerchief on hand [presumably to wipe the sweat from their brows]. Circulation swelled. Shaken by the reaction—and driven to action by protests from both their writers and the Truffidian Antechamber—the editorial board settled on Bookman Old Style as a replacement. Today, Porfal Erogenous is used for little other than posters that advertise squid clubs and houses of ill-repute. The font has a bouquet of honey poured over firm, fresh peaches, cucumbers, ripe melons, and asparagus tips, with a hint of creamy oak. What the font lacks in backbone it makes up for in flexibility.)
The font Dr. V uses for his correspondence is known as “Mother’s Typewriter” because it is indeed generated on his mother’s typewriter, which he has borrowed because the glacially-slow disbursement of funds from the monolithic Ambergris Psychiatric Studies Division (Dr. V has often wondered what ASPD is a division of; the thought of an even more monolithic institution behind ASPD makes him tremble) made it necessary to personally replace his Sophia 300 model when it finally died. Dr. V blames Dr. Simpkin, ten years his junior and three promotions his superior, but, really, what machine that requires the clacking together of metal parts will fare well in a city as fungus-riddled as Ambergris? In any event, “Mother’s Typewriter” is a cranky font with a lecturing, brittle ambiance and enough backbone for ten fonts. The briny aftertaste is particularly unpleasant, reminiscent of the frequent (and didactic) postscripts Dr. V’s mother added to the letters she sent him when he was a student at the Blythe Academy so many years ago.