Tachyon Publications: Greetings and Other Stories, Terry Bisson


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			Terry Bisson

			Visit the Terry Bisson website.

	Terry Bisson was born February 12, 1942, in Owensboro, Kentucky. After receiving a B.A. from the University of Louisville in 1964, he moved to New York, scripting comics, editing the short-lived ‘zine Web of Horror, and doing various ‘‘hackwork’’ (as he calls it) for tabloids. He lived for four years in the Red Rockers hippie commune in the Colorado mountains, working as an auto mechanic, then returned to New York in 1976, serving as an editor and copywriter at Berkley and Avon until 1985. For the next five years, he ran the revolutionary mail order book service Jacobin Books, and in the mid-90s he was a consultant at HarperCollins. One of speculative fiction's most entertainingly satiric voices, Terry Bisson has become known for his sly wit and progressive edge. In addition to his six novels, Bisson has written novelizations of Galaxy Quest, Alien Resurrection, The X-Files, and The Fifth Element. His nonfiction includes Car Talk (with Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers), and On a Move, a biography of Mumia Abu Jamal. Bisson’s short fiction regularly appears in Playboy, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. His classic short story from 1991, "They're Made Out of Meat" remains an Internet favorite. A native of Kentucky and New York, Terry Bisson currently lives in Oakland, California.

Greetings and Other Stories

by Terry Bisson

Also by Terry Bisson:
Numbers Don't Lie

Cover illustration and design by John Picacio

Terry Bisson can charm your toes off.
—Washington Post Book World

You’re about to face off with an Ashcroft van, break out from an assisted-dying facility, witness a volunteer crucifixion, endure a Neanderthal eviction, and journey to the end of time on a porch glider. Each of these ten blazingly satiric short stories will leave you exhausted, outraged, and eager for the next ride. Often compared to Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Lethem, and James Morrow, Terry Bisson spins out radically irreverent tales.

Terry Bisson, author of the cult classic "They’re Made out of Meat," has received speculative fiction’s highest accolades, including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon Awards, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. Bisson has written six novels, including Pirates of the Universe, a New York Times Notable Book and Talking Man, a World Fantasy Award nominee. His ecologically-based time travel novella Dear Abbey, nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Award, is included in Greetings.

In Bisson's third story collection, the veteran satirist's prodigious wit and inventiveness demonstrate why some of his peers regard him as a national treasure. In the opening story, "I Saw the Light," Bisson wryly extrapolates Arthur C. Clarke’s classic concept of an alien artifact found on the moon (the 2001 gambit) to reveal that humans have been serving as a kind of pet for the aliens. Other tales explore an innovation in prisoners' rights by which death-row inmates can now choose crucifixion on live TV; a paleontologist's surprising visit to the stone age; and a group of aging hippies forced to revisit their troubled past when they begin sharing the same dreams. The longest and perhaps best story, "Dear Abbey," follows the exploits of a pair of radical environmentalists trying to avert global warming by traveling into the future by means of a porch glider. Bisson’s distinctive minimalist style leaves plenty of room for disarming social satire that keeps one amused and pleasantly provoked.
–Booklist

Bisson fans are bound to savor this strong story collection from the Hugo and Nebula Award winner, but it should be particularly revelatory to new readers in search of crisp black comedy and satire. The lighthearted "I Saw the Light" turns the classic alien contact story (with props from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001) upside down, while the terse "Openclose" offers a glimpse into one future sponsored by the Office of Homeland Security. Capital punishment and religious education feed a surreal media circus in "The Old Rugged Cross." In the title story, legally ordered assisted suicide is supposed to help maintain world population, but no one-from suicides to the accidentally maimed and the hacked-up victims of genocide-can find peace while stuck waiting at "Death's Door." The haunting "Scout's Honor" and the gently elegiac "Almost Home" balance the bleak chills. The volume closes with the striking "Dear Abbey," about a desperate attempt to save the Earth from ecological disaster by traveling to the end of time.
-Publishers Weekly

one of SF’s leading innovators.
—Booklist

Every word he writes is worth reading, even though a lot of them are the same ones.
—John Crowley

Bisson's prose is a wonder of seemingly effortless control and precision; he is one of science fiction’s most promising short story practitioners, proving that in the genre, the short story remains a powerful, viable and evocative form.
—Publishers Weekly

Generously endowed with sharp wit, dead-on dialogue and the storytelling gifts of a born raconteur.
—Science Fiction Weekly

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