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John Milo "Mike" Ford (April 10, 1957 – September 25, 2006) 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 (using the name Miles Atherton de Grey); 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

Ford's works were varied in setting and style. Several were of the Bildungsroman (coming-of-age) 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 spent part of his career working in other people's universes. His 1983 book The Klingons for FASA's Star Trek: The Role Playing Game had an influence on subsequent productions from Paramount. He also wrote a comedic novel set in the Star Trek universe called How Much for Just the Planet?, where the Enterprise crew compete with a Klingon crew for control of a planet whose unhappy colonists defend their peace in inventive and farcical ways. The book includes song lyrics that satirize many 20th century stage musicals.

Ford authored the award-winning adventure The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues (1985) 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 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."

After his death, almost all of Ford's work was out of print. The rights to his work had reverted to his legal heirs, but no one had managed to get in touch with them. After an investigation by a journalist, Isaac Butler, Ford's editors at Tor Books were able to reconnect with his family, and in November 2019 an agreement was reached to reissue all his published works, starting in 2020 with The Dragon Waiting.

Awards

2005 Origins Award for Role-Playing Game Supplement of the Year – GURPS Infinite Worlds 4th Edition

1998 Minnesota Book Award for Fantasy & Science Fiction

1993 Philip K. Dick Award – Growing Up Weightless

1991 Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement – GURPS Time Travel

1989 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction – "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station" (in Invitation to Camelot, edited by Parke Godwin)

1989 Rhysling Award for Long Poem – also "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"

1985 Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement – The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues

1984 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel – The Dragon Waiting

Nominations

2005 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection – Heat of Fusion and Other Stories

1996 Nebula Award for Best Novelette – "Erase/Record/Play" (in Starlight 1, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

1996 Theodore Sturgeon Award – also "Erase/Record/Play"

1995 Rhysling Award for Long Poems – "Troy: The Movie" (in Weird Tales, Spring 1994)

1991 Rhysling Award for Long Poems – "Bazaar Day: Ballad" (in Liavek: Festival Week, edited by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull) and "Cosmology: A User’s Manual" (in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January 1990)

1990 Rhysling Award for Long Poems – "A Holiday in the Park" (in Weird Tales, Winter 1988/1989)

1987 Nebula Award for Best Novelette (final ballot) – "Fugue State" (in Under the Wheel, edited by Elizabeth Mitchell)