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.