Remembering Mike

[elisem]

Here is the Making Light post about Mike's death and life and work. There are some lovely links there.

It's a day for remembering things. When I'm tidying the house, there will always be a voice quoting something about the dust being an integral part of his filing system, Mrs Hudson.

Anyhow, go look at the links to his works if you want to know some of the reasons a bunch of us are remembering him. Be warned that his work is in a whole bunch of different areas, and there's a constant feeling of "Wait, he did THAT too?" as one bounces from novels to gaming to poetry to music to a bunch of other things. 

In the list of alternate universes, there is one where Mike got to finish his Munchkin project, and saw it became an animated series, and got Margaret Cho to voice the character he wanted.

There's also one where he and I got to (would have gotten to? would get to, since it's still future but not this future?) do what he said we should do, sitting in our whatever-wheelchairs-will-be-called-when-we-were-80 holding hands and looking down at Earth. 

OK, yeah, I may be rather weepy today. Please be kind. The links in Making Light include many to other people's remembrances of him.

He was quite a Mike. I'm glad we had him for as long as we did.

OK, time to get going on the day, here. It ain't gonna seize itself. 

Do you have Mike memories, of his work or himself or both? Funny/sweet stories especially welcome.

Comments

[pameladean]

I think you know all my stories, obel. But one tiny thing: when we moved into this house and all got tired of taking three other people's phone calls, especially since several of us were working from home and so you had to sound vaguely professional if you answered the phone, we got the eensy voicemail system for small offices that we are still using in a glitchy form today. To get me, you needed to press 2. If Mike called me and got my answering machine, he would always say in a highly amused but also affectionate tone, "HelLO, Extension Two!"

P.

[ndrosen]

I spoke with him briefly, twenty-six and a half years ago, at Boskone. Years later, responding to an appeal from Lois McMaster Bujold on her email list, I made a donation to help him with medical expenses. I wish I had more personal reminiscences to share, but at least he added to my life by some of his stories and poems. Salute!

[naomikritzer]

My most vivid memory of Mike (who I did not know particularly well -- I was younger, newer to fandom, and a little bit in awe of him) is of sitting in Ask Doctor Mike, at Minicon the year that Octavia Butler was GoH, watching Octavia (who I was even more in awe of) just about fall out of her chair from laughing.

[carbonel]

On the Saturday just past, an online play-reading group I'm involved with read the Hooper translation Cyrano de Bergerac. And it gave me a certain feeling of melancholy but also pleasant memories, because the only other time I'd read that play was at a long-ago play-reading group with Mike taking the part of Cyrano.

[vass]

I remember your post when he got his new kidney. I registered as an organ donor because of it.

[ckd]

I think you've heard all of my Mike stories, and were there for most of them.

Though the one that I consider an affront to narrative causality you weren't there for! The affront, of course, being that I met him before you did which would not have happened in any rationally-written universe.

(I met him at my first-ever convention[1] during the Meet the Pros party; I recognized his name from a story he'd written in the Car Wars magazine Autoduel Quarterly and told him I'd enjoyed it. I hadn't brought it with me, so no autographs, but even at that age I was pretty sure telling an author you recognized their name from something you read and enjoyed was going to go over well. :-)

[1] The Boskone From Hell. Yes, really.

[azurelunatic]

Reading How Much for Just the Planet? was a revelation. "You can DO THAT with Star Trek?" I thought, having paused in the middle of my first, greedy, read of the book.

I still say "Someone give the captain a PIE!!!" at appropriate moments.

[mrissa]

I think I've told you all of mine, but maybe I haven't told you this one: that at David's 50th birthday party I'm pretty sure it was? I was sitting on the floor talking to Mike who was on the couch, and Mark was on the floor with me, talking animatedly, which is rare for Mark, and afterwards we got in the car and Mark said, that was a nice man on the couch, and I laughed and said, yes, he always is. And I waited until Mark was at a stoplight before I said, "That was John M. Ford." "WHAT," said Mark, and I was glad I had waited for the stoplight.

I drove past Woodville yesterday and ritually shouted, "PANTRIES!" and then "hi Mike." Before I went past Woodville regularly my greetings of Mike were mostly for the John M. Ford Memorial Wrong Turn by the downtown library and also for the park on the West River Road where we had that lovely fall picnic and he kept my godson, then age 2, from running headlong into the river ("I be--right back!" quoth godson, and Mike just quietly reached out and snagged the hood of his hoodie). I'm not sure he ever was in Woodville; I can't think of any reason he should have been. Lord knows I don't tarry. But every time I go through it, I think, "The Woodville is filling up with pantries," and of that poem of his.

I am writing a gender-bent generation-ship Richard III novella that has substantial disability themes and it is substantially for Mike.

[elisem]

It utterly delights me that you ritually shout "PANTRIES!" when driving past Woodville. For those who haven't seen the poem yet, here ya go:

#203 ::: John M. Ford ::: (view all by) ::: September 23, 2006, 12:14 AM:
The villanelle is what?

Enter Mr Jno. Ford (the Elizabethan one) as King Edward the Fourth.

I am the King now, and I want a sandwich.
This monarch business makes a fellow hungry.
I wonder where my brother Richard is.

What happened to the kippers left from breakfast?
Or maybe there's a bit of cold roast pheasant.
I am the King now, and I want a sandwich.

A civil war is such an awful bother.
We fought at Tewksbury and still ran out of mustard.
I wonder where my brother Richard is.

Speak not to me of pasta Marinara.
I know we laid in lots of boar last Tuesday.
I am the King now, and I want a sandwich.

The pantry seems entirely full of Woodvilles
And Clarence has drunk two-thirds of the cellar.
I wonder where my brother Richard is.

If I ran England like I run that kitchen
You'd half expect somebody to usurp it.
I am the King now, and I want a sandwich.
I wonder where my brother Richard is.

(I love the other stuff too, but "PANTRIES!" has had me giggling on and off since I read this.)