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# TERRY BISSON of the UNIVERSE

Science Fiction Writer

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- [Home](https://terrybisson.com/) - TERRY BISSON of the UNIVERSE, Bisson is an award-winning science fiction writer, mainly known for his short stories.
- [New Book from TB: Tomorrowing](https://terrybisson.com/tomorrowing/) - Tomorrowing Pages: 168,Published: May 2024 ORDER For twenty years, Terry Bisson published a regular “This Month in History” column in the science fiction magazine Locus. Tomorrowing collects these two decades of memorable events, four a month, each set in a totally different, imaginary yet possible, inevitable yet avoidable future. From the first AI President
- [NEW: The Outspoken and the Incendiary](https://terrybisson.com/outspoken-and-the-incendiary/) - The Outspoken and the Incendiary: Interviews with Radical Speculative Fiction Writers SKU: 9798887441214 Author: Terry Bisson Foreword by Jonathan Lethem Introduction by Nisi Shawl Afterword by Nalo Hopkinson Elegies by Rudy Rucker and Peter Coyote Series: PM Press ISBN: 9798887441214 Published: 08/05/2025 Format: Paperback Size: 6 x 9 | Pages: 416 Subjects: Literary Collections /
- [Carapans: First Photos of Earth’s Enigmatic “Aliens”](https://terrybisson.com/carapans/) - Photos by Rosalie Winard • Text by Terry Bisson “First Contact, the ancient and enduring dream of science fiction, is celebrated in these first photographs of the enigmatic Carapans who have apparently made our Earth their home. How long have they been here? What do they seek? The discovery of this colony on Long
- [A Literary Celebration of Terry Bisson](https://terrybisson.com/tomorrowing/city-lights/) - Outspoken and the Incendiary: City Lights and PM Press celebrate the life and work of Terry Bisson MC’d by Ramsey Kanaan and Peter Maravelis with Diana Block, Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, Nick Mamatas, Kim Stanley Robinson, Rudy Rucker, and Carter Scholz Terry Bisson was an author, editor, political activist and friend to
- [Terry Bisson Reads Billy’s Book Stories](https://terrybisson.com/billys-book-stories/) - Many thanks to Robert Kruger and Carter Scholz for these rare recordings. Billy and the Ants (8:47 minutes) https://terrybisson.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/BillyandTheAnts.mp3 Billy and The Fairy (10:38 minutes) https://terrybisson.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/BillyandTheFairy.mp3 Billy and the Bulldozer (6:18 minutes) https://terrybisson.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/BillyandTheBulldozer.mp3 Billy and the Unicorn (8:58 minutes) https://terrybisson.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Billy-and-the-Unicorn.mp3 Billy and the Spacemen (6:06 minutes) https://terrybisson.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Billy-and-the-Spacemen.mp3 Billy and The Wizard (11:43 minutes) https://terrybisson.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Billy-and-the-Wizard.mp3
- [Publishers and Colleagues Remember TB](https://terrybisson.com/publishers-and-colleagues-remember-tb/) - Publisher’s Weekly Remembers TB File 770 Remembers TB Locus Magazine Remembers TB Clarion West In Memory of TB Reactor Magazine, In Memoriam Boing Boing Obituary Black Gate Remembers
- [Tachyon Press Remembers TB](https://terrybisson.com/tachyon-press-remembers-tb/) - Goodbye to the exceptional Terry Bisson By Rick Klaw, Tachyon Reprinted from PM Press Blog All of us at Tachyon are saddened by the news of the sensational Terry Bisson’s death. Activist, editor, and writer Terry Bisson was the award-winning author of over 40 novels, numerous short stories, comic book adventures, and screenplays. His best known novels included Wyrldmaker (1981), Talking
- [Meg Elison Remembers TB](https://terrybisson.com/meg-elison-remembers-tb/) - Terry Bisson: Editor, Mentor, and Friend From the PM Press Blog By Meg Elison When I met Terry Bisson, I had thought he was already dead. I had just moved to the Bay, and someone told me about the monthly event with Tachyon Publications that he emceed: SF in SF. I was a brand-new writer,
- [Bill Ayers](https://terrybisson.com/bill-ayers/) - This piece was written during Obama’s first presidential campaign in response to the all the manufactured media hysteria about Obama’s Chicago connections to William Ayers and 60s radicals. The NY Times didn’t want it for an Op-Ed. Go figure. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE Conveniently forgotten in all the hoopla about Obama’s “terrorist pal” is
- [RSVP to the FBI](https://terrybisson.com/rsvp-to-the-fbi/) - In 1985 I was one of six members of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, three women and three men, subpoenaed to a federal grand jury investigating, not our work, but armed actions by comrades who were underground. Following the example of Puerto Rican Independentistas (and most Leftists historically) we refused to cooperate and were for some months political prisoners.
- [This Month in History](https://terrybisson.com/this-month-in-history/) - This Month in History is a regular feature in Locus magazine ...
- [Life & Works](https://terrybisson.com/life-works/) - The short version: Bisson is an award-winning science fiction writer, mainly known for his short stories, who lives in California. The Life & Works, below, is probably more than anyone wants to know. Terry Ballantine Bisson was born in Madisonville, Kentucky, and raised in Owensboro, 1942–1960. He attended Grinnell College in Iowa and the University of Louisville.
- [The Ballantines of Kentucky](https://terrybisson.com/the-ballantines-of-kentucky/) - We who call ourselves the Ballantines of Kentucky are all descendants (or married to or adopted by) of Tilden Hendricks Ballantine and Wilmot Austin Bewley of Rumsey and Calhoun in McLean County, Kentucky. We don’t call ourselves the Bewleys because marriage was (and still is) a patriarchal institution, and because we know less about them. The
- [“HAWK” DEBATE HEATS UP ](https://terrybisson.com/hawk-debate-heats-up/) - My most powerful science fiction story ever—caused a shouting match! Appeared in the the Feb. 1996 Linewaiter’s Gazette, the newsletter of the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, NY.
- [“DOWN BY THE BANKS OF THE OHIO”](https://terrybisson.com/down-by-the-banks/) - Bluegrass Music’s Family Reunion OWENSBORO, KENTUCKY, sits on a high clay bank of the Ohio River some170 miles north and east of the Mississippi, right before the bottomland begins to turn into the “knobs” outlying the low plateaus that mount like stairs east across Kentucky to the low wall of the Cumberlands, which are themselves
- [THE BLACK PATCH WAR](https://terrybisson.com/the-black-patch-war/) - It was, The New York Times reported with alarm, the first military occupation of an American city since the end of the Civil War, some forty years before.
- [Cover Copy](https://terrybisson.com/cover-copy/)
- [CONTACT](https://terrybisson.com/contact/) - If you want to reach me, please email using this form. Or contact my Literary & Media Representative, John Silbersack at The Bent Agency, New York, NY. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *Comment or Message *CommentSubmit
- [$10 a Day](https://terrybisson.com/10-a-day/) - Written for Nancy Kress, Nebula Awards collection, 2002. WRITING SF HUMOR: A LOOK AT THE NUMBERS Condensed from Writers Booty magazine. You can make up to ten dollars a day, writing and selling SF humor from your own home. Sound too good to be true? Read on! A partial phone survey (almost half—47.76%—don’t have phones)
- [GREET THE PRESS](https://terrybisson.com/greet-the-press/) - This TV play was written before Abu Ghraib, when the first evidence of torture was revealed in The Washington Post. It never found a publisher. Go figure. TWO GUYS IN SUITS; TV STUDIO. HOST Welcome, sir, to Greet the Press, public television’s answer to--well, whatever. Before we start rolling, perhaps we could go over
- [CARS](https://terrybisson.com/cars/) - An early elegy for the auto industry ... (Published in Automotive News Millennial Issue, Jan 1, 2000.) Detroit, We Have a Problem Look around. Cars everywhere. New, old, American, “foreign” (whatever that means, these days), econobox and SUV and urban cowboy pickup and gran turismo ... But wait. The cars themselves are not the
- [The Singularity](https://terrybisson.com/the-singularity/) - Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil and other SF thinkers predict a looming Singularity, when our technology outstrips us, our machines outthink us, and we awaken in a new and wonderfully (or dreadfully) unrecognizable world. My disagreement with this apocalyptic vision was published as an editorial in Postscripts magazine— The Singularity has already happened. We missed
- [A BAKER’S DOZEN](https://terrybisson.com/a-bakers-dozen/) - Helpful Hints for Writers 1. WRITE IN ENGLISH Other languages are hard to read 2. WRITE LEFT TO RIGHT Readers appreciate it 3. WRITE STORIES GIRLS LIKE They read more than boys 4. PUT IN ADVENTURE It “livens” things up 5. CORRECT BAD GRAMMAR AS YOU GO Why put it off? 6. SIT IN
- [Walter Miller](https://terrybisson.com/walter-miller/) - This was published as an Afterword to the Gallimard (French) edition of Miller’s Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. A CANTICLE FOR MILLER; or, How I Met Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman but not Walter M. Miller, Jr. I am a science fiction writer, a dicey business at best. In November, 1995,
- [Edward Abbey](https://terrybisson.com/edward-abbey-2/) - My appreciation of Abbey was published in American Rebels (Nation Books, 2003) edited by Jack Newfield. Edward Abbey (1927–1989) was the quintessential American: the Easterner who headed West, pulling up stakes and lighting out for the Territories, looking back over his shoulder only to make sure no one was following. He was also the quintessential
- [Billy Graham](https://terrybisson.com/billy-graham/) - My less-than-hagiographic profile of Billy Graham was published in American Monsters (2004) edited by Jack Newfield and Mark Jacobson Caesar’s Man Like many of the great American performers of his generation, Billy Graham got his start in vaudeville. Chicago’s Youth for Christ was designed to appeal to GIs back from World War II and kids
- [Peter Coyote](https://terrybisson.com/peter-coyote/) - The story of an old friend, commissioned for a special issue of “Common Ground” celebrating the California Bay Area’s progressive history and heroes. PETER COYOTE He came from the East and never looked back. Well, maybe once or twice. But California rang him like a bell. Growing up in Jersey, in the arms of a
- [E. R. Burroughs](https://terrybisson.com/e-r-burroughs/) - My introduction to the University of Nebraska Press (2002) edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Moon Maid. IT WAS, I believe, Harlan Ellison who pointed out, with not inconsiderable pride, that easily half of the most enduring fictional characters in modern culture have come to us from genre literature. Thus we have strutting across our stage
- [FRED POHL](https://terrybisson.com/fred-pohl/) - My introduction to the one-volume German edition of his HEECHEE SAGA (Gateway novels). Fred Pohl was there at the beginning, the Big Bang as it were, when what is today a vast commercial and cultural universe (some would say, wasteland) that includes film and TV as well as books and magazines, started as an improbable
- [John Brown](https://terrybisson.com/john-brown-2/) - This is from the October 2009 issue of Monthly Review. John Brown—150 Years After Harpers Ferry TERRY BISSON I dreamed I saw John Brown last night. No surprise. The old man is still very much with us. What some saw as his madness, and others as his martyrdom, is still discussed and debated, celebrated and
- [R.A. LAFFERTY](https://terrybisson.com/r-a-lafferty/) - A eulogy for one of our most overlooked and most influential writers. From LOCUS magazine. R.A. LAFFERTY (1914–2002) Though my friend Dan Knight was one of his many small press publishers, I only met R.A. Lafferty once, at the 1990 Worldcon. He was an old man. I sat beside him at the bar overlooking the
- [FIRE!](https://terrybisson.com/fire/) - This essay from a doctoral thesis, “Alternative History: The Development of a Literary Genre,” is the best and most politically savvy exegesis of my “John Brown” novel, FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN. What’s not to like?! Thanks to Ed McKnight for letting me post it here. Copyright 1994, Dr. Ed McKnight John A. Logan College (now
- [Cap ’n’ Trade](https://terrybisson.com/cap-n-trade-3/) - This little tale dramatizes the environmental and social benefits of Cap and Trade. It’s from my first collection, Bears Discover Fire (Tor). BY PERMIT ONLY “What about the environmental costs?” my boss asked. My boss, Mr. Manning, always thinks about the environment. He’s Personal Paints’ Environmental Control Officer. Every company has one these
- [DOCK OF THE WHAT](https://terrybisson.com/dock-of-the-what/) - If we are going to clean up the music business, we are all going to have to be diligent, attentive, uncompromising and cruel. A Radio Play // Terry Bisson FADE IN (MUSIC): “Sittin’ on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away.” SENATOR: That’s quite enough. (MUSIC CLICKS OFF) Thank you. There
- [60 Rules for Short SF (and Fantasy)](https://terrybisson.com/60-rules-for-short-sf-and-fantasy/) - Written for a SFWA how-to book, published in The New York Review of SF A “mainstream” short story can be about anything: a mood, a character, a setting, even a flashy writing style. A genre (SF or fantasy) short story is about an idea. The fictional elements (character, plot, setting, etc) are only there to
- [“Monster Project”](https://terrybisson.com/monster/) - Inspired by “The Blair Witch Project,” 1999.
- [Bible Studies](https://terrybisson.com/bible-studies/)
- [They’re Made Out of Meat](https://terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/) - Copyright, Terry Bisson, 1991 Originally published in OMNI, 1991, and featured in HARPER’S and around the internet since. It has even made its way into several books on consciousness and brain science. I’m surprised, pleased, and proud. But please do not reprint, perform, alter or adapt in any way without first checking with the author. Thanks.
- [Writing & Race](https://terrybisson.com/writing-race/) - This was published in (and written for) Nisi Shawl’s Writing and Racial Identity (Wiscon Chronicles #5) Aqueduct Press, 2011. Racial Identity and Writing: Partial Transcript of a Wiscon 2010 Panel Due to technical difficulties, portions of this WISCON panel discussion were lost. We present what’s left, unedited, for posterity: which is us, for in keeping
- [BILLY AND THE BULLDOZER](https://terrybisson.com/billy-and-the-bulldozer-2/) - Billy had a bulldozer. It was yellow. It was big enough to sit on. Billy made a house in the sandbox. It had windows and a door. It even had a little chimney. Billy bulldozed it down. Then he built it again and bulldozed it down. # “What did you do all day?” asked
- [Billy](https://terrybisson.com/billy/) - There was a drain at the bottom of the driveway. Billy got his water gun. “Flash flood!” he said, washing the ants down the drain. They tried to swim but it did them no good. “Stay out of the street,” said Billy’s mother. “Yes, ma’am,” said Billy. He knew better than to go into the
- [OUTSPOKEN AUTHORS](https://terrybisson.com/outspoken-authors/) - OUTSPOKEN AUTHORS I'm proud of the Outspoken Author list which looks like a science fiction Who’s Who or Hall of Fame, except that I included myself. Because I could. Coming up: Nisi Shawl, Meg Elison, Nick Mamatas, Vandana Singh …