John M. Ford


John Milo "Mike" Ford was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet.
A contributor to several online discussions, Ford composed poems, often improvised, in both complicated forms and blank verse; he also wrote pastiches and parodies of many other authors and styles. At Minicon and other science fiction conventions he would perform "Ask Dr. Mike", giving humorous answers to scientific and other questions in a lab coat before a whiteboard.

Life

Ford was born in East Chicago, Indiana, and raised in Whiting, Indiana. In the mid-1970s he attended Indiana University Bloomington, where he was active in the IU science fiction club and Society for Creative Anachronism ; while there, he published his first short story "This, Too, We Reconcile" in the May 1976 Analog.
Ford left IU and moved to New York to work on the newly founded Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, where, starting in mid-1978, he published poetry, fiction, articles, and game reviews. Although his last non-fiction appeared there in September 1981, he was tenth most frequent contributor for the 1977–2002 period. About 1990, he moved to Minneapolis. In addition to writing, he worked at various times as a hospital orderly, computer consultant, slush pile reader, and copy editor.
Ford suffered from complications related to diabetes since childhood and also had renal dysfunction which required dialysis and, in 2000, a kidney transplant, which improved his quality of life considerably. He was found dead from natural causes in his Minneapolis home on September 25, 2006, by his partner since the mid-1990s, Elise Matthesen. He was a prominent member of the Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library, which established a John M. Ford Book Endowment after his death with the donations to be used as interest-generating capital for yearly purchase of new books.

Work

Though Ford's novels varied in setting and style, several were of the Bildungsroman type: in Web of Angels, The Final Reflection, Princes of the Air, Growing Up Weightless, and The Last Hot Time, Ford wrote variations on the theme of growing up, learning about one's world and one's place in it, and taking responsibility for it – which involves taking on the power and wisdom to influence events, to help make the world a better place.
Ford's 1983 book for FASA's influenced later Paramount productions. Ford authored the award-winning adventure The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues for West End Games' Paranoia role-playing game.
Ford used a variety of styles to suit the world, characters, and situations he chose to write about. Author and critic John Clute wrote in the 1993 Encyclopedia of Science Fiction that "two decades into his career, there remains some sense that JMF remains unwilling or unable to create a definitive style or mode; but his originality is evident, a shifting feisty energy informs almost everything he writes, and that career is still young." Ford always surprised with his ability to use a variety of styles that best suited the world, characters, and situations he had chosen to write about. As an example of his originality, in the comedic How Much for Just the Planet?, the Enterprise crew compete with a Klingon crew for control of a planet, whose colonists are not happy with this and defend their peace in inventive ways, which soon make everything a farce, including a Vaudevillian pie fight. The book includes song lyrics that satirize many 20th century stage musicals.
Ford's widely varying contributions may have led to his underestimation by readers, but he was much respected by his fellow writers, editors, critics and fans. Robert Jordan, Ford's lifelong close friend, called Ford "the best writer in America – bar none." Neil Gaiman called Ford "my best critic … the best writer I knew." Patrick Nielsen Hayden said "Most normal people had the slight sense that something large and super-intelligent and trans-human had sort of flown over... There would be a point where basically the plot would become so knotted and complex he would lose all of us."
It was announced in November 2019 that Tor Books had reached an agreement with Ford's family to reissue all his published works, starting in 2020 with The Dragon Waiting.

Books

With Darrell Schweitzer and George H. Scithers, Ford co-authored On Writing Science Fiction , a writers' manual with advice illustrated by short stories that were first sales to IASFM.

Short works and poetry