The angels discover Terry Bisson

An author out standing in his field …

Locus Magazine has reported that sf/f author Terry Bisson is dead, a month shy of his 82nd birthday. Mr. Bisson, a versatile writer who made a living with a variety of styles and genres, including a series of children’s books sponsored by NASCAR (as “T. B. Calhoun”), may best be remembered for his pungent sf/f short stories that bordered on (or wandered over into) the surreal, like “Bears Discover Fire”, or “They’re Made Out of Meat”. His progressive politics worked together with his literary jobs, bringing him stories like “macs” (a 168 clones of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh turned over to the families of the 168 victims) and editing work like the Outspoken Authors series for PM Press. Just recently, in October 2023, the New Yorker offered a short piece on his last writing project, “This Month in History”, a monthly compilation of “future” history items published in Locus. He was a genial and generous member of the sf/f family, too, and remembrances of his colleagues are piling up. Locus will focus their February 2024 issue on him. 

I will miss him, too. In the late 1990s, Mr. Bisson taught writing at the New School in Manhattan. For the low, low price of $400, a student got to spend 14 weeks talking with and learning from one of the true crafters of sf/f. And the 2 weeks he was out, he got his friend Alice Turner, fiction editor for Playboy, to cover for him. A bargain at twice the price, as we say. 

Postscript: PM Press, home of Mr. Bisson’s Outspoken Authors series (a super way to learn about writers in chapbook format, with 2 main pieces, some bibliography, and an interview conducted by Mr. Bisson his own self), has posted a lovely tribute to the man, along with some of his own essays and poetry, including his 1985 “salute” to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was busy harassing the folks who were harassing the Ku Klux Klan:

RSVP to the FBI

(On being subpoenaed to give information to a Federal Grand Jury investigating revolutionary movements inside the USA)

Thank you for handing me this invitation

to talk to you

But I am otherwise engaged.

Thank you for offering me this opportunity

to have a heart to heart

with the murderers of Martin Luther King

and Fred Hampton,

not to mention Crazy Horse

Michael Stewart and Eleanor Bumpurs

and the nameless millions

who do have and will have names

But I am otherwise engaged.

Thank you for inviting me

to sit down with the brothers

of the somocistas

(as you describe yourselves)

their long knives eager

for the blood of teachers

the blood of nuns

the blood of Sandino

which is right now running

bright like a river in the veins of young

Nicaragua

But l am otherwise engaged.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity

to spit on the graves of Sacco and Vanzetti

to dishonor the memory of the Rosenbergs

or of my ex father in law

who spent 10 years not being an actor

rather than 10 minutes being a collaborator

But l am otherwise engaged.

Thank you for inviting me to run with the hounds

howling through the ruined cities

try ing to hunt down the

FALN, the BLA

the ten or the hundred most wanted

most ready and willing and able

to resist with arms

and heart and ideology

your world

wide crimes

But l am otherwise engaged.

And seriously, thanks

for giving me this chance

to stand fast with the Puerto Ricans

who have gone to jail silent since 1936

rather than drink from your bootprints ·

To stand fast with the New Afrikans

who like Nat Turner “never said a mumbling word”

To stand fast with the Palestinians

steadfast in Israeli prisons

the Irish deep and defiant in Long Kesh.

the Africans on Robben Island

scorning your offers with songs

To stand fast with the children of Lumumba

and Che and Malcolm X

not to mention my own children

and your own as well

Thank you for this chance to stand

not with the defeated but the defiant

who pick up the gun

who pick up the pen

who pick up the baby and the struggle

Thank you for this chance

to stand with humanity against you

Don’t mind if I do.

Terry Bisson
April, 1985

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