John M. Ford

[mneme]

You know why John M. Ford kicks ass? Not only does he write really cool sf and fantasy, and such, and write really well, he's one of the few writers, anywhere, who writes stories about gamers.

Not The Player of Games' "because of your gameplaying skills, you're in this plot" or the gameplaying culture of Xanthony's "Proton" or the D&D-esque frame of the "Guardian of the Flames" novels, but characters involved in a novel who just happen to play games, like many authors have characters who happen to be musicians, artists, or writers -- like the historical gamers in Scholars of Night or the roleplayers in Growing up Weightles. And despite the roleplayers (so I'm told) in a Jim Bucher "Harry Dresden" novel, that's still -damn- rare.

The fact that the protagonist of another of his novels, _The Last Hot Time_, has a similar relationship with a different non-mainstream *cough* interest of mine doesn't lower him in my estimation one bit, mind.

Comments

[nightface.livejournal.com]

I very much agree. He writes great stuff and good gamers.

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

You know why John M. Ford kicks ass?

Ummm...because he's an IU alum? :-)

[merlinofchaos]

You mean either "Jim Butcher" or "Harry Dresden" =)

And yes, there's a group of role players that end up as low-power werewolves in those novels. Pretty funny, IMO.

(Of course, a character who was clearly one of my characters appears in those novels, so I'm very much biased towards them)

[selki.livejournal.com]

Now that is funny, I fixed the name in my head and never noticed, and although I've read several of the Harry Dresden books, I hadn't noticed (/remembered?) roleplayers.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Book 4 -- the Alphas are gamers.

[mneme]

Oops. Fixed, thanks. I presumably started out writing "Jim Bucher" and ended up wanting to write "Harry Dresden," hacing not realized that I started out trying to rite it the other way.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

He's also a kickass poet.

[mneme]

Dayim straight he is. In The Scholars of Night which I was reading when I started this and have now finished, he even manags to throw in Marlowean pastiche. Not as good as his full-piece stuff, but still pretty good.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

there are also the protagonists in Princes of the Air, who do tons of simulated computer space combat/role playing in their childhood and grow up to...

but that would be telling

[mneme]

Yah; don't -- I've got Princes of Air in my immediate trq (ie, in my backpack).