John M. Ford (1957-2006) was a science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet whose work was held in high regard by peers ranging from Neil Gaiman to Robert Jordan to Jo Walton to Roger Zelazny, alongside innumerable others. His novels include the World Fantasy Award-winning The Dragon Waiting, the Philip K. Dick Award-winning Growing up Weightless, and the contemporary thriller The Scholars of Night. His debut novel Web of Angels (1980) has been called “cyberpunk before there was cyberpunk.” He spent the latter decade-and-a-half of his writing life in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
John M. Ford was, in his lifetime, a favorite author of many writers better known than he was, including Neil Gaiman and Robert Jordan. He won World Fantasy Awards for both his novel
The Dragon Waiting and his poem "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station," and he won the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel,
Growing Up Weightless. His Star Trek™ novel,
The Final Reflection, essentially created the nuanced Klingon culture seen later in the feature films, and his other novel in that universe,
How Much For The Planet?, was a Star Trek™ tale told as a Gilbert&Sullivan musical, complete with songs. He was a genius. He died in 2006.
Francis Spufford is the author of several highly praised books of nonfiction, including his debut, I May Be Some Time, which won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize, and a Somerset Maugham Award. It was followed by The Child That Books Built, Backroom Boys, Red Plenty (translated into nine languages), and Unapologetic. His first novel, Golden Hill, won the Costa First Novel Award. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge.
