The Disappearance of John M. Ford

[james_davis_nicoll]

John M. Ford to return to print.

Comments

[philrm]

So happy to see this. My SFBC edition of The Dragon Waiting is one of my most treasured books.

[(Anonymous)]

This is excellent news! It's still tragic that his life was cut so short, but at least another generation can experience is work.

--
Nathan H.

[kaffy_r]

This made my otherwise not-particularly-fantastic Friday so much brighter!!

[jsburbidge]

Yay!

I actually have seven books by Ford, but this will allow me to fill in a few; plus, of course, there's the new material.

My guess is it would take teams of determined unicorns to get the Star Trek franchise to republish How Much For Just The Planet?, though ISFDB tells me it stayed in print for twelve years.

[dewline]

Is it not still available in e-book form?

But perhaps with this deal with the estate in play, with people who can now be contacted and negotiated with anew...?

[graydon]

My understanding is that whatever Paramount tentacle owns the rights (Pocket?) straight up owns the rights.

My understanding is also that they'd really rather neither ever see the light of day; the "these are the rules" lists got a lot longer after each of Ford's Trek books. ("No using the series characters as walk-on bit parts in the framing story for something else entirely...") Plus The Final Reflection is sort of ur-canon for Next-Gen Klingons; it's not actually canon as such but you can see the source and direction and splash patterns of the stupid-solvent all the same. Reprinting it isn't especially in their IP interest; there's zero question about who owns what but in these days of HBO vs Netflix Ford's Klingon Empire would have to be nigh-irresistible for the lavish series treatment.

[jsburbidge]

Oddly, I've seen The Final Reflection second-hand several times, but the only copy of HMFJTP? I've seen was the one I read in the Merrill Collection.

I think Paramount wants to pretend that one never happened.

[dewline]

I checked the publisher catalogue. Still available as e-book.

[graydon]

Star-Trek as genre-aware musical comedy? as arguably prematurely anti-capitalist musical? as absolutely one hundred percent pure-quill organic free-range slapstick? As a narrative where the plantside plucky insurgents arguably win outright?

I can see how they'd want to avoid that one gaining wide currency. Someone might expect them to do it, and it'd be something of a challenge.

[mindstalk]

It and many other Star Trek novels are available as DRM-free ebooks on Google Books and presumably Kindle; Simon and Schuster has committed to publishing its ST novels and its Saga line of SF without DRM.

[jsburbidge]

I am happy to see it - I checked a while back (a year or two) but they had not done so at that time, but on looking this morning I see that it's been added.

The "Book 36" directly under the title in the Google Play store is a good indication that they're bringing back the series as a series.

[(Anonymous)]

This is fantastic news. My copy of the Dragon Waiting fell apart years ago, and I've lost a couple other books due to moving. I can't wait to see what gets reprinted.

[dragoness_e]

This is awesome!

[ba_munronoe]

The only Ford I have is "Heat of Fusion", so I will need to open up some more shelf space. I'm not keeping much in one of the kitchen cabinets, after all...

[ravenskyewalker]

Wow, that's amazing news, and thanks for linking to the article.

[ethelmay]

Who gets the royalties?