by Terry Bisson
PM Press
8/5/2025, paperback
In-depth, intense, insightful.
For more than a decade, radical science fiction author and activist journalist Terry Bisson interviewed some of the most provocative and outspoken authors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Anarchism, sexuality, creativity, and the future of humanity itself--no topic was taboo. Bisson's prankster spirit also shone through as he quizzed his subjects about what cars they drove, played free association games, and created an atmosphere of two old friends having intimate late-night chats. Collected from PM Press's award-winning Outspoken Authors series for the first time, The Outspoken and the Incendiary showcases insightful and long-form explorations into the lives and minds of some of today's most politically charged fiction writers.
"PM's Outspoken Authors series looks almost like a science fiction Who's Who or Hall of Fame, except that I included myself. Because I could." --Terry Bisson
Words and Thoughts By: Eleanor Arnason, Terry Bisson, Michael Blumlein, John Crowley, Samuel R. Delany, Cory Doctorow, Meg Elison, Karen Joy Fowler, Eileen Gunn, Elizabeth Hand, Cara Hoffman, Nalo Hopkinson, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Paul Krassner, Joe R. Lansdale, Jonathan Lethem, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken MacLeod, Nick Mamatas, Michael Moorcock, Paul Park, Gary Phillips, Marge Piercy, Rachel Pollack, Rudy Rucker, Kim Stanley Robinson, Carter Scholz, Nisi Shawl, John Shirley, Vandana Singh, and Norman Spinrad, with additional new contributions by Nalo Hopkinson, Jonathan Lethem, Nisi Shawl, Peter Coyote, and Rudy Rucker.
Reviews:
“What makes a writer? What makes a radical? After reading The Outspoken and the Incendiary the answer is clear: a heaping of joy, dollops of dreams of a better world, and a soupçon of strange. Terry Bisson, himself an agile and at-a-slant writer, here guides us deep into the hearts, minds, and eyebrow-raising origins of PM's Outspoken Authors—some of the most subversive, sharp, and wickedly funny cultural producers of our time. What changes the world? Story. And these are people doing it.” —Nicola Griffith, author of Menewood
“This superb book represents nothing less than a group portrait of the radical mind in conversation with itself. The interviews are illuminating and entertaining in equal measure, as some of the great speculative writers of our time expound upon what has propelled them on their artistic journeys. The book is also a tribute to the late Terry Bisson, literary provocateur, writer extraordinaire, and—as evidenced here—genius interviewer.” —JJ Amaworo Wilson, author of Nazaré
“These interviews read like blazing samizdat missives on the last half century of the culture, mainstream, and underground, conducted by a man who witnessed much of it and is interested in all of it.” —Andrew Nette, coeditor of Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950–1985
About the Author:
Terry Bisson (1942-2024) was an author, editor, political activist, and friend to many. He was a Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer of seven novels, numerous short works of fiction, and over a dozen books for children and young adults. He was the author of On a Move: The Story of Mumia Abu Jamal and editor of PM Press's Outspoken Authors series. PM Press published his books TVA Baby, Fire on the Mountain, and The Left Left Behind. He also wrote the long-running "This Month in History" series for Locus. His radical politics landed him in jail for refusing to give testimony to a grand jury investigating the radical underground. He operated Jacobin Books, a "revolutionary" mail-order book service, from 1985 to 1990. He was as much an activist's activist as he was a literary powerhouse.