
The Disappearance of John M. Ford - apollinaire
https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/john-ford-science-fiction-fantasy-books.html
======
appleflaxen
the short version is that the author described his relationship with his
family as estranged, in part due to his domestic partner. When he died, the
family received the entire estate due to the absence of a valid will. When the
author tracked them down to find out why they prevented his works from being
published, his siblings denied they had, and implicated a publishing agent who
never responded to repeated attempts at communication. The agent never
received the messages, because she had left the industry.

So the resolution was putting the siblings (estate) in touch with a publisher,
and now the works will be published.

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schoen
I'm not very familiar with Ford's work, but I very strongly remember reading
his poem about the September 11 attack:

[http://nielsenhayden.com/110.html](http://nielsenhayden.com/110.html)

It's amazing.

~~~
rst
There's also this sonnet, composed on a whim in response to a half-joking
prompt:

    
    
      The worm drives helically through the wood
      And does not know the dust left in the bore
      Once made the table integral and good;
      And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
      Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
      A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
      The names of lovers, light of other days --
      Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
      The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
      But memory is everything to lose;
      Although some of the colors have to fade,
      Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
      Regret, by definition, comes too late;
      Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.
    

This is, as noted later in the thread, a person who once won a World Fantasy
Award for the poem on his self-published Christmas card (the absolutely
brilliant "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station", on line here:
[https://sigridellis.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/winter-
solstice...](https://sigridellis.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/winter-solstice-
camelot-station-by-john-m-ford/) ).

~~~
m463
that seems to be titled "Against Entropy" here:

[http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008033.html](http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008033.html)

~~~
rst
Also sometimes titled De Vermis, which is the title of the blog post that Ford
dropped the first comment
on:[http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/003789.html](http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/003789.html)

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pjc50
"Literary estate in unfavourable family hands" has been the obscure fate of a
lot of authors. Another reason to question why the heirs deserve the 70 years
of exclusive control after the author's death.

Also:

> Even if Ford had found a larger audience, though, his health problems and
> lack of insurance would have kept his finances on the thinnest of ice. “All
> it took was one bad infection and Mike would wipe out every penny he had,”
> Teresa Nielsen Hayden explained. “To be an adult about money would mean to
> be permanently impoverished, give up on books, give up on travel, give up on
> the things that made his life so much better. And so he didn’t.”

~~~
rst
It has, but in this case, the family was (by their own account) not so much
unfavorable, as clueless -- they say they inquired about getting the books
back into print, but asked Ford's former agent, who was in the process of
ghosting pretty much everybody and never responded. Meanwhile, the former
publishers would have loved to get the books back into print, and privately
complained bitterly about the supposedly intransigent family that was
preventing this, but it's really not clear how seriously they tried to ever
get in touch. Crossed wires all around.

I think the surest sign of everyone's actual intentions is that when the
reporter who was investigating this finally had contact information for
everybody, they wound up making a deal to get everything the estate had the
rights to back in print. (The exceptions to this are things like Ford's
utterly brilliant Star Trek tie-ins -- fanfic written by a master at the
height of his form -- to which the family never had the rights. Though
ironically, for that very reason, they're among the very few Ford works that
are still in print!)

------
gumby
Web of angels, written in 1980, describes the life of a hacker (cracker) on
the Internet.

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m463
> The Dragon Waiting ... > At the time, used copies of this mass-market
> paperback from 1985 started at $200 on Amazon. (It’s currently much more
> affordable.)

I suspect because of this article, Amazon shows no paperback copies, and only
a hardcover for $500.

~~~
mrec
Amazon UK is currently showing only one used paperback copy at £799 ($1036
USD). I have a horrible feeling I left mine behind in my last move.

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mrybczyn
Thanks! Added to reading list! I was glad to find that Robert Jordan had
supported him, and by transitivity - so did I :)

Also - a good argument for shortening the default time to public domain.

