The opening chapters introduce us to three of our major characters. And, of course, to see if the Suck Fairy had visited the poor book. But I did have a copy of The Dragon Waiting, so I thought I would give it a look over to see what all the fuss was about. So despite Roz keeping telling me that Ford was the best of us, I’d never actually read anything by him.

I wasn’t reading a huge amount of SF&F in ’84, and was generally only up to date when Marc Gascoigne thrust a book in my face and told me to read it. It is a great story in itself, and also gives a real sense of how loved Ford was by his peers.įor additional context, the other novels on the World Fantasy short list that year included George Martin’s Armageddon Rag, Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, and RA McEvoy’s Tea With the Black Dragon (the only cross-over with the Hugo, which was won by David Brin’s Startide Rising). Click through on the link above for the full story of how his literary estate became lost, and how it was recovered. Someone born in that year would be in their mid-thirties now.įord died in 2006. For historical context, that’s the year before Neuromancer won the Hugo. Ford is most famous for a book called The Dragon Waiting, which won the World Fantasy Award in 1984. Many of you could have been forgiven for saying, “who?”, and wondering why the likes of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Neil Gaiman and Roz Kaveney were so excited.

Back in November, SF&F Twitter was all abuzz with the news that Beth Meacham of Tor had done a deal with the estate of the late John M Ford.

The dragon waiting by john m ford