Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Tor is planning to reissue everything by John M. Ford that they can get the rights to--which, as I was delighted to learn yesterday, is almost everything except Mike's two Star Trek novels.

The Trek novels are still "in print," in kindle editions for reasonable prices: $4.99 for The Final Reflection and $8.99 for How Much for Just the Planet?

Tor has also kept The Last Hot Time and Heat of Fusion (short story collection) in print, but The Last Hot Time is a trade paperback for $18.99 and Heat of Fusion is hardcover, at $22.99.

Much of this batch is stuff I picked up at Wiscon: after getting stuck without enough reading because of a delayed flight on my way out, I stopped in the dealer's room and got, not only one book I was specifically looking for, but five used books for a dollar each, semi-randomly. (I declined a couple of things because I knew I didn't like the writers, and didn't buy anything I'd already read.) [There are some spoilers here, specifically for Lee Killough's Deadly Silents; Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After; and possibly James White's Tomorrow Is Too Far and Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season, but I'm cutting mostly for length.]( Read more... )

Most of my friends already know this, but elisem has asked that we (re)post the link. The John M. Ford memorial is in Minneapolis this afternoon.

I'm in New York, but I'll be thinking of Mike, of Elise, and of the other friends who are gathering to remember him and take care of each other.

I had already decided to donate to the Minneapolis Public Library's John M. Ford Book Endowment, because it's something beneficial I can do in Mike's memory now (I signed my organ donor card, but hope that won't be relevant any time soon, and by definition I won't be around to know about it). Then papersky offered, among other incentives, that for a donation of $100 or more she'd put the donor's name into a book:

If your name works as Greek, Latin, Carthaginian or Lizardman, then into Our Sea, otherwise into Half A Crown.

Or, if you prefer, I can translate your name into Greek, Latin, Carthaginian or Lizardman.

I asked her to translate my name, and noted that while "Vicki" is Latinate, I had a preference for Greek. She noted that the Romans wouldn't have used "Victoria" as a name for a human, but the Greeks did use Nike. The name Jo came up with is, she says, not an actual Greek name, but it sounds entirely plausible: Rhodonike, Victory of Roses.

[I don't know if Jo's offer is still open: her most recent auction update post said at least through this past Monday. But the library will still be happy to accept donations.]

We were discussing where to go for dinner at a convention, I think the Farthing Party. Nothing noteworthy, except that "we" included Mike Ford; I think I had exactly one at-con meal with Mike, which was him, elisem, me, and L WINOLJ, and we ate in the hotel coffee shop. Elise wasn't in this dream, but I'm not sure who was (maybe if I'd posted when I woke up, not over a day later). I don't recall Mike turning up in my dreams before, but I rarely remember my dreams.

In the elevator today, we met a neighbor I basically like (she used to play cello for cats [1] and now teaches elementary school), and I asked her to witness me signing my donor card, along with cattitude.

I've also made sure that both cattitude and my mother (who would be my next of kin after him) know, and agree with my choice. (My other partners also know and agree—I know at least one of them is also signed up—but they're not legally recognized as kin for this purpose. Still, if the idea bothered either of them, I'd have discussed it further before going ahead.)

It's a small thing. No. That's not it. When it has any effect, it's a large one, but a lot more people sign organ donor cards than become donors after they die. For me, it's an easy thing to have done: it didn't take much time, and it costs me and my family/heirs nothing at all. [I say "for me" because I know there are people with religious concerns connected to this, but none of those who might be affected by my decision found it problematic.]

I'm doing this for strangers, but I'm doing it in memory of Mike (John M. Ford), and to pay forward the anonymous stranger who left him a kidney.

[1] Actually, she played cello for Cats: she was in the orchestra for the musical, but even long-running musicals close eventually.

I didn't know Mike as well as I'd have liked, but I did get to spend time with him, either listening to him on panels or as the delightfully funny "Ask Dr. Mike," or in company with elisem.

The last few times I saw him, Mike was wearing an enamel lapel pin, with a good depiction of the human kidney. A fitting thing, for someone with a kidney transplant, but Mike thought of it and many others didn't. When Mike got the new kidney, he said that a good friend of his whom he had never met had just died. And he was still in the hospital when he got a friend to bring him a steak-and-kidney pie.

This past Wiscon, adrian_turtle and I kept Elise and Mike company for a quiet dinner in their hotel room, and then we all helped her set up for her haiku earring party: quiet and companionable, talking for a while, then slicing cheese from the Farmer's Market and assembling furniture.

I missed Mike last weekend, at the Farthing Party: not because he'd said he'd be there, but because elise was, and because there was an Asterisk panel, and he was part of, and part of the reason for, the first of those, a few Minicons ago.

A few Wiscons ago, I'd been working on an earring haiku. Well, it started as a haiku. The Sunday evening, L (who is not on LJ), Elise, Mike, and I had dinner. I sat across from Elise, who helped me work on what had become a prose poem, while Mike and L sat across from each other and discussed theatre. It was a remarkable blending/overlap of conversations.

Mike had the same gift papersky does, of writing poetry that fits into a conversation. Not the only kind he wrote, or that she does: Mike also wrote about love and the ways we defy entropy, and his memorial poem 110 Stories is all over the Web.

There are friends and loved ones we expect to outlive, for whatever reasons: we're younger, they have health problems, we think ourselves immortal. But that expectation doesn't make it less of a shock, or less painful.

pegkerr pointed me at this group of photos of Mike, many with his eyebrows raised, alone and in groups. It helps.

We've lost another of the good people: Mike Ford was an excellent writer and a real mensch.

My world feels a little smaller all of a sudden, and my heart goes out to elisem and the other people who knew and loved him well.

I picked up adrian_turtle's copy of Fugue State, by John M. Ford, this afternoon. I've been reading it in bits, in between helping her carry stuff around her lab, dinner, and such. The structure of the story seems to go with that.

When I got to the end, I said, quietly, "Mike, you are a strange man."

I've been reading too many things that have unreliable narrators, or are about the inherent unreliability of narrative, or both. I'll have some things to say about Alison Bechdel's excellent memoir Fun Home in a day or five, and I'm most of the way through Midnight's Children.

Rereading Sorcery and Cecilia between the Bechdel and the Ford was rather a relief.