The Outspoken and the Incendiary: Interviews with Radical Speculative Fiction Writers

by Terry Bisson, Jonathan Lethem (Foreword by), Nisi Shawl (Introduction), Nalo Hopkinson (Afterword), Rudy Rucker (Contribution by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798887441214
Publisher:	PM Press
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

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.

Jonathan Lethem is the author of The Fortress of Solitude, Brooklyn Crime Novel, and eleven other novels. His stories and essays have been collected in seven volumes. His Outspoken Authors book is The Collapsing Frontier.

Nisi Shawl is an award-winning African American writer, editor, and journalist. They are best known for their science fiction and fantasy stories and novels dealing with race, gender, physical ability, and sexual orientation. Even before Shawl’s steampunk-flavored alternate history of the “Belgian” Congo, Everfair, took the sci-fi world by storm, their short stories had already established them as a cutting-edge Black writer whose politically charged fiction is in the grand feminist tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Joanna Russ. Their Outspoken Authors book is Talk like a Man.

Nalo Hopkinson is a Canadian, Jamaica-born, award-winning superstar of modern fantasy. She has edited and coedited several fantasy anthologies and taught at the Clarion workshops and other venues. She has won the Theodore Sturgeon Award, World Fantasy Award, Aurora Award, and the Sunburst Award (twice), among others. In 2020, Hopkinson was named the 37th Damon Knight Grand Master, in recognition of "lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy." Her Outspoken Authors book is Report from Planet Midnight.

A direct descendant of philosopher G.W. Hegel, Rudy Rucker is a mathematician, science author of The Fourth Dimension, online editor of Flurb, award-winning SF writer with two Philip K. Dick Awards, and transreal cyberpunk. A native of Kentucky, he lives in Silicon Valley. His Outspoken Authors book is Surfing the Gnarl.

Peter Coyote is an American actor, double Emmy winning narrator, and Zen Buddhist priest. He is the author of Sleeping Where I Fall, The Rainman’s Third Cure, Tongue of a Crow, and two books on Buddhism: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet Buddha, and Zen in the Vernacular.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Nisi Shawl
Introduction: Jonathan Lethem
Eleanor Arnason “At the Edge of the Future”
Terry Bisson “Fried Green Tomatoes”
Michael Blumlein “A Babe in the Woods”
John Crowley “I Did Crash a Few Parties”
Samuel R. Delany “Discourse in an Older Sense”
Cory Doctorow “Look For the Lake”
Meg Elison “Sprawling into the Unknown”
Karen Joy Fowler “More Exuberant Than is Strictly Tasteful”
Eileen Gunn “I Did, and I Didn’t, and I Won’t”
Elizabeth Hand “Flying Squirrels in the Rafters”
Cara Hoffman “My Favorite Amphibian”
Nalo Hopkinson “Correcting the Balance”
James Patrick Kelly “Encounter with a Gadget Guy”
John Kessel “I Planned to Be an Astronomer”
Paul Krassner “Reflections of A Realist”
Joe R. Lansdale “That’s How You Clean a Squirrel”
Jonathan Lethem “Rooms Full of Old Books Are Immortal Enough for Me”
Ursula K. Le Guin “A Lovely Art”
Ken Macleod “Working the Wet End”
Nick Mamatas “Put Your Twist in the Middle”
Michael Moorcock “Get the Music Right”
Paul Park “Punctuality, Basic Hygiene, Gun Safety”
Gary Phillips “But I’m Gonna Put A Cat On You”
Marge Piercy “Living Off the Grid”
Rachel Pollack “Radical, Sacred, Hopefully Magical”
Rudy Rucker “Load On the Miracles and Keep a Straight Face”
Kim Stanley Robinson “A Real Joy to Be Had”
Carter Scholz “Gear. Food. Rocks.”
Nisi Shawl “The Fly in the Sugar Bowl”
John Shirley “Pro Is for Professional”
Vandana Singh “A Source of Immense Richness”
Norman Spinrad “No Regrets, No Retreat, No Surrender”
Afterword: Nalo Hopkinson
Elegies: Rudy Rucker and Peter Coyote

Editorial 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

“I’ve come to think of PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series, which has by now been going on for some thirteen years under the editorship of Terry Bisson, as my favorite collection of author hang­outs. These modest collections of fiction, essays, bibliographies, and interviews have ranged from legendary authors like Le Guin and Delany to newer voices like Meg Elison and Vandana Singh, and each one feels like spending a fascinating evening with the subject.”
—Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“Terry’s been an outspoken writer for a very long time, and that he thought what I had to say was important enough to be heard is a lovely thing.”
—Nalo Hopkinson

“Fluent and moral and wry, and very much a writer dominated by aftermath issues and emotions, Bisson will continue to be read with great intensity by those who hope to recognize the version of the Matter of America whose complex stories he told, and so wisely and wryly cherished.”
—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

“Terry Bisson was a man of the left—the far left (as his novel Fire on the Mountain makes abundantly clear)—and one of his great contributions to SF was his editorship of the Outspoken Authors series.”
—Rich Horton, editor of The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy series

From the Publisher