The short story "Bears Discover Fire" (published in Asimov's) swept almost every honor in the SF field in 1990-91, including the Asimov's and Locus readers' awards, both the Nebula and Hugo awards and the Theodore Sturgeon short fiction award. In 1993 Bisson was given the Phoenix Award (DeepSouthCon) for his work as a Southern SF writer. In 1998 he was awarded a Fellowship in Screenwriting and Playwriting by the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 1999 he was inducted into the Owensboro, Kentucky HALL OF FAME. In 2000 "macs" won another short-story Nebula. “They’re Made out of Meat,” a 2001 Nebula nominee, is an internet favorite.
In 2006 Stephen O'Regan's film of "They're Made out of Meat" won the Grand Prize at the SF Short Film Festival in Seattle. "Necronauts" is currently in development by Brian Yuzna of "Re-Animator" fame. Bisson's screenplay of ROBESON was written for Four Stars of Hollywood and Auckland. Several of Bisson's stories have been produced onstage in New York, most notably by Donna Gentry at the West Bank on 42nd St. "Bears Discover Fire" was adapted by Ed Smith for Georgetown College's Kentucky Onstage series in 2002. Some of Bisson's stories are on the internet as radio plays, featured on The SciFi Channel's "Seeing Ear Theater." TB's works for Seeing Ear also include "Orson the Alien," the 60th anniversary commemoration of "The War of the Worlds" which was broadcast live from the Museum of Television and Radio at Rockefeller Center in 1998.
Terry Bisson has written novelizations of many films, including William Gibson's JOHNNY MNEMONIC; VIRTUOSITY; THE FIFTH ELEMENT by Luc Besson; ALIEN RESURRECTION; Dreamworks' GALAXY QUEST; and THE SIXTH DAY. As "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. As "T.B. Calhoun" he wrote the first six of NASCAR's Pole Position Adventures for kids, three of them with driver/author Ned Webb. As himself he wrote TRADIN' PAINT: Stock Car Rookies and Royalty for Scholastic (Fall, 2001). With award-winning YA author Stephanie Spinner, Bisson wrote BE FIRST IN THE UNIVERSE and EXPIRATION DATE: NEVER! for Dell. He has written two YA novels for Lucasfilm. The first, BOBA FETT: The Fight to Survive, was published by Scholastic in April 2002. BOBA FETT: Crossfire followed soon after.
Bisson's non-fiction articles and reviews have appeared in The Nation, Monthly Review, Glamour, SF Age, Automotive News, New York Newsday, Writer’s Digest, Covert Action Information Bulletin, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Park Slope Food Coop's Linewaiter's Gazette.
In the late 60's, after scripting several tales for CREEPY and EERIE with writing partner Clark Dimond, Bisson was Editor of the short-lived WEB OF HORROR,publishing the early works of such luminaries as Ralph Reese, Berni Wrightson, Mike Kaluta and Dennis O'Neill. Since then he has adapted the works of William Gibson, Greg Bear, Jane Austen, Joel Rosenberg, William Shakespeare, Roger Zelazny and Anne McCaffrey for comics. This work includes the six-part graphic novel adaptation of Roger Zelazny's first two Amber novels, for DC; and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, EMMA and HENRY V for Classics Illustrated (never, alas, published).
Bisson created THE NO-FRILLS BOOKS in 1981 and co-authored CAR TALK WITH CLICK AND CLACK, THE TAPPET BROTHERS (Dell, 1991) with National Public Radio's call-in mechanics, Tom and Ray Magliozzi. He co-authored a western Kentucky memoir, A GREEN RIVER GIRLHOOD, with his aunt Elizabeth Ballantine Johnson in 1992. He completed SAINT LEIBOWITZ AND THE WILD HORSE WOMAN, the long-awaited posthumous sequel to A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, for the estate of WALTER M. MILLER, JR. (Bantam, October 1997.)
With his long-time companion Judy Jensen, Bisson owned and operated a revolutionary mail-order book service, Jacobin Books, from 1985 to 1990. His young adult biography of NAT TURNER, Slave Revolt Leader was published by Chelsea House and Holloway House in 1988. With Tim Blunk and Ray Levasseur, Bisson (as "Jacobin") edited an anthology of writings by revolutionary political prisoners in the USA, HAULING UP THE MORNING (Red Sea Press, 1990). In 1996 he edited the 1960s memoir of activist film star Peter Coyote, SLEEPING WHERE I FALL (Counterpoint, Spring 98). Other editing projects include bebop guitarist Bruce Forman's mystery novel, TRUST ME; Dan Berger's history of the Weather Underground, OUTLAWS OF AMERICA; Diana Block’s ARM THE SPIRIT; and David Gilbert's SDS/weather memoir LOVE AND STRUGGLE. Bisson helped put together Mumia Abu Jamal's LIVE FROM DEATH ROW in 1995 and wrote ON A MOVE: The Story of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Litmus, February 2001). He later wrote a film script about Mumia for independent producer Joshua Leonard.
He is the editor of PM Press's OUTSPOKEN AUTHOR series which features such SF icons as Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. LeGuin, Rudy Rucker, Cory Doctorow and Kim Stanley Robinson.
A member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), Bisson hosts a monthly author reading series, SFinSF, at the Variety Theater in downtown San Franscisco. He lives in Oakland, California, and is represented by John Silbersack at Trident Media (NY)
They're Made out of Meat, by Terry Bisson
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."
"So ... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat."
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So
what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."
This story originally appeared in Omni April 1991 and was nominated for the Nebula Award. It is taken from the collection 'Bears Discover Fire’.
Bears Discover Fire, by Terry Bisson
I was driving with my brother, the preacher, and my nephew, the preacher’s son, on I-65 just north of Bowling Green when we got a flat. It was Sunday night and we had been to visit Mother at the Home. We were in my car. The flat caused what you might call knowing groans since, as the old-fashioned one in my family (so they tell me), I fix my own tires, and my brother is always telling me to get radials and quit buying old tires.
But if you know how to mount and fix tires yourself, you can pick them up for almost nothing.
Since it was a left rear tire, I pulled over to the left, onto the median grass. The way my Caddy stumbled to a stop, I figured the tire was ruined. “I guess there’s no need asking if you have any of that FlatFix in the trunk,” said Wallace.
“Here, son, hold the light,” I said to Wallace Jr. He’s old enough to want to help and not old enough (yet) to think he knows it all. If I’d married and had kids, he’s the kind I’d have wanted.
An old Caddy has a big trunk that tends to fill up like a shed. Mine’s a ’56. Wallace was wearing his Sunday shirt, so he didn’t offer to help while I pulled magazines, fishing tackle, a wooden tool box, some old clothes, a come-along wrapped in a grass sack, and a tobacco sprayer out of the way, looking for my jack. The spare looked a little soft.
The light went out. “Shake it, son,” I said.
It went back on. The bumper jack was long gone, but I carry a little 1/4-ton hydraulic. I found it under Mother’s old Southern Livings, 1978-1986. I had been meaning to drop them at the dump. If Wallace hadn’t been along, I’d have let Wallace Jr. position the jack under the axle, but I got on my knees and did it myself. There’s nothing wrong with a boy learning to change a tire. Even if you’re not going to fix and mount them, you’re still going to have to change a few in this life. The light went off again before I had the wheel off the ground. I was surprised at how dark the night was already. It was late October and beginning to get cool. “Shake it again, son,” I said.
It went back on but it was weak. Flickery.
“With radials you just don’t have flats,” Wallace explained in that voice he uses when he’s talking to a number of people at once; in this case, Wallace Jr. and myself. “And even when you do, you just squirt them with this stuff called FlatFix and you just drive on. $3.95 the can.”
“Uncle Bobby can fix a tire hisself,” said Wallace Jr., out of loyalty I presume.
“Himself,” I said from halfway under the car. If it was up to Wallace, the boy would talk like what Mother used to call “a helot from the gorges of the mountains.” But drive on radials.
“Shake that light again,” I said. It was about gone. I spun the lugs off into the hubcap and pulled the wheel. The tire had blown out along the sidewall. “Won’t be fixing this one,” I said. Not that I cared. I have a pile as tall as a man out by the barn.
The light went out again, then came back better than ever as I was fitting the spare over the lugs. “Much better,” I said. There was a flood of dim orange flickery light. But when I turned to find the lug nuts, I was surprised to see that the flashlight the boy was holding was dead. The light was coming from two bears at the edge of the trees, holding torches. They were big, three hundred pounders, standing about five feet tall. Wallace Jr. and his father had seen them and were standing perfectly still. It’s best not to alarm bears.
I fished the lug nuts out of the hubcap and spun them on. I usually like to put a little oil on them, but this time I let it go. I reached under the car and let the jack down and pulled it out. I was relieved to see that the spare was high enough to drive on. I put the jack and the lug wrench and the flat into the trunk. Instead of replacing the hubcap, I put it in there too. All this time, the bears never made a move. They just held the torches, whether out of curiosity or helpfulness, there was no way of knowing. It looked like there may have been more bears behind them, in the trees.
Opening three doors at once, we got into the car and drove off. Wallace was the first to speak. “Looks like bears have discovered fire,” he said.
* * * *
When we first took Mother to the Home almost four years (forty-seven months) ago, she told Wallace and me she was ready to die. “Don’t worry about me, boys,” she whispered, pulling us both down so the nurse wouldn’t hear. “I’ve drove a million miles and I’m ready to pass over to the other shore. I won’t have long to linger here.” She drove a consolidated school bus for thirty-nine years. Later, after Wallace left, she told me about her dream. A bunch of doctors were sitting around in a circle discussing her case. One said, “We’ve done all we can for her, boys, let’s let her go.” They all turned their hands up and smiled. When she didn’t die that Fall she seemed disappointed, though as Spring came she forgot about it, as old people will.
In addition to taking Wallace and Wallace Jr. to see Mother on Sunday nights, I go myself on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I usually find her sitting in front of the TV, even though she doesn’t watch it. The nurses keep it on all the time. They say the old folks like the flickering. It soothes them down.
“What’s this I hear about bears discovering fire?” she said on Tuesday. “It’s true,” I told her as I combed her long white hair with the shell comb Wallace had brought her from Florida. Monday there had been a story in the Louisville Courier-Journal, and Tuesday one on NBC or CBS Nightly News. People were seeing bears all over the state, and in Virginia as well. They had quit hibernating, and were apparently planning to spend the winter in the medians of the interstates. There have always been bears in the mountains of Virginia, but not here in western Kentucky, not for almost a hundred years. The last one was killed when Mother was a girl. The theory in the Courier-Journalwas that they were following 1-65 down from the forests of Michigan and Canada, but one old man from Allen County (interviewed on nationwide TV) said that there had always been a few bears left back in the hills, and they had come out to join the others now that they had discovered
fire.
“They don’t hibernate anymore,” I said. “They make a fire and keep it going all winter.”
“I declare,” Mother said. “What’ll they think of next!”
The nurse came to take her tobacco away, which is the signal for bedtime.
* * * *
Every October, Wallace Jr. stays with me while his parents go to camp. I realize how backward that sounds, but there it is. My brother is a Minister (House of the Righteous Way, Reformed) but he makes two-thirds of his living in real estate. He and Elizabeth go to a Christian Success Retreat in South Carolina, where people from all over the country practice selling things to one another. I know what it’s like not because they’ve ever bothered to tell me, but because I’ve seen the Revolving Equity Success Plan ads late at night on TV.
The school bus let Wallace Jr. off at my house on Wednesday, the day they left. The boy doesn’t have to pack much of a bag when he stays with me. He has his own room here. As the eldest of our family, I hung onto the old home place near Smiths Grove. It’s getting run down, but Wallace Jr. and I don’t mind. He has his own room in Bowling Green, too, but since Wallace and Elizabeth move to a different house every year (part of the Plan), he keeps his .22 and his comics, the stuff that’s important to a boy his age, in his room here at the home place. It’s the room his dad and I used to share.
Wallace Jr. is twelve. I found him sitting on the back porch that overlooks the interstate when I got home from work. I sell crop insurance.
After I changed clothes I showed him how to break the bead on a tire two ways, with a hammer, and by backing a car over it. Like making sorghum, fixing tires by hand is a dying art. The boy caught on fast, though. “Tomorrow I’ll show you how to mount your tire with the hammer and a tire iron,” I said.
Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two Page 6
