Michael Bishop (author)

Michael Bishop (author)

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 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. In July 2009, "The Pile" was the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story of 2008.

In 1993, 20th Century Fox optioned his novel Brittle Innings for a film and bought the rights outright in 1995. (To date, no film has been made.)

Bishop has published thirteen solo novels, three collaborative novels, and more than 140 pieces of short fiction, most of which have been gathered into seven collections. His eighth collection, The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy, a career retrospective, was published in February 2012 by Subterranean Press. 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. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

He has edited seven anthologies, including the Locus Award-winning Light Years and Dark and A Cross of Centuries: Twenty-five Imaginative Tales about the Christ, published by Thunder's Mouth Press in 2007. His latest anthology, Passing for Human, was co-edited with Steven Utley and published by PS Publishing in 2009.

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 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. Bishop's collaboration with Steven Utley, the story "The City Quiet as Death", was published in June 2009 on Tor.com.

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.

Bishop has been Guest of Honor at more than a dozen science fiction conventions including the 1977 DeepSouthCon, the 1978 Philcon, the 1992 Readercon, the 1992 World Fantasy Convention, the 1999 World Horror Convention, the 2005 Norwescon, the 2009 Science Fiction Research Association Conference, and Special Guest at the 2010 ArmadilloCon. He was also one of the organizers of the three Slipstreaming in the Arts conferences (1997–2001). In 2001, he was given an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from LaGrange College.