John M. Ford
John M. Ford (known to his friends as Mike) died September 25th, 2006.
He was a splendid writer, an amazing and witty raconteur, and the man I would most want on my team in a trivia contest. His brain was filled with a staggering amount of information on, as near as I could tell, every topic under the sun. All more or less organized and readily accessible.
I sometimes felt a mild trepidation when he visited the store, not because the visits were unpleasant, but because I would have to shift my tired work-clogged brain into a completely different gear, and then floor it to try to keep up with a conversation that was simultaneously invigorating and exhausting.
And he never once, in the twenty years I knew him, said or did anything to suggest that he'd noticed that his brain was so much bigger and shinier than mine. And that is a rarer quality than one would wish amongst the writers and science fiction fans of the world.
He was also the mastermind behind the perennially popular
Ask Doctor Mike panel at local conventions, at which he would, armed only with his wits, some chalk, and a chalkboard, field questions about damned near anything from the audience. (Some of whom had clearly spent the interval since the previous panel thinking up real stinkers.) It was a dazzling display of quick wits, humor, and really serpentine logic.