Terry Ballantine Bisson

Terry Ballantine Bisson was born in Madisonville, Kentucky, and educated at the University of Louisville. Active in civil rights and anti-war activism in the 1960s, Bisson lived in a commune and worked as a mechanic and comic book editor before writing full-time. He settled in California's San Francisco Bay Area.

Bisson became renowned for concise, wry, and profound short fiction. In 1990, his story "Bears Discover Fire" swept every major science fiction honor, winning the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus awards. His 1991 humorous dialogue "They're Made out of Meat," depicting baffled alien explorers observing that human consciousness arises from organic tissue, became a viral cultural classic and theatrical staple. Bisson also published novels like Talking Man and Fire on the Mountain, an alternative history of John Brown's raid.