John Shirley was one of the founding members of the Portland Punk Rock scene.

His band Terror Wrist began playing in 1977.  After the band broke up he started The Monitors.  Not long after The Monitors also broke-up, Corboy and John began working together in Sado-Nation. Shirley was the original lead singer of Sado-Nation before going to New York City to start the band Obsession (on Celluloid Records). 

John re-wrote lyrics to some of the songs Corboy had written a few years before. John also brought a number of songs to Sado-Nation that he had performed in some of his earlier bands.  Some songs of note are, "Natural Born Rocker," "Death Camp," and "He's Got His Guitar," a song written about Dave Propp.  John's lyrics had more to do with his personal vision of the world around him, than with punk rock politico based ideals.

During these early days of Sado-Nation, Shirley was working on his writing skills. He was developing a style that would later come to be known as "Cyber-Fi". His first book was published, and John was on his way.

He continues to record, as an avocation, and writes lyrics for other bands; he wrote many of the lyrics in the most recent Blue Oyster Cult album, Heaven Forbid, and on their forthcoming album.

John currently resides in San Francisco.  He is also a widely published and acclaimed novelist and short story writer of "new noir", horror, dark fantasy and suspense.

He is regarded as one of the founding "cyberpunk" writers along with Bruce Sterling and William Gibson and was a major influence on Gibson.

His cyberpunk trilogy - Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra and Eclipse Corona are back in print from Babbage Press.

Ballantine/Del Rey will be publishing his novel Demons later in 2001; his new story collection Darkness Divided is out from Stealth Press; Black Butterflies will be out in March as a Leisure paperback.

He is a winner of the Bram Stoker Award for best story collection and the International Horror Guild Award, as well as having had his book Really Really Really Really Weird Stories chosen by Publisher's Weekly for their annual list of "Best Books of the Year."

John Shirley - the broad strokes, winner of the Bram Stoker Award, author of Black Butterflies; which was chosen by Publisher's Weekly for its official list of "Best Books of the Year"

Co-screenwriter of The Crow

Showtime originals: Twists of Terror, Strontium Dog

Teleplay Credits include the TV series Poltergeist, Profit, Deepspace Nine and The Fox Halloween Special

Author of 16 books including Wetbones, Eclipse, Black Butterflies and Really Really Really Really Weird Stories.

Dark Echo - John Shirley's Site.

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