Thanks for pointing me to this site. Also, if you find out anything about ventriloquism or the dummies/figures that ventriloquists use, I’d be interested in the most helpful sources for such information. Paul Di Filippo and I did a pair of mysteries novels a few years back about a young man, the son of a second-rate ventriloquist, who also has this skill and who uses it in investigative work, but my original idea involving this subject matter centered on an event/image in WWII that I don’t want to reveal here, but that I keep putting off writing because I don’t think I’ve researched either the war or the ventriloquist-dummy element thoroughly enough to frame the story itself persuasively. In any case, I think your interest in dolls, masks, and maybe even automata touches on some of the matters that I’m interested in. And, of course, I’ve always (or long) been interested in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein mythos.