Photo: Rosalie Winard

Activist, editor, and writer Terry Bisson is the award-winning author of over 40 novels, numerous short stories, comic book adventures, and screenplays. His best known novels include Wyrldmaker, Talking Man, Fire On the Mountain, Voyage To the Red Planet, The Hole In the Hole, Saint Leibowitz And The Wild Horse Woman (with Walter M. Miller, Jr.), NUMBERS DON’T LIE, Billy and The Ants, and And Any Day Now. Bisson produced several movie novelizations including Virtuosity, Johnny Mnemonic, The Fifth Element, and Galaxy Quest.

Outside of comic book stories for series such as Creepy, Eerie, and the short-lived Web Of Horror (which he also edited), Bisson published no short fiction until 1990. These works headlined by “Bears Discover Fire” (made into an into an acclaimed short film and winner of the SF Chronicle, Asimov’s Reader, Locus, Hugo, Sturgeon, and Nebula awards), “Press Ann,” “They’re Made Out of Meat,” “The Shadow Knows,” “Dead Man’s Curve,” “Necronauts,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and “macs” (winner of the Locus, Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, and Nebula awards) cemented Bisson’s reputation as a master storyteller. Many of these acclaimed stories were collected in Bears Discover Fire And Other Stories, In The Upper Room And Other Likely Stories, GREETINGS AND OTHER STORIES, The Left Left Behind, and Tva Baby And Other Stories.

Bisson’s non-fiction articles and reviews have appeared in The Nation, Monthly Review, Glamour, Sf Age, Automotive News, New York Newsday, Writer’s Digest, Common Ground, Covert Action Information Bulletin, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Whole Earth Catalog, and others. Among his numerous book length nonfiction are Car Talk With Click And Clack, The Tappet Brothers (with Tom and Ray Magliozzi), A Green River Girlhood (with his aunt Elizabeth Ballantine Johnson), and On A Move: The Story Of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

While a student at Grinnell College (Iowa) in 1961, Bisson was involved with student protesters who supported President Kennedy’s proposed test-ban treaty and “peace race.” While protesting in Washingto, Bisson along with 13 other classmates, dubbed the Grinnell 14 by the press, met with Kennedy’s National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. They were the first such group to meet with anyone from the Kennedy White House. This event is seen as the impetus for the student peace movement.

On a rainy November day in 1961, members of the Grinnell 14 pause for a moment before starting their long drive to Washington, D.C. Left to right: Bayard Catron, Terry Bisson, Michael Horwatt, Mike Montross, Bennett Bean, Philip Brown, Peter (Cohon) Coyote, James Smith, Celia Chorosh Segar, Jack Chapman, Mary Mitchell, Sarah (Mary Lou) Beaman-Jones, Ruth Gruenewald Skoglund, and Larry Smucker (Source: Grinnell College)

Among all these other accomplishments, Bisson is the editor of the Outspoken Authors Series for PM Press which features such SF icons as Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. LeGuin, Rudy Rucker, Cory Doctorow, and Kim Stanley Robinson. In conjunction with Tachyon Publications, he hosts the monthly SF in SF reading series in San Francisco.

All of at Tachyon wish the sensational Terry a happy birthday. Keep on keeping on.

For more information on NUMBERS DON’T LIE, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

For more information on GREETINGS AND OTHER STORIES, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by John Picacio