During this time, he worked as an auto mechanic and worked as an editor in the magazine and book world. He published his first novel in 1981 and has continued his career as an active science fiction writer since then. Politically, he was close to the New Left movement.
Terry Ballantine Bisson was born in Madisonville, Kentucky, in 1942 and spent his childhood in Owensboro. He studied at Grinnell College, Iowa, and the University of Louisville. After a brief period in Louisville, he visited hippie communes in the Southwest and South from 1969 to 1975 and lived in New York for thirty years.
During this time, he worked as an auto mechanic and worked as an editor in the magazine and book world. He published his first novel in 1981 and has continued his career as an active science fiction writer since then. Politically, he was close to the New Left movement.
He has three children, Nathaniel, Peter, and Zoe, from his first marriage to Deirdre Holst of New York; He also had two stepchildren, Kristen and Gabriel. He had a daughter named Welcome with his wife of 50 years, his companion Judy Jensen. He lived with Judy in Oakland, California, until she died in 2002. He has written several novels, including Wyldmaker, Talking Man, World Fantasy Award-nominated Fire on the Mountain, Voyage to the Red Planet, and Pirates of the Universe. In addition to his popular science fiction novels The Pickup Artist and Numbers Don't Lie, he also became known for his works Dear Abbey and Planet of Mystery, which were nominated for the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) award.
Terry Ballantine Bisson (February 12, 1942 – January 10, 2024) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was best known for his short stories, including "Bears Discover Fire", which won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and "They're Made Out of Meat".
Bisson's short fiction has been published in magazines such as Playboy, Asimov's, Omni, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nature, Harper's, Socialism & Democracy, Tor, The Baffler, Southern Exposure, Infinite Matrix and Flurb. Many of his stories have appeared in various anthologies. His first compilation, “Bears Discover Fire,” was published by Tor in the fall of 1993. The "In the Upper Room" compilation, which was released to the reader under the Tor label in May 2000, also included the Locus and Nebula award-winning story "Macs". At the same time, the book won France's "Gran Prix de l'Imaginaire" award. TACHYON published a hardcover collection called “Greetings” in 2005. PS of England brought the author's "Billy's Book" to the readers in 2009. In 2011, he attracted attention with his work "TVA Baby", published under the title PM.
His short story "Bears Discover Fire" (published in Asimov's) won several awards for science fiction in 1990-91, including the Asimov's and Locus Readers' awards, both the Nebula and the Hugo, and the Theodore Sturgeon short story award. In 1993, Bisson was awarded the Phoenix Award (DeepSouthCon) for his work as a Southern Science Fiction Writer. In 1998, he was awarded a Script and Playwriting scholarship by the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2000, "Macs" won the Nebula Award along with another short story. "They're Made out of Meat", which was a 2001 Nebula nominee, was also among his acclaimed works. The author's work "They're Made out of Meat" was adapted into a movie by Stephen O'Regan in 2006 and won the Grand Prize at the Science Fiction Short Film Festival in Seattle. Another of his works, "Necronauts", was included in the development list by Blumhouse Productions. Several of his stories have been adapted for the stage, most notably by Donna Gentry, at the West Bank on 42nd Street.
“Bears Discover Fire” was adapted into a short film by Scott Riehs and Ben Leonberg, and the production won the Best Student Film award at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival in 2016. Some of his stories were broadcast online as radio plays on The SciFi Channel's "Seeing Ear Theater" program. Work for Seeing Ear included “Orson the Alien,” a 60th-anniversary tribute to “The War of the Worlds,” which was shown live from the Museum of Television and Radio at Rockefeller Center in 1998. On the other hand, Bisson undertook the novelizations of many films such as "Johnny Mnemonic", "Virtuosity", "The Fifth Element", "Alien Resurrection", "Galaxy Quest", and "The Sixth Day". Under the name “Brad Quentin,” he wrote three “Jonny Quest” novels (Demon of the Deep, Peril in the Peaks, and Attack of the Evil Cyber-God) for HarperPrism. “T.B. Under the pseudonym "Calhoun", he personally wrote the first six of the NASCAR Pole Position Adventures series. "Tradin' Paint: Stock Car Rookies and Royalty", which he wrote for Scholastic, was published in 2001. With award-winning young adult author Stephanie Spinner, he wrote “Be First in the Universe” and “Expiration Date: Never!” for Dell. He wrote works called. The first of two young adult novels he wrote for Lucasfilm, "Boba Fett: The Fight to Survive," was published by Scholastic in 2002. It was followed by “Boba Fett: Crossfire.”
The author, who is remembered for his productive and sensitive personality, died at his home in Berkeley, California, on January 10, 2024, following his cancer diagnosis. He was 81 years old when he passed away.