Michael Bishop (1945-2023)
Author and editor Michael Bishop, 78, died November 13, 2023 after entering hospice care in late June.
Michael Lawson Bishop was born November 12, 1945 in Lincoln NE. He spent much of his youth with his mother in a small town near Wichita KS, while visiting his father at Air Force bases around the country during the summers. He graduated from the University of Georgia with a bachelor’s (1967) and master’s in English (1968), then joined the Air Force as an English instructor at the Air Force Academy Preparatory school (1968-72) and at the University of Georgia (1972-74), before becoming a full-time freelance writer.
Bishop’s first story, “Piñon Fall” appeared in Galaxy in 1970. His first novel was A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975; revised 1980 as Eyes of Fire). Other novels include And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees (1976; as Beneath the Shattered Moon 1977); Stolen Faces (1977); the Urban Nucleus series, about Atlanta in the future: A Little Knowledge (1977), fix-up Catacomb Years (1979), and Under Heaven’s Bridge (1981) with Ian Watson; Transfigurations (1979); Nebula Award-winning time-travel novel No Enemy But Time (1982); horror Who Made Stevie Crye? (1984); Ancient of Days (1985); alternate world SF The Secret Ascension (1987; as Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas, 1988); Mythopoeic Award-winning contemporary fantasy Unicorn Mountain (1988); comic superhero novel Count Geiger’s Blues (1992); Locus Award-winning Southern Gothic WWII baseball novel Brittle Innings (1994); and Joel-Brock the Brave and the Valorous Smalls (2016). He also wrote two mysteries with Paul Di Filippo under the joint pseudonym “Philip Lawson”: Would It Kill You to Smile? (1998) and Muskrat Courage (2000).
A prolific short story writer for most of his career, Bishop’s collections include Blooded on Arachne (1982), One Winter in Eden (1984), Close Encounters With the Deity (1986), Emphatically Not SF, Almost (1990), At the City Limits of Fate (1996), Blue Kansas Sky (2000), Brighten to Incandescence (2003), The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012), The Sacerdotal Owl and Three Other Long Tales of Calamity, Pilgrimage, and Atonement (2018), and A Few Last Words for the Late Immortals: 50 Short Stories & Poems (2021).
He also published poetry collections Windows and Mirrors (1977) and Time Pieces (1998), screenplay Within the Walls of Tyre (1989). Non-fiction collection A Reverie for Mr. Ray appeared in 2005. He edited anthologies Changes (1983; with Ian Watson), Locus Award winner Light Years and Dark (1984), Nebula Awards 23 (1989), Nebula Awards 25 (1991), A Cross of Centuries: Twenty-five Imaginative Tales about the Christ (2007), and Passing for Human (2009, with Steven Utley).
Bishop’s other honors include DeepSouthCon’s Phoenix Award (1977); Locus Awards for novellas “The Samurai and the Willows” (1977) and “Her Habiline Husband” (1983); the Clark Ashton Smith Award for verse (1978); a Rhysling Award for poem “For the Lady of a Physicist” (1979); a Nebula for novelette “The Quickening” (1981), a Southeastern Science Fiction Achievement Award (SESFA) for short fiction for “The Door Gunner” (2004), and the Shirley Jackson Award for his short story “The Pile” (2008). He was also nominated for eight Hugo Awards and five World Fantasy Awards.
Bishop was the longtime writer-in-residence at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia, and lived in nearby Pine Mountain. He is survived by his wife Jeri, daughter Stephanie, and grandchildren; his son Jamie predeceased him.
For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
