Conference noted::sf

1118.0. "John Ford" by TECRUS::REDFORD () Mon Nov 09 1992 18:41

    John Ford's first novel, "Web of Angels" is back in print, so I
    thought I should enter a note about one of my favorite authors.
    
    "Web of Angels" came out around 1980, a time when SF
    was waking up to computers, and it remains one of the best books
    around about hackers.  It's a series of stories following the
    life of a master hacker in a galactic society linked by an FTL comm
    network called the Web.  Everything happens on the Web, and in
    fact, you have to be able to work with it before you are allowed
    off-planet.  It's protected by the Geisthounds,
    semi-intelligent programs that wander around the Web, looking for
    signs of tampering.  If they find it, they zero in on the source
    and put a million volts across the keyboard.  The novel follows
    the hacker from his childhood escape from the Web police,
    through his training, a tragic love affair, mature powers, and
    confrontation with the master of the Hounds.
    
    What's especially nice about the novel is that its plot is laid
    out at the beginning in a Tarot reading.  The fleeing child
    is given shelter by a fortune-teller, who lays out his life.  As
    you go through the book, he becomes each of the characters foretold.
    
    Ford's next book was "Princes of the Air", a novel about three
    boyhood friends who go their separate ways in an expanding
    interstellar empire much like Elizabethan England.  There's much
    derring-do and intrigue for the sake of the Queen.  There are
    even references to Shakespeare, where his style is adopted by
    diplomats as a deliberate means of seeming clear while being ambiguous.
    
    Ford is probably best known, though, for his first Star Trek
    novel, "The Final Reflection".  He pulls off the remarkable feat
    of drawing new themes and characters out of a setting that has
    been mined out for decades.  He does it by not referring to the ST
    characters at all, except for an appearance by Spock as a boy. 
    Instead, the entire story is told from the point of view of a
    Klingon captain.  The captain is an analog to Kirk in every way,
    being brave, bold, and constantly at odds with authority, but
    since he is a Klingon, he's also a ruthless killer.  In fact,
    there's an analog to the Star Trek TV show, a holo-show where
    every week the Klingon battleship "Vengeance" goes out to win new
    planets for the Empire.
    
    The captain easily knocks off the Federation ships that he
    encounters, but runs afoul of Klingon politics.  He becomes
    expendable, and so is sent on a doomed peace mission to the
    inscrutable humans of the Federation.  A human being will actually
    walk into a room full of other humans completely unarmed.  Who
    can deal with such creatures?  It's a refreshing change of view
    for the ST world, and highly recommended.
    
    Ford wrote another ST novel, "How Much For Just the Planet?",
    which was funny but rather minor.
    
    In my view, Ford's biggest and best book was "The Dragon
    Waiting", an extraordinary alternate history where magic works, 
    Christianity never arose, and Byzantium never fell.  It's set in
    what would be 1480 A.D..  It follows four characters: a woman
    doctor from Florence (who is a close friend of Lorenzo Medici), a
    Welsh sorceror, a Gaulish mercenary soldier (and secret follower
    of Mithra), and a German vampire (and artillery expert).  They come
    together in Britain to fight on the side of Richard III, who is
    here the honorable (but betrayed) rightful heir to the crown.  As
    you can tell, there are hints from our time-line everywhere.  The
    story ranges across most of Europe and is told with tremendous color 
    and depth.  
    
    Unfortunately, I haven't seen much from Ford recently.  I heard
    him at a con a couple of years ago (where he read a wonderful
    piece of verse that re-told "The Iliad" in terms of every
    Hollywood genre from slapstick comedy to spy thriller), but
    haven't seen any books by him in a while.  I hope he's working on
    something big.  In the meantime, keep an eye out for him,
    
    /jlr

  I second the recommendation for "The Dragon Waiting"--excellent book!
  Didn't Ford also write a fantasy book with actors as the main characters?
  Not sure if i read it or a related "prequel" short story...

								paul

    John M. Ford also wrote several short stories and novelettes in the
    Liavek shared-universe, to which the note about the actors is probably
    referring.
    
    He is also a medium-sized-name game designer, frequently working with 
    Steve Jackson Games.

Article: 673
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Subject: John M. Ford: Growing Up Weightless
Sender: [email protected] (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh, PA USA
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 1994 23:59:41 GMT
 
"Growing Up Weightless", which appeared as a trade paperback last year, is
now out in a mass-market edition -- and it's worth getting.  (Of course,
most books by John M. Ford are worth getting.)
 
It's a coming-of-age novel, and Ford uses it to do what coming-of-age
novels do best, which is to let the viewpoint character introduce the
reader to a milieu, and to reintroduce the reader to old problems in new
settings.  Ford does this with tremendous craftsmanship.
 
The milieu is the Moon -- in the twenty-second century a politically
independent entity.  It's hard to tell what Earth is like at this time:
We see Earth only through unknowledgeable and disinterested Lunar eyes, at
a time when Lunars are going through a phase of having a tremendous chip
on their collective shoulder, where Earth is concerned.  
 
This 'chip' is significant in part because it hints at the stresses in
Lunar society.  The Lunars think of their society as being comfortable,
stable (even stodgy), somewhat cozy.  To an extent they're right:  The
standard of living is high, Lunar society is well-educated, polite, and
conforming, and nobody seems to be rocking the boat.  Around the edges,
though, the reader can detect stress-marks.  Population is growing quickly
(in part due to an immigration which is a trickle from Earth's perspective),
young people are frustrated, and star-travel has left Luna something of a
backwater.  Almost universal (though not intrusive) monitoring and
surveillance are at odds with a high regard for privacy and for minding
one's own business.  And the need for water is pushing Luna towards
compromises they don't want to make.
 
Against this setting, Matt Ronay is going through troubles many bright
fourteen-year-olds have been through.  His world seems to offer him
nothing significant and worthwhile to do with his life.  His father's
importance overshadows and smothers him.  Relationships within his circle
of friends are showing stress-marks of their own.
 
The story proper centers around a plan Matt and his friends have evolved
to slip their traces and secretly sneak off for a week-long trip to farside
and back.  While story-telling conventions require that they encounter at
least one genuine crisis along the way, it is a tribute to Ford's skill
that he is able to keep the novel interesting while the travellers encounter
no more than the routine comforts and discomforts any travellers may expect.
(The crisis in question does conveniently solve some of Matt's immediate
problems, but this is not as remarkable as it would be if Matt's world
offered as little scope as he believes it does.)
 
I put this book in the class of books that are more concerned with
painting a portrait than with telling a story.  There is a story here,
with an interesting enough plot and interesting enough characters to carry
the book, but what I'll remember longest is the Lunar world in which the
story is embedded.
 
%A Ford, John M.
%T Growing Up Weightless
%I Bantam Spectra
%C New York
%D 1994 (trade edition 1993)
%G ISBN 0-553-56814-0
%P 261pp
%O $4.99
 
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected]  [email protected]
 
   The inability of snakes to count is actually a refusal, on their part,
    to appreciate the Cardinal Number system. -- "Actual Facts"