So Long as Lowest Bidders Make OUR Parts
If I recall correctly, Camille Paglia once favorably compared Princess Di to Prince Charles by writing that every genuinely bright person reads everything she can get her hands on, highbrow or low. John M. Ford wrote everything there was to write, from sonnets to Star Trek novels. I knew him primarily as a poet, one of the few good ones working in “speculative poetry.” He achieved a measure of internet fame with his poem about the massacre at the World Trade Center in 2001, “110 Stories.” You would do well to find a copy of the Rhysling winner, “Winter Solstice, Camelot Station.” (I adapted the title of this entry from a line in his “SF Cliches” series of sonnets.) His fiction remains for me to discover.
The Making Light link above takes us to a small sampling of Ford’s ouevre. Henry Farrell laments, “I don’t think that he’ll ever get the recognition that he deserved; his gifts didn’t fit well with his times.” My hope, instead, is that the Long Tail bears him safely past oblivion. Because if the future won’t serve science fiction writers and speculative poets, the future is surpassingly ungrateful.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 27, 2006 @ 9:14 am
I’ve never read anything by him, despite doing most of my leisure reading in SF. I believe the people who say that he was a good or great writer, but as time goes on, the number of archived works of good or great writers is going to get larger as well, eventually making the discovery of any one of them by any individual reader more or less hit or miss. Even if I now go out and read his works, that just means, given my limited lifespan, that I’ll be missing out on whoever else I might have read in that time.
So I suspect that fewer and fewer will get the recognition that they deserve, either now or in the future. Only God can read them all.
Comment by Steve —
September 27, 2006 @ 10:22 am
That’s why Burgess Meredith should have worn contacts, Rich.
I know him almost solely through his comments at the Nielsen Haydens’ sites, but even so, he came across as a warm, smart, funny guy.
Comment by Jeremy Osner —
September 27, 2006 @ 10:30 am
I knew him only as a blog commenter, and I admired his comments. Every fan of The Muppet Show should check out his take on “The Rainbow Connection”.
Comment by Gary Farber —
September 27, 2006 @ 11:45 am
Mine briefly and inadequately here.
Comment by Avram —
September 27, 2006 @ 11:54 am
His fiction remains for me to discover.
.
What?! Then get yourself a copy of Growing Up Weightless! Now!
Comment by John Emerson —
September 27, 2006 @ 12:28 pm
If he’s unclassifiable, it might be to his long-term advantage. Generic writers stop selling when the genre becomes passe. A lot of the most durable authors are uncharacteristic of their era.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
September 27, 2006 @ 2:37 pm
I’ve spilled as many tears over Ford as over anyone I’ve personally never met. But I defy anyone who knows a bit about his history (eg that he was only 49 when he died) to read Elise M’s poem to him without breaking down.
Comment by Gary Farber —
September 27, 2006 @ 4:45 pm
“What?! Then get yourself a copy of Growing Up Weightless! Now!”
And thus we then argue for Scholars of Night and The Dragon Waiting, among others.
Comment by Michael —
September 27, 2006 @ 5:57 pm
He’s also the author of the single funniest RPG supplement ever. In 1985 he wrote The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues for West End’s Paranoia. Check out Greg Costikyan’s and Allen Varney’s comments on the man.
Comment by Eric Scharf —
September 27, 2006 @ 8:51 pm
My parents’ was the last generation that had the remotest possible grounds from which to lament that they hadn’t read everything “worth reading.” I have never experienced such guilt. While I sympathize with Ford’s survivors and regret the untimely end of such a brilliant mind, if Ford’s passing is going to be — as it so appears — the occasion for dozens of well-considered literary recommendations, well, hell, we all should have such a fine send-off.
To my knowledge, I’ve only read one of Ford’s works, and, owing to his relatively undistinctive name, I did not retain him as an Author Of Note. I have not forgotten, however, a single minute of the many hilarious hours that my friends and I spent with Ford’s PARANOIA scenario, “Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues.”
Role-playing games are a collaborative art, and they probably work best when the GM is also the scenarist. But YCBBB was fiendishly scalable to the precise amount of cruelty to which one’s players should be subjected, and the gags redound to Ford’s grasp of PARANOIA’s tribute to the two most misunderstood writers of the 20th century, Kafka and Orwell. To paraphrase a quote from an otherwise limp 7-11 burrito of a movie, YCBBB made me want to be a better GM.
I will certainly seek out Ford’s other works, if only to catch another glimpse of the beast.