Beginning: what's the first you ever heard of Mike Ford, aka John M. Ford, or his work?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

[Well, somebody's got to start things off, I guess. Though I haven't a good answer to the question. But still.]

Welcome, everybody, no matter when you read this; welcome to this place, which is going to be somewhere to talk about him and his work. Whether you're a friend, a reader, an old gaming buddy, a colleague in any of the many ways possible, an admirer, somebody who would be an admirer if the stories didn't confuse the heck out of you, a seeker of footnotes, a poetry enthusiast, somebody doing a paper for school, or something else entirely, welcome.

As for the question, I don't remember the first time I ever heard of his work. I do remember the first time I met him: it was in Calhoun Square, Uptown, Minneapolis, during an event that (I think) had to do with reading and books. He walked up and introduced himself to me.

Right now, the piece of his work uppermost in my mind is... well, I think that'll make a good second post, so this will be continued on next rock. Anyhow, welcome.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

pameladean put Growing Up Weightless in Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, and off I went after it. I think this came up the first time I met Pamela, and she asked if I'd liked it, and I had, and she asked if I'd found any of his others and liked them, and I had. I don't want to say that's why we became friends then, but I also doubt that it was any kind of deterrent.

And I'm pretty sure I met Mike at Minicon in '04. Everyone told me and timprov we had to go to Ask Dr. Mike, and they described it to us, and having never met the central figure, we were skeptics. "People just ask him questions? What kind of questions?" "Any kind!" "And he answers them?" "Yes! And it's funny!" What I did not ask was, Are you sure it's really funny and not just you've-known-this-person-for-most-of-my-life funny? And -- of course -- it was.

[belmikey.livejournal.com]

It's somewhat embarrassing to admit that the only work of Mike's that I've actually read are his two Star Trek novels.

But then again, maybe not, since I never really got the impression that he was remotely embarrassed to have written them. Nor should he have been, because they were both Really Good Reads.

Of the two, The Final Reflection has stuck with me the best. I was, in fact, just about to start rereading it last week, anyway, before I heard of Mike's passing. I first read it when it first hit the shelves. I was...13? 14? Something like that. It reshaped my thinking -- and many other Trekkies at the time, from what I've gathered over the years -- of the Trek universe. It gave depth to things that had previously been really very shallow.

More than that: despite being a 'tie-in' novel, it was actually a good science fiction story in its own right -- something an alarming amount of Star Trek fails at. You could strip off the framing story, change some names around, divorce it entirely from Star Trek...and it still held up as a story about the delicate dance two equally matched, mutually alien cultures must dance when they're getting to know each other, and just how high the stakes are if they can't figure out how to coexist.

But the part of it that I thought was brilliant then, as an impressionable teen, and still think is brilliant now, as a jaded late-30-something, is that he told it all from the "alien" perspective. He made the reader get into the Other's head in a way that very little other science fiction succeeds at doing, and Star Trek almost never tried.

In that way, The Final Reflection reshaped my thinking about more than just Trek. Star Trek always preached an inclusive ideal, but often fell short in execution, especially when non-humans were involved. As a product of 1960s television, there was a strong us-and-them divide, not just with enemy aliens like the Klingons, but with allies like the Vulcans. 'They' almost always got the short end of any comparison.

But Mike's story treated the aliens and humans alike as people, with all their shades and differences and disagreements. He showed us brilliant, thoughtful Klingons and brutal, stupid humans, and every shade in between on both sides. He didn't try to lie to us and tell us that we could all just get along; but he did remind us that They are just as varied as Us, just as flawed and just as capable of brilliance; they just don't agree with us.

I was 13. The Cold War looked like it would never end. Our government was doing what governments always do when locked in confrontation with another government -- dehumanizing our perception of the "enemy". Mike's tale of humans and Klingons, told from the Klingon perspective, was a powerful reminder that the "enemy" were people.

Much of the detail and background Mike wrote about Klingons in The Final Reflection has been contradicted or ignored by Paramount's later television and movie productions (although I like to think that Michael Dorn's portrayal of Worf was at least somewhat informed by a copy of the book that my friend Jon gave him at his first convention). I find that, despite all the time, attention, and detail that I know the writers at Paramount have spent over the course of the four additional series to flesh out the Klingon culture...I still vastly prefer what Mike wrote in 1983, before TNG was even a possibility.

[pameladean]

David and I stopped by the New Books racks in Uncle Hugo's and deliberately picked out a book by somebody we had never heard of. It was Web of Angels. We were both smitten, I perhaps unreasonably. I read it three times in a row. Not very long after (this would all have happened roughly in 1983) I bought and read Diane Duane's Star Trek novel The Wounded Sky. I wrote a long letter to Will and Emma saying that this was the first Trek novel I'd venture to recommend to non-fans of the show. They wrote back, kindly but a little condescendingly, saying that the book was okay, but really, the one for non-fans was John M. Ford's The Final Reflection. I was very disgruntled at this, until I read the book. I persist in thinking that The Wounded Sky is a grand book, but I had to admit that they had a point. I finished it and immediately reread it as well. It was so bewilderingly rich in in-jokes, complex philosophy, and scarily believable characters that one hardly knew what to say about it.

In 1984 we went to the World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa. Will and Emma introduced us to Mike at the Meet The Authors party. He was being used as a kind of mobile support by a very happily drunken sf writer who kept announcing that her divorce was final. He treated her with a delicate mixture of kindness and reserve that was jawdropping, and he also found time to receive our praises for his books very kindly and to make us laugh about ten times in ten minutes.

He won the World Fantasy Award for The Dragon Waiting that weekend, but we hadn't been able to stay for the banquet. I've been sorry ever since, though I can pretty much figure out the kind of gently self-deprecatory yet geuninely appreciative remarks he must have made.

P.

[laurel]

I read all the existing Star Trek novels while I was in high school and I totally fell in love with How Much For Just the Planet? (along with Diane Duane's novels). I think I somehow missed The Final Reflection, quite possibly 'cuz I read the description and realized the main cast wasn't in it much or at all and that turned me off. Silly me.

I was hanging around FIDOnet then too and I'm sure Mike was mentioned.

And then when I went to my first Minicon (24 in 1989, my senior year of high school), I was told by all and sundry that I simply had to go to "Ask Dr. Mike" and so I did and wow! I'm not sure I even realized right away that Dr. Mike was also John M. Ford, but I'm sure I clued in at some point. I'm sure I saw Mike on panels starting then too and made a point to.

I remember very much wanting to write a fan letter, but being shy, I'm not sure if I did. I also remember finally talking to him and him being very kind.

And somewhere in there at Minicon or Fourth Street or Reinconation, we got to talking and realized we both knew a lot of classic movies and obscure movies and TV and then we really got to talking . . .

And that conversation continued at parties, readings, conventions, wherever.

I pretty much always looked forward to seeing him and it was always a pleasure when I did.

[redbird]

wild_irises introduced me to Mike, some years ago, when they were both in New York working on a gaming project (at least, I know he was, she might have been working on something else), and I ran into them on our way to a science fiction reading at Dixon Place. I'm not sure what year it was; I'd already met you, I know.

And I'm not sure when I started reading his fiction; I suspect I started with How Much for Just the Planet?, then picked up the collection At the End of the Twentieth Century. rysmiel insisted that I had to read The Dragon Waiting and was right.

[zeekar.livejournal.com]

Cue the standard "Trek-novel-reading fan blown away by The Final Reflection" story. Several friends and I were all mightily impressed by Mr. Ford's (never met the man, so I can't bring myself to call him "Mike") ability to portray Klingons as simultaneously believable people and believable aliens...

We tried to come up with rules for klin zha (back before there were official ones (http://www.tasigh.org/takzh/) like there are today) and assembled our loosely-knit group of far-flung fans into a Klingon House.

Then, of course, came How Much for Just the Planet?. I had a roommate in college who was into musical theatre, especially the just-arrived Phantom of the Opera, but that novel largely responsible for my investigations into the comedic aspects (even though "musical comedy" is considered redundant for many people...)

My acquaintance with his writings ended there until this week. I remember hearing along the way vague rumors about him having been in poor health for a long time, and I remember discovering that he had approved some official rules for klin zha, and that was about it. Then I heard that he had passed away, and felt the loss somewhat more keenly than you might expect for all that. And since then I've been reading his commentary and posts on Making Light and wherever else I can find it, and finally understanding how much I missed out on. Especially the bit about never getting to tell him how sorry I am I missed out on it...

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

Since I read this post this morning, I've been trying to remember. I know that Mimi Panitch introduced me to Mike, and I think it was 1980. He was writing The Dragon Waiting at the time, so I guess it must have been. Mimi was beside herself with how good the book was, and how hard it was to keep him focused on finishing it.

[nbardsley.livejournal.com]

In 1986 I was in high school and working part-time at a bookstore. Naturally, there was a lot more time to skim the SF section and let the cover art and copy sink in. For some reason the cover of The Dragon Waiting stuck in my mind and eventually I bought a copy. I thought it was simply amazing.

(Looking backward, I wish I could recollect what I thought the book was about after that first reading; each time I read the novel, there's a little more understanding and a deeper appreciation. But each new reading overwrites the previous perception, and now I really wonder what I was thinking twenty years ago, because I don't remember being confused at all. Ignorance and bliss, I guess.)

The Star Trek novels were available, but I think that Web of Angels and Princes of the Air were harder to find by that point. In any case, I bought whatever John M. Ford novels I could, and loved them all. Ended up with a bound galley of Growing Up Weightless and remember the disappointment that it wasn't going to be released in hardcover.

Over the next handful of years, I became acquainted with a number of people via GEnie's SFRT, which led to driving halfway across the country for the last few 4th St. conventions. A kaleidescope of memories from then: meeting my hero John M. Ford who was so friendly and down to earth that it wasn't like meeting your Favorite Writer. Conversations on that second floor balcony between the rooms and function spaces where everybody ended up standing and talking for hours at a time, never quite getting to their destination because there was always a really cool conversation to be distracted by. One with him and Laurel K. about bad old SF movies where I learned about "Manos" The Hands of Fate as the worst bad movie ever. Another where he was talking about some silly rabbit thing he was working on for one gaming thing or another. (There's one of Elise M. sitting at a table with a bunch of small ceramic figures, casting them as different characters in various plays, ensembles, and pantheons.) I remember someone telling me apocryphally that the manuscript for the original short version of "Fugue State" was lost or damaged somehow, and JMF (I never knew him well enough to be comfortable calling him Mike) just sat down and wrote the long version from memory without looking at the Under the Wheels version. The first I ever heard about Aspects was at a FoM panel where he mentioned that clothes people wore would be an important facet of his next book.

--Nathan

[laurel]

Boy do I remember standing there at the Sheraton Park Place on that second level between the consuite and the function space. Now that you mention it, I remember Mike pulling out sheafs of paper to show us with that rabbit thing, I think. I'd forgotten about Manos coming up. I wish I could remember more, thanks for sparking a little bit more memory (and for your part in it all too, of course).

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Sometime, oh, in the late eighties, maybe '87, my friend Nasty Nick (very nice fellow really) insisted I read The Dragon Waiting, absolutely insisted. So I borrowed it and I kept it on my pile for a bit, because I didn't want to read it. It had a horrible cover -- the British horrible cover -- and it had the word "Dragon" in the title and yeech. Then Nick kept nagging me to read it and eventually I picked it up reluctantly one Sunday morning and read the first page, and some hours later I got up to put the light on and go to the bathroom and several hours after that I finished it. Then I rang Nick, it was late at night by then, and I said it was me, and he said "What?" and I said "I read it!" and he fell over laughing and saying "I told you so!" at the other end of the phone.

And then, for years, Nick and I found all the others and bought them for each other, including old copies of Asimov's with poems in, until I bought him the only copy of Casting Fortune ever to be imported to the Island of Britain (well, maybe not, but the only one I ever saw there) as a wedding present and his wife never forgave me.

Ah damn, I wonder if Nick knows, and I bet he doesn't because he isn't plugged into fannish lines of communication, and I'm going to have to tell him. Though he might have seen it in the Independent.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

As for many others, my first introduction was The Final Reflection. I read it shortly after it was published - that was near the end of the time when I read all Star Trek novels, because it was becoming apparent that the more they published, the fewer there were worth reading. Fortunately I hadn't stopped yet.

It was not too long afterwards that I started hearing how great The Dragon Waiting was, but already too late to buy the book new - at least I can't think why else I didn't buy it immediately. I bought a copy in a used book store in 1988, the first time I saw one.

Dragon ensured I was a raving JMF fanboy, and after that I bought everything new of his as soon as I was aware of it, and picked up Web of Angels and The Princes of the Air as soon as I found them.

I never met him - I had the chance at the 2004 WorldCon, as I went to "Ask Dr. Mike," but I am usually very neurotic about introducing myself to people (particularly people I might gush over), and, well...

But really, it didn't matter. I had much more experience of him online than I could have gotten there, on the Pyramid newsgroups and on Making Light, and it was all good.

--Dan Blum

[ckd]

The first of his work that I remember seeing was in Autoduel Quarterly 3/3, which as the "Winter 2036" issue would have been late 1985/early 1986.

While I began with his gaming writing and then moved to his Star Trek books and thence to his own-setting fiction, I don't consider it a case of "maturing" from one stage to the next. While I never played Paranoia and therefore missed Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues, I can still re-read that first story I ever saw of his and see the quality of the story apart from the Cool Gaming Ideas.

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

The first time I ever heard of John M Ford was in the old Shinders on Block E, when Will Shettery grabbed The Dragon Waiting and informed me, correctly, that I wanted to buy it, despite the cover.

This can't be the real first time, because I knew who he was, but the first time I remember seeing him is when I got to join the circle of people passing around a few sheets of paper and laughing hysterically, and so had the privilege of reading Scrabble With God while Mike grinned at us all.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Ack, I made my reminiscence a separate post, failing to notice that everyone was commenting here.

I swear, I'll get the hang of the internet yet.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Is just fine. I have recently been told that there is no correct way to do grief, and I think that applies to this, too.

Let many conversations bloom, in other words. Likewise many posts.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I'd never read a Trek novel until after I found out Mike wrote one. I first saw him at "Ask Dr. Mike" during my first Minicon which, I think, was about seven years ago. Any man who could do funny improv with questions from the audience was someone I wanted to know, and know about. The first book of his I read was How Much For Just the Planet? and I sought out and read his others after that. I enjoyed talking to him both in person and on Making Light.

We had book group at the library yesterday and we're about half and half divided between fans and readers, so we were explaining about Mike to the readers and decided to add The Last Hot Time to the next slot in our reading schedule -- probably next year.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

The first I noticed of John M. Ford was his book, Web of Angels, about which my friend Ole Kvern was raving. (I never actually got around to reading it until a few years ago.)

The first I noticed of Mike Ford was hearing from people who had come home from the 1982 ChiCon the "Remember, Jerry, you kill it, you eat it!" story.

I got to know him personally in the early '90s, when Debbie was making frequent trips to New York to work with Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan on various gaming projects. I'm a bit vague on precisely when, but it was before Mike got together with Heather Wood.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I think the first I remember reading of his work was in the early eighties, in Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine. He wrote a bunch of alternate universe stories. I bought his Web of Angels, Princes of the Air, and The Dragon Waiting, then lost him for a while until the late nineties when I discovered he was doing the odd bit of work for Steve Jackson Games, and posting often to their newsgroups. Got the two Star Trek novels, lost him again when he slackened off the SJG posts, discovered him again posting all sorts of odd and entertaining stuff at Making Light. Oh, somewhere about the mid-nineties I bought Growing Up Weightless as well.

Never had any personal contact with him, but he was always an entertaining read. I'm sorry he's gone.