the first time

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

The first time I read John M. Ford was pretty early in his career, about 1979 I think, before he had published a novel. I had begun reading the prozines, buying them in corner stores. Asimov's under George Scithers published a good deal of Ford, including a series of stories about the Alternities corporation, and a group of folks who were stuck in the corridors of time, lost from their own historical reality. The first one I read was "Mandalay", and I was mesmerized. Later I used to beg Mike to collect the Alternities stories; he expressed affection for them, but said there was only about 35 or 40 thousand words of them (if I recall correctly), and that he'd have to write more to make it into a book, which he probably was never going to have time to do.

I met Mike when I was a feckless assistant at Tor, and he seemed almost endlessly willing to converse with me about science fiction, though he didn't know me and had no professional reason to be more than friendly in passing. He told lots of jokes and made lots of references that I didn't get, and he cheerfully backed up and explained them when I asked: I am grateful to him for getting me over the awful insecure habit of pretending to know what people are talking about when I don't.

Days that Mike was in the office were excellent, fun days. I wish I'd had more of them.