Photos
Downloads
Order / Stream
Music Videos
Bios
Short
John G. McDaid is a science fiction writer, folk/filk singer-songwriter, and freelance journalist from Rhode Island. A 1993 graduate of the Clarion science fiction workshop, he sold his first short story, the Sturgeon Award-winning "Jigoku no mokushiroku" to Asimov's in 1995. In 2017, his songs won both the topical and "Iron Filker" contests at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest. In 2020, he took first place in the Common Fence Music Community Hoot. Trail Of Mars is his first solo studio album.
Medium
John G. McDaid is an award-winning science fiction writer, folk/filk singer-songwriter, and freelance journalist from Portsmouth, Rhode Island. He attended the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop in 1993, and sold his first short story, the Sturgeon Award-winning "Jigoku no mokushiroku" to Asimov's in 1995. His 1993 digital novel, Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, included two audio tapes, which The New York Times review called the work of "A mischievous guitarist and vocalist with a gift for the inimitable phrase."
His journalism has appeared in RIFuture and the Providence Phoenix. A student in the Newport MFA creative writing program at Salve Regina University, he teaches media theory courses at Roger Williams University.
Since his early retirement in 2016 from a day job in corporate communications, he has been writing full time and playing at folk venues and science fiction conventions, including a featured concert at Worldcon Dublin in 2019, and a first-place finish in the 2020 Common Fence Music Community Hoot. Trail Of Mars is his first solo studio album.
Long
John G. McDaid is a science fiction writer, folk/filk singer-songwriter, and freelance journalist from Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Born in Brooklyn, NY the year NASA was created, his surrogate parents were Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton (as he grew up, they morphed into James Tiptree, Jr., Thomas Pynchon, and Ursula Le Guin.)
He attended the Clarion science fiction workshop in 1993, and sold his first short story, the Theodore Sturgeon Award-winning "Jigoku no Mokushiroku (The Symbolic Revelation of the Apocalypse)" to Asimov's in 1995. His most recent story, "Umbrella Men," appeared on the cover of the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He is currently working on an alternate history novel set in the last weeks of WWII.
His most recent publication, "We Knew The Glass Man," an interactive fiction built in Twine, appeared in Cream City Review in 2019. He was an invited speaker at the ACM conference in Hof, Germany in September 2019, where he read from and was interviewed about the work.
Other publications include the Nebula-shortlisted "Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with diverse Variations for the Harpsichord with two manuals" in the January 2005 Fantasy & Science Fiction (which won the Media Ecology Association Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work, and was a Sturgeon finalist), and "The Ashbazu Effect" in the 2004 anthology ReVisions, which was a finalist for the 2005 Sidewise alternate history award.
In April 2019, he won second prize in the FilKONtario topical songwriting contest. In October 2017, he won both the topical and "Iron Filker" songwriting contests at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest.
In April 2017, MIT Press published Traversals by Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop, which features commentary and analysis of McDaid's pioneering hypertext novel Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse. The book grew out of a 2013 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to the Electronic Literature Organization for the preservation of early digital texts.
A theorist and practitioner in the field of hypertext narrative, he wrote one of the first hypertext novels, Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, a New Media Invision Award finalist, in 1993. As a member of the TINAC collective, he has written on digital narrative and spoken at dozens of colleges and conferences.
He helped create one of the first hypertext writing programs (within Expository Writing) at New York University in 1988. He taught writing and communication courses at NYU, Adelphi University, and the New York Institute of Technology during his 7 years in academia and served on the program committee for the ACM Hypertext conferences in 1999 and 2000. He attended Syracuse University and the New School University, and did doctoral work in Media Ecology at NYU. He is an MFA student in fiction at the Newport MFA at Salve Regina University.
Reviews
About Trail Of Mars
Portsmouth's John McDaid had just started working on a solo acoustic album when music venues shut for the pandemic. With musicians facing tough economic times, he re-envisioned the project and reached out to the folk community.
"I was able to work with musicians who would normally be tied up playing gigs every night," said McDaid. "But during the lockdown, they were uncommonly generous with their time, and we worked together to create something really amazing. They're not songs about the pandemic, but they are definitely of the times."
"Trail of Mars" was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Mark Dann, who's recorded folk and rock heavyweights like Ray Charles, Garth Hudson, Ellis Paul, and Steve Forbert. Behind the drums is Eric Parker, who recorded and toured with Steve Winwood, Joe Cocker, Bonnie Raitt, and Lou Reed. On bass is Craig Akin, the bassist for top Americana group Red Molly. Also from Red Molly, Abbie Gardner brings her fiery dobro and backing vocals to two tracks. Tracy Grammer adds violin and vocals on three tracks. On electric guitar and mandolin is Jim Henry, the in-demand session player who's toured with Grammer and Mark Erelli.
Winner of the John Culkin Award from the Media Ecology Association.
Tracklist:
- Lost In Translation5:08 *
- Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride3:56
- The Bottom Line3:25
- Sigmund Freud's 115th Dream4:29 ✕
- Down To The River5:13 *
- Into Thin Air4:42 ✕
- Gioconda Smile4:06
- Virus (A Heresy)3:53
- Trail Of Mars4:17
- Walking Off The Earth4:42 *
* Recommended · ✕ Explicit · Full download available to press on request
What's filk?
Filk is a musical tradition that draws on influences from the world of speculative fiction and its fans. What began as a typo more than 50 years ago in a program item announcing a concert has grown into a branch of folk music with its own songbook, conventions, and awards. McDaid is a four-time nominee for "Best Writer/Composer" in the Pegasus Awards, which recognize excellence in filk music worldwide.
Contact
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Lost In Translation
Virus (A Heresy)