Michael Bishop (author)

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Michael Bishop
Born:	November 12, 1945 Lincoln, Nebraska
Occupation:	novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet, teacher
Nationality:	American
Writing period:	1970 - present
Genres:	science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction, poetry
Subjects:	anthropology, religion, American South
Debut works:	Story: "Piñon Fall" (1970) / Novel: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975)
Influences:	Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jack London, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Jonathan Swift
Website:	http://www.michaelbishop-writer.com

Michael Lawson Bishop (born November 12, 1945 in Lincoln, Nebraska) is an award-winning American writer. Over four decades and thirty books, he has created a body of work that stands among the most admired in modern science fiction and fantasy literature.

Bishop received a bachelor's degree from the University of Georgia in 1967 before going on to complete a master's degree in English. He taught English at the United States Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs from 1968 to 1972, and later at the University of Georgia. Bishop left teaching in 1974 to become a full-time writer.

Bishop has twice been awarded the Nebula: in 1981 for “The Quickening” (Best Novelette) and in 1982 for No Enemy But Time (Best Novel). He has also received four Locus Awards and his work has been nominated for numerous Hugo Awards. He and British author Ian Watson collaborated on a novel set in the universe of one of Bishop’s earlier works. He has also written two mystery novels with Paul Di Filippo, under the joint pseudonym Philip Lawson. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Bishop has published more than 125 pieces of short fiction which have been gathered in seven collections. His stories have appeared in such publications as Playboy, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the Missouri Review, the Indiana Review, the Chattahoochee Review, the Georgia Review, Omni, and Interzone.

In addition to his fiction, Bishop has published poetry (gathered in two collections) and won the 1979 Rhysling Award for his poem “For the Lady of a Physicist.” He has also had essays and reviews published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Omni Magazine, and the New York Review of Science Fiction. A collection of his nonfiction, A Reverie for Mister Ray, was published in 2005 by PS Publishing.

He has written introductions to books by Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree, Jr., Pamela Sargent, Gardner Dozois, Lucius Shepard, Mary Shelley, Andy Duncan, Paul Di Filippo, Bruce Holland Rogers, and Rhys Hughes. He has edited six anthologies, including A Cross of Centuries: Twenty-five Imaginative Tales about the Christ, forthcoming from Thunder’s Mouth Press.

In recent years, Bishop has returned to teaching and is writer-in-residence at LaGrange College located near his home in Pine Mountain, Georgia. He and his wife, Jeri, have two children and two grandchildren.

Contents 1 Career Overview 1.1 Early Work 1.2 The Anthropological Novels 1.2.1 A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975) 1.2.2 And Strange At Ecbatan The Trees (1976) 1.2.3 Stolen Faces (1977) 1.2.4 Transfigurations (1979) 1.2.5 Eyes of Fire (1980) 1.2.6 Under Heaven’s Bridge (1981) 1.3 The UrNu Sequence 1.3.1 A Little Knowledge (1977) 1.3.2 Catacomb Years (1979) 1.4 Later Novels 1.4.1 No Enemy But Time (1982) 1.4.2 Who Made Stevie Crye? (1984) 1.4.3 Ancient of Days (1985) 1.4.4 Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas (1987) 1.4.5 Unicorn Mountain (1988) 1.4.6 Count Geiger’s Blues (1992) 1.4.7 Brittle Innings (1994) 1.5 Selected Short Fiction 2 Bibliography 2.1 Books 2.1.1 Novels 2.1.2 Story Collections 2.1.3 Anthologies 2.1.4 Miscellaneous Books 2.2 Major Stories 3 Interviews 4 External links 5 References

[edit] Career Overview

[edit] Early Work

Michael Bishop’s first published professional fiction sale was the short story "Piñon Fall" to Galaxy Science Fiction in 1970. It was shortly followed by “If a Flower Could Eclipse,” the first story in his UrNu sequence (which is the only series of related stories in Bishop’s career.) While Galaxy Science Fiction and If magazines were publishing his sf stories, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction became Bishop’s venue for his slightly off-kilter fantasy/horror stories. This early period is also noted for a number of high profile novellas: in 1973 “Death and Designation Among the Asadi” and “The White Otters of Childhood” appeared on the shortlist ballots for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. The 1974 gonzo novella “On the Street of the Serpents” (including a character named “Michael Bishop”) first appeared in an anthology of original stories. It would eventually lead to a contract for his first novel from Ballantine Books, the anthology’s publisher.

[edit] The Anthropological Novels

Six of Bishop’s first eight novels are set on other worlds (the other two are the part of his UrNu sequence of stories.) Critic and author John Clute writes that “…his early stories and novels display considerable intellectual complexity, and do not shirk the downbeat implications of their anthropological treatment of aliens and alienating milieux…”^[1] In his major essay on these early novels, author Ian Watson writes “Michael Bishop is both an exoticist and a moralist. He is sometimes guilty, in the first respect, of a certain over-writing – underlying exotic venue by exotic diction – though the two become more organically integrated as his work progresses; and in the second respect of what one might call an over-scrupulousness on the part of his characters and his perceived attitude to them… These, however, are merely the consequence of aspiration and conscience; and as more of Bishop’s work has appeared – and his reputation has grown – he has shown…a more coherent melding of exotic vision, ethics and style.”^[2]

[edit] A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975)

When Bishop’s first novel, A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire, was published by Ballantine Books in 1975, critics Alexei and Cory Panshin wrote that the novel “shows an interest in the anthropological comparable to Ursula Le Guin and a sense of the alien comparable to James Tiptree, Jr. But it is an individual work, Bishop’s own and no one else’s. A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire is highly imperfect. It is a pied mirror, everywhere reflecting brilliantly bright, everywhere cloudy. It leads the eyes inward, and ultimately reveals nothing clearly. Even so, it is the most impressive first novel so far seen in the Seventies.” They go on to declare that “Bishop is one of the new and still rare breed of science fiction writer attempting to produce art without rejecting the pulp vigor that is science fiction’s continuing strengths.”^[3]

[edit] And Strange At Ecbatan The Trees (1976)

Bishop’s second novel (and first hardcover publication) takes its title from Archibald MacLeish’s poem “You, Andrew Marvell.” Published by Harper & Row in 1976, it is set in the same far future as his Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella “The White Otters of Childhood.” There are two surviving races, both genetically engineered by a third, the Parfects, who also manipulate the ongoing struggle between them. Reviewer Keith L. Justice writes “If Bishop never published another word of fiction, he would still have to be considered a milestone writer in the development of contemporary sf… Writers such as Le Guin, Tiptree, and Bishop are developing a whole new generation of artistry.”^[4]

[edit] Stolen Faces (1977)

In Stolen Faces (published by Harper & Row in 1977), a recently demoted commissioner has been reassigned to a colony planet to govern a compound which isolates the sufferers of a leprosy-like disease. Ian Watson writes that the novel is “about deceit, maskedness and discovery of self-truth…a harsh, arctic tale by contrast with [And Strange At Ecbatan The Trees] where the terrain may be stark but there is a mannered elegance in the tone of voice; it is a tale executed in an argot-ritualistic style.”^[2] Critic Richard Delap writes “There is an abundance of exploitable elements in Bishop’s story, so it is astonishing to see how the author keeps them under strict rein, always with a highly keyed visual sense but also with a literary flair that says more by implication than by direct description. The writing itself is crafted with a precision that becomes obvious only as the novel progresses.”^[5]

[edit] Transfigurations (1979)

The Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella “Death and Designation Among the Asadi” forms the first part of Transfigurations, a novel published in 1979 by Berkley Putnam. The story continues when the daughter of the anthropologist who studied the Asadi, a hominid-like race on the planet Bosk’veld, investigates his disappearance. In the journal Foundation, John Clute writes that the novel is “…a fever of explanation. Hypothesis builds on hypothesis [as more and more data is added to the original observations], and much of the resulting construction is beautifully crafted, almost hallucinatory it is so plausible. But of course these explanations are never enough – and the intellectual tact by which Bishop makes them almost but not quite fit the data they are meant to make transparent is perhaps the strongest part of this extremely dense and carefully thought-through novel.”^[6] Legendary science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon writes “Michael Bishop’s Transfigurations is as complex, as carefully thought-out, and as compelling an sf novel as you’ll find anywhere, ever.”^[7]

[edit] Eyes of Fire (1980)

In 1980, Bishop was given the unusual opportunity by editor David Hartwell to rewrite his first novel. This completely revised version (or, as Bishop has called it, wholesale reimagining^[8]) was published by Pocket Books as Eyes of Fire. In his introduction to the British hardcover edition of the revised work, Bishop writes “…I still feel affection for the original version of A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire, its callow narrator, and a few of the flavorful images and metaphors with which I salted the text. But I also recognize the fumble-fingeredness and immaturity of that initial version.”^[9] Very few publications (mostly fanzines) took enough notice to review the new version. (Pocket Books even used the artwork of the original publisher’s edition.) In one of the rare reviews, Robert Frazier writes “In almost every detail, Eyes of Fire is crafted intelligently… It is not the type of sf that pushes to the heights of wonder. Instead it is a probing, disturbing, moving reflection on humanity… Bishop’s skill is at plumbing to the depths, and his basic tool is a two-way glass. [Other novels this year] will have to go a long distance to surpass this effort.”^[10]

[edit] Under Heaven’s Bridge (1981)

When British author Ian Watson read Bishop’s A Little Knowledge (1977), he was so fascinated with the alien Cygnusians that he wrote to inquire whether Bishop had plans to write a story about the aliens’ home planet.^[11] Thus began what Bishop calls “the first ever transatlantic science fiction collaboration,” with all correspondence sent by post. Although often labeled as the third book in the series, it is not truly part of the main UrNu sequence. In this novel, published in the UK by Gollancz (1981) and in the US by Ace Books (1982), a Japanese linguist, crewmember of the research starship Heavensbridge, arrives on the home planet of the Kybers (so-called because they’re seemingly made of flesh and metal.) She soon learns that the planet’s sun will shortly go nova. Brian Stableford writes that the novel when compared with other recent sf collaborations “is a very solid and rewarding piece of work. Its basic premise is original and intelligently worked-out, and the storyline sustains the fascination of the reader throughout. Nevertheless, it seems to me to fall slightly behind the standard set by recent solo works by either of the two authors.” He concludes that the “book is worth reading, but it is not an outstanding work in either author’s canon.”^[12] This is Michael Bishop’s last novel-length work of other worlds fiction.

[edit] The UrNu Sequence

With “If a Flower Could Eclipse” (1970), his second published story, Bishop began a series of stories set in the Urban Nucleus of Atlanta, one of several domed cities in his future history. Over the next decade he would write seven stories of varying length and one novel to fill in the century-long chronology. Some of the stories first appeared in such prestigious anthology series as Damon Knight’s Orbit and Terry Carr’s Universe. Four of the stories would subsequently be chosen for best-of-the-year anthologies. (N.B.: The novels A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire and Under Heaven’s Bridge are only tangentially connected to the series and thus not part of the sequence proper.)

[edit] A Little Knowledge (1977)

The only novel-length work in the UrNu sequence, A Little Knowledge, was published in 1977 by Berkley Putnam. Chronologically, its events fall just before the last story in the series, “Death Rehearsals.” The alien Cygnusians that first appeared in the novella “Allegiances” have been brought into the domed city of Atlanta, causing quite a stir when one of them converts to the state sponsored religion. Mary S. Weinkauf writes “…this is a cleverly done book with many elements of previously admired sf…although it is maneuvered by too carefully contrived coincidences and leaves some questions at the end… [It] is a book to think about long after you put it down.”^[13] Richard Delap writes that “characters…scurry through this shifting maze as if they are buffeted by the social and political activities of this future world rather than by an author plotting to reach a predestined conclusion. A Little Knowledge is a lively, thought-provoking novel that will exercise your brain.”^[14]

[edit] Catacomb Years (1979)

All of the previously published stories in Bishop’s UrNu sequence, along with a new novella, “Dress Rehearsals,” are contained in Catacomb Years, a fix-up published in 1979 by Berkley Putnam. Bishop also wrote new connecting material and provided a timeline. Spider Robinson’s comments on the book’s structure: “Plainly [Bishop] intended the Domed City to be a metaphor for something or other…and it probably worked just fine in some of those individual novelettes, where an emotionally involving story made you overlook a shaky premise. But the “novel” has no emotional continuity… There are a few marvelous stories in this book, and one superb one [“The Samurai and the Willows”], but they are ruined by a setting which exposes their worst weaknesses.”^[15] Robert Frazier strongly disagrees: “Catacomb Years is not a rough sculpture with visible seams and weak welds; it is a polished puzzle entity a la Miguel Berrocal.”^[16] Author Elizabeth Lynn was equally impressed: “Bishop takes his wildly diverse plot elements…and weaves them into a shining and almost seamless tapestry… The material, to those who have read the pieces as they appeared…will be familiar and friendly. But set against each other they acquire new significance and a new luster. Bishop’s skill at characterization is impressive, as is his ability to juggle his cast and his numerous subplots.”^[17]

[edit] Later Novels

[edit] No Enemy But Time (1982)

Perhaps Bishop’s most critically acclaimed novel is the Nebula Award winning No Enemy But Time, published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster under David Hartwell’s editorship and the Timescape imprint. John Clute writes that the novel “intensified the movement of [Bishop’s] imagination to a local habitat, and for the first time introduced a protagonist of sufficient racial (and mental) complexity to carry a storyline immured in the particular and haunted by the exotic.”^[1] In this sophisticated twist on the traditional time-travel story, a modern day African-American man is recruited by the military for his special ability to “dream” himself into the Pleistocene era where he becomes involved with a tribe of habilines. Thomas Disch writes “Bishop is determined to write about human goodness without resorting to the mock heroics of formula adventure stories. There are no villains in the book, even among the habilines. The central and absorbing drama of the book is the hero’s growing love for the habiline, Helen. Looming behind this love story is a larger theme, the formation across the entire span of history of the Family of Man, a phrase that becomes, as the novel ripens to its conclusion, no mere liberal piety but a fully realized dramatic affirmation.”^[18] In one of the few mixed reviews, Tom Easton writes that “Kampa [the protagonist] is the only character who does come alive. All others are at least stiff. Some are outright caricatures. The book is not faultless, but it is overall a pleasure to read… Its treatment of anthropology is so effective that the few flaws are easily overlooked.”^[19] Editor and critic David Pringle writes that the novel “is narrated in an oddly detached, quizzical and dryly humorous manner… The paleo-anthropological details are superbly imagined, the African landscapes beautifully described, yet the final effect is one of coolness, distance… Michael Bishop’s prose style is learned, witty, Latinate, although salted with deliberately-placed colloquialisms and low jokes. This book is the work of a talented and serious writer.”^[20]

[edit] Who Made Stevie Crye? (1984)

How would an author follow-up an award-winning science fiction novel? Bishop wrote a contemporary novel set in the rural American South. Mary Stevenson (“Stevie”) Crye is a young widow with two children struggling to take care of her family as a freelance writer. Her typewriter has started to act up, automatically transcribing her nightmares and subsequently her future. The only American edition of Who Made Stevie Crye? was published in 1984 by the highly esteemed specialty publisher Arkham House under the editorship of Jim Turner. This original edition, as well as the British edition, was photographically illustrated by J. K. Potter. When David Pringle chose it as one of the hundred best fantasy novels, he described the novel as “a playful metafiction about the real and the fictitious, about the writer and his or her creation…” and concluded that the novel is “…a gripping and intelligent tale of the supernatural by an author who is adept at avoiding most of the clichés of the horror genre.”^[21] In his mixed review of the novel, Joe Sanders writes “Sometimes vivid, sometimes prosaic; sometimes involving but often affectless, this is not a novel to like casually. Even when it looks like standard mass-produced pop lit, it actually is nudging us toward something more disturbing and hilarious than we’re comfortable imagining. It finally is impressive enough to be uneasily recommended.” Sanders’ editor, Robert A. Collins, chides the reviewer with the footnote “Ignore Sanders’ uneasiness, which obviously stems from his difficulty in pegging the book’s genre; Stevie Crye is a marvelous book which transcends genre, as all the best of Bishop does.”^[22] Author Ian Watson writes “Here is a humane, trickster kaleidoscope questioning a genre and a market, and fiction, and reality too – yet exquisitely spiced with human reality – and delivering the eerie chill of the occult and the illicit, curdling the blood but also warming the heart.^[23]

[edit] Ancient of Days (1985)

Bishop’s 1983 Locus Award-winning novella “Her Habiline Husband” forms the first third of Ancient of Days, published in 1985 by Arbor House. It’s the story of “Adam,” one of the last surviving Homo habilis who is discovered in contemporary Georgia. In this thematic companion to his novel No Enemy But Time (with an almost inverse conceit), Bishop tackles issues of racial and cultural prejudice, and explores the question of what it means to be human. Locus reviewer Debbie Notkin writes “This is science fiction so precise and so well-thought-out that it reads like history, although little history is so well-written, or cares so much about its characters.”^[24] Bernard Goodman of Fantasy Review believes that “Bishop’s theme of evil inherent in humanity echoes William Golding,” and that the novel “in some ways…parallels Golding’s Lord of the Flies.” ^[25]

[edit] Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas (1987)

Originally published as The Secret Ascension by Tor Books in 1987 (but subsequently reprinted with the author’s preferred title), this work is an homage to writer Philip K. Dick, a pastiche of his style, and includes an alternate reality version of Dick as a character. The novel is set in a world in which Richard Milrose Nixon, in his fourth term as president, holds fascistic control over America, and the science fiction works of Philip K. Dick remain unpublished, distributed underground as samizdat. Author and reviewer Orson Scott Card writes that “the climax is not just an inward epiphany for a character… [T]he world changes in wonderful strange ways, and the audience can read the book passionately, with sweating fingers, eager to see what happens next, yet reluctant to leave the present moment. Imagine: A writer who is already one of the best, taking risks and finding ways to be better.”^[26] Card does take Bishop to task for the author’s characterization of Richard Nixon, calling it a “caricature” and a “stock character of a madman.” Locus reviewer Tom Whitmore calls the book “a masterful pastiche” and “…the closest thing to a classic Dick sf novel anyone has ever done.”^[27] Gerald Jonas in the New York Times writes “Mr. Bishop is a solid, serious writer whose reach (in his previous work) has always seemed to me to exceed his grasp. Here, he catches some of Dick's fire, especially in the early chapters… Then a lot happens very quickly (as in some of Dick's own novels), and the satire, which should hold things together, turns predictable. But…the ending (starring Philip K. Dick) approaches sublimity.”^[28]

[edit] Unicorn Mountain (1988)

Based upon the novel’s title and jacket art, a casual reader might have expected 1988’s Unicorn Mountain (Arbor House/Morrow) to be just another entry in the proliferating fantasy field of the Eighties. Orson Scott Card writes “The triumph of this, Bishop’s most artistically whole and successful novel to date, is that he set out to do something that is nearly impossible in fiction: He wrote a novel about constructing a tribe...To do it, he had to bring us to know and understand and care about more fully-created characters than most writers produce in a career.”^[29] John Clute’s assessment emphasizes another theme of the work: “Michael Bishop, whose voice is like a shout from the bottom of the well of the enormous South, and whose heart is on his sleeve, [manages] in Unicorn Mountain to generate a moving tale out of ecological disaster here and in another world, AIDS, the death of cultures, the death of species, and the slow sea-changing of America into themeparks.”^[30] The novel would go on to win the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.

[edit] Count Geiger’s Blues (1992)

Xavier Thaxton, protagonist of Count Geiger’s Blues (subtitled “A Comedy”), is the fine arts editor for a newspaper in the fictional Southern metropolis of Salonika (a satirical/alternate reality version of contemporary Atlanta) with a particularly low opinion of pop culture. When he is accidentally exposed to illegally dumped nuclear waste, the radiation exposure turns him into a superhero (or, as Bishop has designated, a “stalwart”). Analog reviewer Tom Easton writes “This is where Bishop falters. The satire he has painstakingly created now teeters on the brink of farce. He quite properly makes the decision to yank it back from that brink, but then he loses the satire. He becomes heavy-handed and obvious.”^[31] Faren Miller disagrees: “The most ambitious comic books are no longer merely comic – may even incorporate tragedy in a critique of modern life as savage and acute, in its way, as the ferocious satire of Dante’s Inferno. Count Geiger’s Blues also goes beyond humor – well beyond, in its remarkable closing chapters. But they build on all that has gone before. In unleashing a startling talent for comedy and a wide-ranging knowledge of pop culture in both its absurdity and its splendor, Michael Bishop has written his best book yet.”^[32] John Kessel writes “Comedy is certainly a new tone from Bishop, and he demonstrates a talent for it…But it seems to me Bishop doesn’t really want to write comedy. It’s as if Bishop is running riffs on whatever wacky ideas come to hand, without much plan, holding his characters at arm’s length; as if, trying to avoid sententiousness, he has to avoid caring – but in the end can’t. The result being a loose, baggy sort of book.”^[33]

[edit] Brittle Innings (1994)

Brittle Innings could for most intents and purposes be considered a sequel to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This simple designation only begins to describe this emotionally and literately complex story. The novel, published in 1994 by Bantam Books, attempts to answer the questions: What if the doctor’s much maligned creation managed to survive his Arctic pursuit? and How would he be perceived in modern times? Bishop places him in the American Deep South during World War II playing minor league baseball. Author and critic Brian Stableford writes that “no potential reader should allow himself or herself to be put off by the seeming freakishness of its premise… There is not a wasted image or phrase in the text, which is extraordinarily rich and eminently readable from beginning to end. It is a very fine book indeed…” Concerning its relationship to Shelley’s novel, Stableford writes that “Brittle Innings seems to me to be the best sequel imaginable.”^[34] The New York Times book reviewer felt uncomfortable with the mix: “The [baseball story] is the real reason to read Brittle Innings; it has a better narrative and a more meaningful message than the subplot about the literate and sometimes likable monster. Mr. Bishop's fine prose makes each of these plot lines well worth reading, but they belong in separate novels.”^[35] In his essay “Of (Human) Bondage in Michael Bishop’s Brittle Innings” Joe Sanders compares Bishop’s young protagonist with Philip Carey of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. “Philip Carey’s struggle toward maturity is painfully messy…unconsciously he knows what he needs: connection to and then freedom from parental authority so that he can determine his own goals in life. [Michael Bishop’s] Danny Boles, with similar needs, is certain that he already has found something to believe in: baseball.” Sanders concludes “Insofar as the characters of Brittle Innings learn to see life’s vivid extremes and as they struggle to see more, they demonstrate that love can sometimes lead not to bondage but freedom.”^[36]

[edit] Selected Short Fiction

“The Quickening”, Bishop’s Nebula Award winning novelette of 1981, is, according to Brian W. Aldiss and David Wingrove “…perhaps, a perfect modern fable. A fable about America and her values. For what is being torn down stone by stone is a world spoiled by the trite commercial values of American culture.”^[37] It’s the story of an ordinary American man who awakes to find himself in Seville, Spain. He soon discovers that the population of the whole world has been scattered, creating a potent stew of race, ethnicity, culture and language.

A major concern throughout much of Bishop’s work (and especially so in his short fiction) is the role of religion in the everyday lives of human beings. His approach has never been to either proselytize or ridicule. When several readers wrote letters of protest to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine about its 1983 publication of Bishop’s novella “The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis,” Isaac Asimov himself wrote an editorial defending the work and the editor’s decision to publish it. He wrote ”…we had a remarkable story that considered, quite fearlessly, an important idea, and we felt that most readers would recognize its legitimacy – if not at once, then upon mature reflection.”^[38]

When Bishop’s story “Dogs’ Lives” was reprinted in Best American Short Stories 1985, it became one of only a handful of genre stories to appear in the prestigious anthology series. The story might have languished in limbo, had the author not pulled its submission to Harlan Ellison’s never-published anthology The Last Dangerous Visions.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books

[edit] Novels

• A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975)
• And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees (1976) (later republished as Beneath the Shattered Moons)
• Stolen Faces (1977)
• A Little Knowledge (1977); the first book in the "Urban Nucleus" series
• Catacomb Years (1979) (fix-up); the second book in the "Urban Nucleus" series
• Transfigurations (1979) (expansion of novella "Death and Designation Among the Asadi")
• Eyes of Fire (1980) (a complete revision of his first novel)
• Under Heaven's Bridge (1981, with Ian Watson)
• No Enemy But Time (1982) (Nebula Award winner)
• Who Made Stevie Crye? (1984)
• Ancient of Days (1985) (Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee)
• The Secret Ascension (1987) (later republished with the author's original title: Philip K Dick Is Dead, Alas)
• Unicorn Mountain (1988) (Mythopoeic Award winner)
• Count Geiger's Blues (1992)
• Brittle Innings (1994) (Locus Award winner and Hugo Award nominee)
• Would It Kill You to Smile? (1998, with Paul Di Filippo, as "Philip Lawson"); the first book in the "Will Keats" series
• Muskrat Courage (2000, with Paul Di Filippo, as "Philip Lawson"); the second book in the "Will Keats" series

[edit] Story Collections

• Blooded on Arachne (1982), includes the novellas “The White Otters of Childhood” and “On the Street of the Serpents”, nine stories and two poems from 1970-1978
• One Winter in Eden (1984), includes twelve stories from 1978-1983 with an introduction by Thomas M. Disch
• Close Encounters With the Deity (1986), includes the novella “The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis” and thirteen stories from 1979-1986 with an introduction by Isaac Asimov
• Emphatically Not SF, Almost (1990), includes nine mainstream stories from 1982-1987
• At the City Limits of Fate (1996) (Philip K. Dick Award nominee), includes fifteen stories from 1982-1996
• Blue Kansas Sky (2000), four novellas from 1973-2000, including the first publication of the title story
• Brighten to Incandescence: 17 Stories (2003), a compilation of previously uncollected stories from 1971-2003

[edit] Anthologies

• Changes (1983, with Ian Watson)
• Light Years and Dark (1984) (Locus Award winner)
• Nebula Awards 23 (1989)
• Nebula Awards 24 (1990)
• Nebula Awards 25 (1991)
• A Cross of Centuries (2007)

[edit] Miscellaneous Books

• Windows and Mirrors (1977), poetry collection
• Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana (1989), novella
• Time Pieces (1998), poetry collection (includes most of the selections from Windows and Mirrors)
• A Reverie for Mister Ray (2005), nonfiction collection

[edit] Major Stories

• "Death and Designation Among the Asadi" (1973) (Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominee)
• "The White Otters of Childhood" (1973) (Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominee)
• "Cathadonian Odyssey" (1974) (Hugo Award nominee)
• "On the Street of the Serpents" (1974) (Nebula Award nominee)
• "Rogue Tomato" (1975) (Hugo Award nominee)
• "The Samurai and the Willows" (1976) (Locus Award winner; Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominee)
• "The House of Compassionate Sharers" (1977) (Hugo Award nominee)
• "Old Folks at Home" (1978)
• "Within the Walls of Tyre" (1978) (World Fantasy Award nominee)
• "Vernalfest Morning" (1978) (Nebula Award nominee)
• "Seasons of Belief" (1979) (dramatized on Tales from the Darkside)
• "Cold War Orphans" (1980)
• "The Quickening" (1981) (Nebula Award winner)
• "The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis" (1983) (Nebula Award nominee)
• "Her Habiline Husband" (1983) (Locus Award winner and Nebula Award nominee)
• "The Monkey's Bride" (1983) (World Fantasy Award nominee)
• "Dogs' Lives" (1984) (reprinted in Best American Short Stories 1985)
• "A Gift from the GrayLanders" (1985) (Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominee)
• "For Thus Do I Remember Carthage" (1987)
• "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana" (1989) (World Fantasy Award nominee)
• "The Ommatidium Miniatures" (1989) (Nebula Award nominee)
• "Life Regarded as a Jigsaw Puzzle of Highly Lustrous Cats" (1991) (Nebula Award nominee)
• "Cri de Coeur" (1994) (Hugo Award nominee)
• "I, Iscariot" (1995) (Theodore Sturgeon Award nominee)
• "Among the Handlers" (1996)
• "Sequel on Skorpiós" (1998)
• "Blue Kansas Sky" (2000) (World Fantasy Award nominee)
• "The Sacerdotal Owl" (2003)
• "The Door Gunner" (2003) (Southeastern Science Fiction Achievement Award winner)
• "The Road Leads Back" (2003)
• "Bears Discover Smut" (2005) (Southeastern Science Fiction Achievement Award winner and British Science Fiction Association award nominee)

[edit] Interviews

• The Prophetic World of Michael Bishop, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine, April 4 1976: 8-10, 20 (interviewed by Phil Garner)
• Michael Bishop: No Two Alike, Locus #335, December 1988: 1, 65-66 (interviewed by Charles N. Brown)
• Interview with Michael Bishop, Science Fiction Review #1, Spring 1990: 42-43, 102 (interviewed by Elton Elliott)
• Michael Bishop: Subduing the Serpent, Locus #426, July 1996: 4-5, 73-74 (interviewed by Charles N. Brown)
• In Prayer the Whisper of the Void October 2000 (interviewed by Nick Gevers, reprinted in The New York Review of Science Fiction #172, December 2002)
• Michael Bishop: The Blessing and the Curse, Locus #526, November 2004: 8-9, 76-77 (interviewed by Charles N. Brown)
• An Interview with Michael Bishop (interviewed by Kilian Melloy)
• Eagle in a Pigeon Hole: Interview with M. Bishop (interviewed by Octavio Aragão)
• Teamwork: Bishop, Crowther, Hutchins Et Al (interviewed by Sandy Auden)

[edit] External links

• Official homepage
• Michael Bishop at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Review/essay on Bishop
• Golden Gryphon Press official site - About Blue Kansas Sky
• Golden Gryphon Press official site - About Brighten to Incandescence: 17 Stories

[edit] References

Persondata
NAME	Bishop, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American writer
DATE OF BIRTH	November 12, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lincoln, Nebraska
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH