John M. Ford

5 Quotations from John M. Ford
gravity well n. | 1987 | How Much for Just the Planet? 36 They’re headed straight for the surface… Any deeper in the gravity well and the tractors won’t be reliable.
ion gun n. | 1979 | Stone Crucible in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Aug. 62 Ye canna shoot me with an ion-gun.
space lane n. | 1980 | On Playing Rôles: Third Look in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 51 If they players would rather explore one world in detail than flit among a hundred, build one without a starport, far off the space lanes.
superheroine n. | 1979 | Mandalay in Asimov’s Science Fiction Oct. 45 At the head of the column stood a woman in black, a superheroine who kept some of her powers, Charlie Brunner. (Charlene? Charlotte? Maybe before the Fracture. But here, Charlie.)
Tau Cetan n. | 1979 | Adventure of Solitary Engineer in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Sept. 118 ‘Watson, you see, but you do not—oh, forget it. Indeed it is a bottle, Watson; a bottle that once held Chateau Ganymede ’86, fermented from subsurface fungi on Jupiter’s moon, a vile concoction. I keep mine in a radioactive-ash-scuttle. There is your murderer.’ ‘You mean Bruce Dee was drunk.’ ‘As the proverbial Tau Cetan, Watson.’