Line #8 Creator/JohnMFord


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/johnmford.jpg]]
2	->''"Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight."''
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4	John M. Ford (1957 - 2006) was an SF writer, game designer, and poet, noted for his intelligence, wit, and originality. This last was in a sense also his greatest weakness, since a writer who never repeats himself can be very hard to market effectively, and he never achieved the fame many feel he deserved. No less than Creator/NeilGaiman and Creator/RobertAHeinlein were great admirers of Ford and his work.
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6	Probably his widely-known work is in a sense his least original -- two novels in the Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse, but even here he broke new ground: ''Literature/TheFinalReflection'' is a historical novel of the early years of Federation-Klingon interaction, with a Klingon as its hero, and ''Literature/HowMuchForJustThePlanet'' is a musical comedy. He also co-wrote the Klingons sourcebook for [[{{Creator/FASA}} FASA's]] ''Star Trek'' TabletopRoleplayingGame, which was for a time the most complete and in-depth source on Klingon language and culture available. Much of it has been OutdatedByCanon since the screen canon got serious about exploring Klingon culture, but there are still fans who think Ford's version was better, and not just in the sense that there will always be fans who think the old version was better. Even so, many feel that Ford's explorations directly influenced the evolution of the canon Klingons into their modern, honor-driven pseudo-Samurai form.
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8	Ford's other work in the realm of RPG design includes several sourcebooks for ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'', and the classic ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' supplement, ''The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues'', and two ''TabletopGame/CarWars'' related short stories (with game stats) "Street Legal" and "Alkahest" for Creator/SteveJacksonGames's in-house gaming magazines ''The Space Gamer'' and ''Autoduel Quarterly'' respectively.
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10	Notable poems include the sonnet "[[http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/003789.html#29472 Against Entropy]]" ("Regret, by definition, comes too late; / Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate."), the multi-award-winning narrative poem "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station", and the September 11 tribute "[[http://nielsenhayden.com/110.html 110 Stories]]". "Against Entropy" is cited as an example of Ford's extemporaneous brilliance: it was written and published ''less than eight hours'' after a prompt by one of Ford's editors.
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12	And we haven't even scratched the surface of his original novels, which include ''Web of Angels'', which did {{cyberpunk}} before cyberpunk was cool; ''Literature/ThePrincesOfTheAir'', a SpaceOpera featuring a trio of con men; ''Literature/TheDragonWaiting'', an AlternateHistory political thriller that won a World Fantasy award; ''The Scholars of Night'', a UsefulNotes/ColdWar thriller; ''Growing Up Weightless'', a Philip K. Dick Award winner that's been described as one of the best Heinlein juveniles Creator/RobertAHeinlein never wrote; and ''The Last Hot Time'', a UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} gangster story set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture in which half the characters are elves.
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14	[[https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/john-ford-science-fiction-fantasy-books.html Mike Ford vanished into obscurity]] after his tragic and untimely death in 2006. He left no will, his agent disappeared, and almost all his books fell out of print. Beginning in 2019, however, new agreements with his family brought his work back to life: Both ''The Dragon Waiting'' and ''The Scholars of Night'' came back to print, and his final unpublished novel ''Aspects'' is being published in April 2022.
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16	Absolutely no relation to the acclaimed film director Creator/JohnFord.
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18	!!Works by John M. Ford with their own pages include:
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20	* ''Literature/TheDragonWaiting''
21	* ''Literature/TheFinalReflection''
22	* ''Literature/HowMuchForJustThePlanet''
23	* ''Literature/ThePrincesOfTheAir''
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25	!!John M. Ford's other works provide examples of:
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27	* AmnesiacDissonance: Self-inflicted in the short story "Erase/Record/Play", in which the scientists experimenting on prisoners in a concentration camp give everyone - victims, guards, and tormentors - the same experimental memory-wiping drug, and mix themselves into the general population to avoid punishment when the liberators come. They can't be coerced or tricked into revealing their guilt, because even they don't know if they're guilty.
28	* AnachronismStew: In "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"
29	* ChainedToARailway: In "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"
30	* CoolTrain: ''Growing Up Weightless'' includes a long sequence set on a railroad on the Moon. Ford explained the design and his reasoning behind it in his essay "To the Tsiolkovsky Station."
31	* DoubleMeaningTitle: "Fugue State," one of Ford's most challenging novellas, is a psychological horror piece featuring mind-wiped characters with uncertain identities. The story follows the structure of a musical fugue.
32	* TheFairFolk: In ''The Last Hot Time''
33	* {{Fictionary}}: "Klingonaase", the Klingon language featured in ''The Final Reflection'' and the FASA role-playing game.
34	* MagicPoweredPseudoscience: In "Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues", R&D scientist Willis-G-EEP-4's inventions work well on the test bench, but fail when used in the field when he isn't around. That's because their success depends on his mutant powers of Minor Telekinesis and Luck.
35	* MeaningfulRename: All the human characters in ''The Last Hot Time'' have one in their backstory, except the protagonist, who being the NaiveNewcomer gets his during the course of the story. (Interestingly, the narration continues to refer to him by his old name for a couple more chapters, until he's settled in to his new identity.)
36	* NaiveNewcomer: The protagonist of ''The Last Hot Time''
37	* PublicDomainCharacter: Myth/KingArthur and co. in "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"
38	* SafeWord: Appears in ''The Last Hot Time'', as the hero learns about BDSM.
39	* ScrabbleBabble: The short story "''TabletopGame/{{Scrabble}}'' With God" uses this trope with a twist. "It isn't that He cheats, exactly." But any word He plays is a real word -- even if it wasn't a minute ago. And He's not above ''un''creating things in order to be able to challenge His opponents' words, either...
40	* TimeCrash: Ford's "Alternities" stories are set in a multiverse where a major Time Crash (called the Fracture) has occured, and the survivors of Alteco are trying to pick up the pieces.
41	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The setting of ''The Last Hot Time''.
42	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: A fight with the new editor of the Star Trek line torpedoed Ford's plans for a sequel to ''Literature/TheFinalReflection''. He did go on to write ''Literature/HowMuchForJustThePlanet'' (which contains some bitter swipes at Paramount), but afterwards he never wrote another Star Trek novel.

Context Creator / JohnMFord