The Heat of Fusion

The Heat of Fusion is a collection of John M. Ford's short stories and poetry. It's marvellous, though (as is usual for Ford) the writing is dense and often ambiguous in meaning.

Ford seems to like a sort of political-psychological story; many of his works are about revolutionary psychology and its darker, more Orwellian elements.

In "Chromatic Aberration," one of the best works in the book, the revolt has succeeded; and part of the new regime's cultural revolution is the invention of new colors. The author claims, with all sincerity, that the revolution has changed human psychology and perception so completely that people can now see real colors; whereas the colors we saw before were just reactionary illusions. The story is creepy in its understatement; Ford creates the impression of a nightmare society without ever actually "breaking character" and telling us about the horrors that may be going on in it.


More lightly, here's one of his sonnets:

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Janus: Sonnet

Sufficient time for faith and miracles
We find we cannot fit into our days;
And nothing's left at all that joyous dwells
Inside the heart. The spark of spirit stays
Too small for dreamburst, and all earth may prove
Inadequate for art. No human is
This potent all alone, and fear kills love...
Love kills fear, and alone; all-potent, this.
No human is inadequate for art,
For dreamburst; and all earth may prove too small.
The spark of spirit stays inside the heart
That joyous dwells, and nothing's left at all
We cannot fit into our days. we find
For faith and miracles, sufficient time.

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It's a sort of sonnet palindrome: everything in the second half is perfectly reversed to achieve a meaning the exactly opposite to the first half.


Ford's work is terribly underrated; he was one of the most literate and capable science fiction writers to ever work in the field.