A delightful novel about
alien invasions, conspiracies,
and the incredibly silly things
people are willing to
believe—some of which may
actually be true—from the Nebula
and Hugo award-winning author ofBlackoutandAll Clear
When level-headed Francie arrives
in Roswell, New Mexico, for her
college roommate’s UFO-themed
wedding—complete with a
true-believer bridegroom—she can’t
help but roll her eyes at all the
wide-eyed talk of aliens, which
obviously don’t exist. Imagine her
surprise, then, when she is
abducted by one.
Odder still, her abductor is far
from what the popular media have
led her to expect, with a body
like a tumbleweed and a mass of
lightning-fast tentacles. Nor is
Francie the only victim of the
alien’s abduction spree. Before
long, he has acquired a charming
con man named Wade, a sweet little
old lady with a casino addiction,
a retiree with a huge RV and a
love for old Westerns, and a
UFO-chasing nutjob who is
thoroughly convinced the alien
intends to probe them and/or take
over the planet.
But the more Francie gets to know
the alien, the more convinced she
becomes that he’s not an invader.
That he’s in trouble and she has
to help him. Only she doesn’t know
how—or even what the trouble is.
PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover
| $28.00 Published
by Del Rey Jun 27, 2023| 416 Pages| 6-1/8 x 9-1/4| ISBN 9780593499856
Hardcover | $28.00
Published by Del Rey Jun 27, 2023| 416 Pages| 6-1/8 x 9-1/4| ISBN 9780593499856
A
Lot Like Christmas - New
Christmas Collection
Published on October 10,
2017, A Lot Like
Christmas is an
"Expanded, Updated Edition of
Connie Willis' Beloved Miracle
and Other Christmas Stories"
For more details and a table of
contents, visit this
entry on the conniewillis.net
blog.
Jean
Cocteau Theater Interview with
Melinda Snodgrass
ConnieWillis.net will
be giving away 10 Advance
Reading Copies of Crosstalk
by Connie Willis
(courtesy of Penguin Random
House). All you have to do to
enter is to send an email to
cwcrosstalk@gmail.com with the
subject CROSSTALK and your name
and city in the text of the
email. Entries will be accepted
until Midnight PT Monday,
September 5th. Open only to US
residents at this time. One
entry per person.
Crosstalk
News and Information
Crosstalk
by Connie Willis is being
published by Del Rey on October
4th, 2016.
Part
romantic comedy and part social
satire, here one of science
fiction’s most lauded authors
examines the consequences of
having too much connectivity, and
what happens in a world where,
suddenly, nothing is private.
One of science
fiction’s premiere humorists
turns her eagle eye to the
crushing societal implications
of telepathy. In a
not-too-distant future, a simple
outpatient procedure that has
been promised to increase
empathy between romantic
partners has become all the
rage. So when Briddey
Flannigan’s fiancé proposes that
he and Briddey undergo the
procedure, she is delighted!
Only…the results aren’t quite as
expected. Instead of gaining an
increased empathetic link with
her fiancé, Briddey finds
herself hearing the actual
thoughts of one of the nerdiest
techs in her office. And that’s
the least of her problems.
There
will also be a signed limited
edition from Subterranean
Press Note that the
book summary there I’d consider
much more spoilerly than the one
above.
Sasquan
(Worldcon 2015) Schedule for
Connie and Cordelia Willis
The
programming schedule for both Connie
and Cordelia at Sasquan has
been posted to the
ConnieWillis.net blog. If you will
be at Sasquan, make sure to catch
them on a panel or two.
Connie's
Injuries and Surgery Updates
Connie recently suffered a bite
from a bat as well as an injury
that required some
surgery. She is recovering
and will be able to make it to
WorldCon in Spokane.
Here's links to the two updates
on the ConnieWillis.net
blog.
Release Date for Crosstalk
According to a recent listing on
Amazon.com, the release date for Crosstalk,
Connie Willis' next novel, will be
September 16,
2016. Some sites are
listing it as January, 2016, but
the fall 2016 date is the correct
one (although Goodreads lists it
as October 18, 2016). Also
note that some places may list it
as the working title, The
Very Thought of You.
She did read from it at the Jack
Williamson Lectureship in April,
and Steven Gould tweeted this
comment along with a picture:
Connie
Willis getting ready to read
from CROSSTALK at the Jack
Williamson Lectureship. It was
really funny. pic.twitter.com/MX1A1Cv1nR
July
2015 Updates From Connie -
D-Day, Nebulas/Chicago, and
the Limberlost
Connie
has written several new updates
written over the last
month. They are available
to view on the ConnieWillis.net
Blog.
Links to the individual entries
in order are as follows:
Greeley Unexpected - Connie
Willis:
SciFi Hall of Famer
(Article about Connie when she was
inducted into the Science Fiction
Hall of Fame with a nice set of
photos and a short video)
April 2015 Update
Connie
has been hard at work
finishing her new novel,
currently titled Crosstalk,
so there hasn't been much to
update here for the last
year.
Her statement on why she won't
be presenting at the Hugo
Awards can be found on the ConnieWillis.net Blog .
Comments are not enabled since
this website and the blog
normally doesn't have much
regular activity and Connie
does not normally hang out
online.
Website
update for April 14, 2014
SEVEN
SUPER WAYS TO CELEBRATE
SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY
Shakespeare's
451st
birthday is coming up next week on
April 23rd. He's my favorite
writer of all time, for at least
451 reasons, the top five (for
each century) being:
1.
He can do virtually
anything: comedy, tragedy,
romance, adventure, burlesque--you
name it. And he's good at
all of it.
2. He
does great female
characters. My favorite is
Viola (Twelfth Night), but there's
also Kate and Beatrice and
Rosalind and Helena and little
Hermia ("Again! Little and
low!") and
poor doomed Juliet and poor dumb
Desdemona, to say nothing of Lady
Macbeth--all different and all
dead on!
3. His
dialogue's terrific, from "What's
done is done," to "Westward, ho!"
to "Come kiss me, Kate!"
4. Some
of the speeches are amazing.
My favorites: the St.
Crispin's Day speech from Henry V
and Prospero's speech from The
Tempest:
"The cloud-capped towers, the
gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great
globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall
dissolve,
And like the insubstantial pageant
faded,
Leave not a wrack behind."
5. He
practically wrote the entire
English language, everything from
"eyeball" to "neither here nor
there" to "It was Greek to
me." You can't get through a
sentence without unconsciously
quoting him. Don't believe
me? How about
dead
as a
doornail
catch
a cold
eat
me out of house and home
with
bated breath
one
fell swoop
seen
better days
Knock
knock, who's there?
for
goodness sake
foul-mouthed
wild-goose
chase
a
heart of gold
so-so
high
time
I
haven't slept a wink
sea
change
fancy
free
a
charmed life
and,
for Sherlock fans: "The
game's afoot."
I
definitely think we should
celebrate the occasion, but a cake
would have to be really big to
support 451 candles, so in lieu of
cake (or cakes and ale) here are
seven things you might not have
seen or read which would be good
ways to mark the occasion:
1. 10 Things I hate about
You. A great modern version
of The Taming of the Shrew, set in
high school and starring Julia
Stiles and Heath Ledger.
It's funny, charming, and pretty
darn faithful to the original,
except that Bianca has a lot more
sense and spunk than the
original. And I don't think
Shakespeare actually wrote, "The
shit hath hitteth the fan."
2.
This Rough Magic by Mary
Stewart. A modern Gothic
romance set on the island of
Corfu, and in amongst all the
murders and mystery, Stewart makes
a compelling case that Corfu might
have been the original for
Shakespeare's island in The
Tempest, with appearances by
Ariel, Caliban, Miranda, and a
legendary Shakespearean actor.
3.
Joss Whedon's Much Ado About
Nothing. Firefly's director
did this modern-day version of
Shakespeare's terrific comedy in
two weeks at his own house with a
bunch of friends, like, say,
Nathan Fillion and "Fred"
and Wesley from Angel. I
didn't think I could like anything
better than the Emma
Thompson-Kenneth Branagh-Denzel
Washington Much Ado, but I was
wrong.
4.
Renaissance
Man. This was a Danny DeVito
comedy that was mostly overlooked
when it came out, but it's
wonderful. It's about an
out-of-work ad executive who's
forced to take a job teaching on a
military base who resorts to
Shakespeare to get through to his
"dummy" recruits, and it has the
best rendering of Henry V's St.
Crispin's Day speech I've ever
heard, spoken, as it should be, by
a soldier.
5.
Hamlet.
No, not the Kenneth Branagh one,
or the Laurence Olivier, or even
the Mel Gibson one (which isn't
all that bad, surprisingly.)
This is the Ethan Hawke one, set
in modern-day Manhattan, with
polaroid photos of flowers,
surveillance bugs, and corporate
takeovers. The "play within
the play is a video montage," the
ghost is on closed-circuit
TV, and Hamlet does
his "To be or not to be"
speech in a video store,
surrounded by shelves labelled
"Action."
6.
Get Over It! A
not-quite-as-good update as 10
Things I Hate About You, but very
fun, this is an update of A
Midsummer Night's Dream, set in a
high school that's doing a
production presided over by Martin
Short, as a director with dreams
of glory, both past and
present. Kirsten Dunst is
great as a modern-day Helena, who
really likes Ben Foster, but he's
hung up on Melissa
Sagemiller. I loved the
stagehands, who would fit
perfectly in Shakespeare's
comedies, and the dancing by
Sisqo, as well as the story, which
is still great after all these
years.
7.
Have Space Suit, Will
Travel. This was the first
Heinlein book I read, and the
first science fiction book, and
it's still my favorite, partly
because of the critical part
Shakespeare's The Tempest plays in
saving the Earth--I mean, if you
were called on to defend the
planet, wouldn’t' Shakespeare be
our best bet? This book was
my first exposure to Shakespeare
(except for my ninth-grade class's
reading of Julius Caesar, which
should NEVER be taught to anyone
under the age of thirty) and to
The Tempest, and I fell in love
with them as well as with science
fiction. It also led
directly to the writing of
Blackout/All Clear, in which The
Tempest once again is involved in
saving the world.
Have
a great Shakespeare's birthday!
Connie Willis
March
27, 2014 - New Connie Willis
Stories on the Way!
There are a
couple of new Connie Willis short
stories being published
soon.
In the anthology ROGUES (edited by
George R. R. Martin and Gardner
Dozois), Connie's story will
be "Now
Showing." According to
Connie, "It's a novelette about
the possible future (or maybe
already present) reality of
movie-going. " It is being
published on June 17th.
Check out this
post on George R. R.
Martin's Not a Blog for more
information and the full list of
contributors.
Coming
soon from Subterranean Press is The
Book of Silverberg, edited
by Gardner Dozois and William
Schafer. Connie's
contribution is titled
"Silverberg, Satan, and Me…". If
you've seen Connie and Bob banter
at a convention, you might have
some inkling of what to
expect. It is available
to
pre-order and will have a
signed limited edition as well as
a trade hardcover edition.
December
23, 2013 Update from Connie
Willis
Is
it just me, or does the fussing,
fuming, and feathers surrounding
Christmas seem worse than usual
this year? I've said "Happy
Holidays" to two different people
in recent days who told me in no
uncertain terms they wanted to
hear "Merry Christmas" instead, so
I am now saying, "Merry Christmas,
Happy Hanukkah (even though it's
over), Happy Ramadan, Happy
Kwanzaa, Jolly Festivus, and a
Solstice That's Not Too Dark, and
just in case I've forgotten
anybody, Happy Everything!"
This takes longer, but is closer
to what I meant anyway.
But
it's annoying that what is
supposed to be a season of peace
and good will has become just
another occasion for people to
behave badly. Although a
number of years ago I wrote a
Christmas story called
"Newsletter," in which the way you
could tell that people had been
taken over by aliens is that they
were behaving nicely at Christmas.
Anyway,
in the spirit of peace and good
will, three
Christmas/Hanukkah/Festivus/Solstice/Kwanzaa/Ramadan/Etc.
gifts from me:
1.
In response to the whole what
color is Santa question, this
carol by Wihla Hutson and Alfred
S. Burt, written in 1951:
Some
children see him lily white,
the
baby Jesus born this night.
Some
children see Him lily white,
with
tresses soft and fair.
Some
children see Him bronzed and
brown,
The
Lord of heav'n to earth come down,
Some
children see Him bronzed and
brown,
with
dark and heavy hair.
Some
children see Him almond-eyed,
this
Savior whome we kneel beside.
Some
children see Him almond-eyed,
with
skin of yellow hue.
Some
children see Him dark as they,
sweet
Mary's Son to whom we pray.
Some
children see him dark as they,
and,
ah, they love Him, too!
The
children in each different place
will
see the baby Jesus' face
like
theirs, but bright with heavenly
grace,
and
filled with holy light.
O
lay aside each earthly thing
and
with thy heart as offering,
come
worship now the infant King.
'Tis
love that's born tonight!
You
have to listen to it to get the
full effect of this lovely carol,
and here are a couple of ways to
do that:
2.
A movie recommendation. We
saw ABOUT TIME, Richard Curtis's
new movie about time travel to
your own past. Richard
Curtis is the guy who did LOVE
ACTUALLY and NOTTING HILL and
ABOUT A BOY and THE VICAR OF
DIBLEY, all of which are also good
to watch at this season of the
year. ABOUT TIME has some
problems, especially with keeping
to his own rules of time travel,
but the movie has a terrific
message, and one we could all use
every day of the year.
3.
For those of you who are Madeleine
L"Engle or A WRINKLE IN TIME fans,
I came across the poem that is the
source for one of her
titles. There was that
pleasant jolt of recognition, and
then a resolution to reread her
books.
It's
also a great poem. It's
"Morning Song from SENLIN" by
Conrad Aiken (I've also resolved
to read more Conrad
Aiken.) I won't quote
the whole thing--you can read it
online--but here are a couple of
relevant passages:
...I
arise, I face the sunrise,
And
do the things my fathers learned
to do.
Stars
in the purple dusk above the
rooftops
Pale
in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And
I myself on swiftly tilting planet
Stand
before a glass and tie my tie...
...The
earth revolves with me, yet makes
no mostion,
The
stars pale silently in a coral
sky.
In
a whistling void I stand before my
mirror,
Unconcerned,
and tie my tie...
...I
ascend from darkness
And
depart on the winds of space for I
know not where;
My
watch is wound, a key is in my
pocket,
And
the sky is darkened as I descend
the stair.
There
are shadows across the windows,
clouds in heaven,
And
a god among the stars; and I will
go
Thinking
of him as I might think of
daybreak
And
humming a tune I know...
A
wonderful season to all of you, full
of holidays and songs!
Happy
holidays!
Connie Willis
November,
2013 Update from Connie
Hi,
Everybody, I
haven't posted in awhile--mostly
because I've been working like mad
on my new novel, which is due in
the spring. But a couple of
weeks ago my husband and I took a
couple of days to go to Milehicon,
where we saw tons of
people--Carrie Vaughn, Cynthia
Felice, Wil McCarthy, Paolo
Baccigalupi, Jim Van Pelt, Rose
Beetum, Carol Berg, Ed Bryant--and
had a great time. We had
breakfast with Craig Chrissinger's
Albuquerque gang and planned out
our traditional Thanksgiving
dinner-booksigning-movie
get-together. I'm pushing
for Disney's new animated film,
FROZEN, though it looks like there
are tons of possibilities this
year, including THE BOOK THIEF and
SAVING MR. BANKS, the Emma
Thompson-Tom Hanks movie about the
real-life making of MARY
POPPINS. (She plays P.L.
Travers, he plays Walt Disney, and
if you get a chance, check out the
newspaper ad for the movie--it's
brilliant!)
(Note:
The reading and signing is at Page
One Bookstore in Albuquerque on
November 26th at 7:15 p.m.)
As
to the rest of the convention, my
husband Courtney demonstrated
antique sewing machines, taught
kids to sew, and did science
demos. (He's way more of a
draw at Milehicon than I am, so
much so that I always end up
scheduled against him because no
one else wants to be.
I
did a thing on happy endings and a
reading and was on a panel about
how to create alien and one on
"The Ten Best Fantasy Films,"
which was great. Everybody
had wonderful lists, all of which
were very different, except for a
few common favorites like LORD OF
THE RINGS and THE WIZARD OF OZ,
and the audience suggested a bunch
more we hadn't thought of.
The
biggest problem was that there
were so many terrific fantasy
movies to choose from. We
voted not to include animated
films (that's next year's panel),
which helped a little by getting
rid of TANGLED, SPIRITED AWAY, and
THE YELLOW SUBMARINE, but there
were still way too many.
And
all so different! I mean,
how exactly do you compare THE
HAUNTING to TIME BANDITS, or
BEETLEJUICE to CROUCHING TIGER,
HIDDEN DRAGON? Or THE THIEF
OF BAGHDAD?
There
are all those wonderful 1930s and
40s afterlife and angels comedies
like HERE COMES MR. JORDAN and A
GUY NAMED JOE, and fairy tales
like THE PRINCESS BRIDE and
LADYHAWKE and LABYRINTH, and
spooky ghost stories like THE
SIXTH SENSE and THE HAUNTING, and
things that don't seem to fit in
any category, like MONTY PYTHON
AND THE HOLY GRAIL.
To
say nothing of all those Christmas
movies, which almost always have a
fantasy element--A CHRISTMAS
CAROL, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, THE
SANTA CLAUSE, THE BISHOP'S WIFE,
you name it.
And
they're all so different! I
mean, when you're naming
favorites, how exactly do you
compare TIME BANDITS to BEING JOHN
MALKOVITCH or BEETLEJUICE to
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN
DRAGON?
And
ten is obviously way too few for a
definitive list, so I went for a
list of personal favorites which
people might not have seen, and
then cheated a little. And
then kept thinking of more I
wanted to add.
Here's
my list, in no particular order
except the top two and the last
one, which are my all-time
favorites:
MY TOP TEN
FAVORITE FANTASIES YOU MIGHT HAVE
MISSED
1.
DREAMCHILD--The little girl who
was the inspiration for ALICE IN
WONDERLAND travelled to New York
City in 1932 (when she was a very
old lady) to accept an honorary
degree on behalf of the late Lewis
Carroll--and to confront her
memories and inner demons.
2.
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS--A bunch of
people are sailing to the States
from England on an ocean liner
during World War II, but the
ship's curiously deserted--and
maybe going somewhere else
altogether. It's based on
Sutton Vane's play (and novel)
OUTWARD BOUND, and is my favorite
eerie movie ever.
3.
THE OTHERS--The most terrifying
ghost story I've ever seen, and
all accomplished without any gore,
any screechy violins. We saw
it on the day it opened without
knowing anything about it, which
is the best way to see it and the
reason I'm not going to say
anything else.
4.
THE KID--Lily Tomlin, Jean Smart,
and Bruce Willis at his snarky
best in a story about a mysterious
kid who shows up wanting his toy
airplane back. Best line--"I
don't have a dog?!"
5.
DRAGONSLAYER--Okay, the CGI's
beyond primitive, but I'll pit the
story against THE HOBBIT any day,
(and I love THE HOBBIT!) I
was surprised at the chorus of
"Yeah!"s from the audience when I
mentioned it, so it's obviously a
lot of other people's favorite,
too.
6.
GHOST TOWN--We went to see this
movie because Greg Kinnear was in
it, and have watched it probably
fifty times since. Think THE
SIXTH SENSE, only hilarious--and
very touching. Who would
have thought Ricky Gervaise would
make a charming romantic comedy
hero?
7.
ENCHANTED-- This might actually
belong in the animated section--or
it might not. But either
way, it's cute and funny and has
the only song about cockroaches
and rats in any movie I know
of. Who knew Disney had a
sense of humor about itself?
8.
BELLE ET LA BETE--From the
ridiculous to the (literally)
sublime. Jean Cocteau's
version of Beauty and the Beast is
truly transcendent. I had a
hard time choosing between this
and Cocteau's ORPHEE, but BELLE
won out just because it's so
beautiful!
9.
Every fantasy movie Emma
Thompson's ever been in.
(This is the cheating part, where
I squeeze in more than one movie
as one choice.) She's
amazing whether she's playing a
homely babysitter in NANNY MCPHEE
or the reincarnation of somebody
else in DEAD AGAIN or the
desperate, slightly
deranged, chain-smoking
writer in STRANGER THAN
FICTION. No wonder she's
playing P.L. Travers in the
upcoming SAVING MR. BANKS.
She's practically perfect in every
way.
And
speaking of practically perfect,
10.
GROUNDHOG DAY. We watch this
every year on February second,
know whole chunks of it by heart,
and live it over and over along
with Bill Murray. And it
gets better every
time.
11.
All of Nick Welling's stuff on the
Syfy Channel. More cheating,
especially since they aren't
movies, they're miniseries, but
they're just too interesting to
leave out. They're inventive
adult reimaginings of well-known
children's books, and I love all
three--and hope there'll be lots
more. My favorite is ALICE,
with its drug-dealer hero Hatter
and its dystopian Wonderland,
though TIN MAN (with Zoe
Deschamel) is generally considered
to be the best. But
NEVERLAND has one of the best last
lines ever, and Bill Nighe is
Captain Hook.
12.
TOPPER--I love all of the
ghost-angel-heaven-full-of-dry-ice-clouds
movies from the thirties and
forties, but whoever thought of
having Cary Grant as a
cocktail-swilling ghost was
divinely inspired, and Leo G.
Carroll and Constance Bennett are
really good, too.
And
finally,
13.
TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY--I've saved
one of the best for last.
It's all about loss and mourning,
it's funny, it's ironic, it's sad,
and it has Alan Rickman in
it. Lovely, lovely, lovely
movie.
Oh,
and I forgot PLEASANTVILLE and
SLIDING DOORS and THE CIRCUS OF
DR. LAO, and SPLASH and...
What's
that you say? The worst
fantasy movie? That's
easy. GHOST. Hands
down.
I
can hear howls of protest from
some of you, but that's only
because you've never seen TRULY,
MADLY, DEEPLY. Go watch it
right now.
I'd
also like to raise a glass to DVDs
and DVRs and Netflix and IMDB for
making it possible to watch all of
these great movies!
Oh,
and on a personal note, we
survived the floods, and in the
election this week my county voted
NOT to secede. Yay!
Have
a happy November!
Connie Willis
An
Update From Connie Willis
AUGUST 4, 2013
Hi,
everybody! It's been a wild
spring and summer, with lots of
travelling, even more working on
the novel, and a new short story
collection out.
It's
called THE BEST OF CONNIE WILLIS
and is a collection of all of my
short stories, novelettes, and
novellas which have won the Nebula
or Hugo Award (or both.)
It's also got three of my speeches
in it, including the speech I gave
when I was the Guest of Honor at
Worldcon several years ago, my
Grand Master acceptance speech,
and a speech nobody's ever heard
before. (The explanation for why
is in the book). Plus,
I wrote new afterwords for all the
stories.
In
May, I went to the Nebula Awards
Weekend in San Jose, the highlight
of which was getting to spend time
with Gene Wolfe, who is one of my
favorite people and who was there
to be named an SFWA Grand
Master.
Then
a week later my family and I raced
off to England for two weeks
for a Jane Austen-King
Arthur-Primeval-Sewing Machine
Tour (more about that in the next
update), and in late June I went
to Seattle to emcee the annual
LOCUS Awards Weekend, which has
become more fun every year.
It's
not like any other awards banquet,
in or out of science
fiction. Although the awards
are very serious (LOCUS boasts the
largest number of people voting of
any award in science fiction), the
banquet is anything but.
Everyone wears gaudy Hawaiian
shirts (if you don't, you have to
wear a sign that says, "I did not
wear a Hawaiian shirt," which
automatically enters you in a
drawing for a lovely Hawaiian
shirt) and leis, and people go to
incredible lengths to outdo each
other. Jay Lake's shirts are
practically blinding, Greg Bear
somehow obtained a limited-edition
Disney LILO AND STITCH shirt,
sarongs abound, and one guy this
year came in a brilliant orange
and red shirt, even more brilliant
Hawaiian shorts, red tights, and
matching sunglasses.
There
are drawings, contests and prizes,
Nancy Kress is the official
heckler (and is way too good at
her job), there are guests like
Neil Gaiman, Gardner Dozois, James
Patrick Kelly, and Ursula
LeGuin. This year's list
included Nancy Kress, Daniel
Abraham, Eileen Gunn, Ty Franck,
Jack Skillingstead, Greg and
Astrid Bear, Liz Hand, and John
Clute, who was being taken into
the Science Fiction Hall of
Fame. Liza Trombi, the
editor of LOCUS, presides, the
entire class of Clarion West
attends, and a great time is
had by all.
It's
not clear exactly how all this
came about. One version is
that one year several authors
decided to wear Hawaiian shirts to
tease Charlie Brown, and the next
year a lot of the fans did, too,
and pretty soon the whole thing
had gotten out of hand, with
light-up leis and hula contests
(you should have seen Gardner
Dozois in a hula skirt and coconut
bra!) and all sorts of Island
craziness.
Another
version, which I like better, is
the one I recounted this year at
the banquet:
LOCUS AWARDS
2013
I
just got back from England, so I
thought this year the theme for
the Locus Awards should
have an English flavor.
Well,
that, and
the fact that Liza told me I
couldn't spend the whole time
talking about PRIMEVAL like
I did last year.
"What's
PRIMEVAL?"
did you say?
(explanation)
Well,
anyway,one
of the things I was so impressed
with in England was
how old everything was.
In
Glastonbury we ate in an inn
that was opened in the 800s. We
drove through the New Forest--where,
by
the way, Connor and Abby ran
into the fake dinosaur in that
one episode--sorry--
Anyway,
everything
had this really impressive
history.
The
New Forest was established in
1066, and
when we went to Winchester
Cathedral we
found out it had been built in
1093to
replace the old church, which
had burned down.
And
it set me to thinking about
LOCUS. So
I started asking people what
they knew about its historyand
they said, "I don't know.
Didn't
Charles N. Brown decide to do a
fanzine about science fiction and
print it out on a mimeograph
machine or something? And
win about a million Hugo Awards? And
make people wear Hawaiian shirts
at the Banquet?"
And
I realized I should fill you in
on the actual history of
Charles N. Brown and LOCUS.
LOCUS
was founded in 1126 by Charles
N. Brown, then
a friar at Oakland Abbey in
Sherwood Forest, where
he painstakingly copied out the
magazine by hand and
illuminated the illustrations
himself.
The
fledgling magazine faced
enormous obstacles: 1--the
populace
couldn't read 2--the
Sheriff on Nottingham kept
trying to shut him down and
3--except for that part of
BEOWULF with the dragon in it, there
was no such thing as science
fiction.
Friar
Brown did not let that stop him. He
worked tirelessly to jump-start
SF, lobbying
Chaucer
to include "The Wyf of
Betelgeuse" in
his Canterbury Tales,
suggesting
to Richard II that he shout, "My
Westeros, my Westeros, my
kingdom
for somebody who'll tell
me how THE GAME OF THRONES
ends!"
and
trying to convince Anne Boleyn that
she should forget about Henry
VIII who
1--was married and
2--wore puffy shorts and
write a fantasy trilogy.
Alas,
she did not listen to him, and
in the ensuing rash of
beheadings, Friar
Brown was forced to flee the
country, stopping
only to see Shakespeare in
Stratford on Avon and
suggest he change Titania and
Oberon into
little green men,before
sailing off with the explorer
James Cook.
It
was on one of his many voyages
with Captain Cook that
Friar Brown first encountered
Hawaii. He
took to it like a duck to water,abandoning
his friar's habit for gaudy
Hawaiian shirts and
(non-puffy) shorts,though
retaining
the sandals, and
joining the natives in drinking
mai-tais and
singing "I Want a Little Grass
Shack in Kaleakakua, Hawaii."
He
suggested Captain Cook do the
same, but his advice was once
again ignored.
After
Captain Cook's death, Charles
escapedwith
the help of Elvis Presley, who
was working as a busboy at the
Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and
hitched a ride on The Black
Pearl and
then on the Pequod with novelist
Herman Melville, who
oddly insisted Charles call him
Ishmael.
Charles
worked hard to convince Mel
(sorry--Ish) that
he should write a screenplay
instead of a novel and
that it should be about a pair
of humpbacked whales who
are our only link to an alien
raceand
who need to be rescued by Kirk
and Spock who
have travelled back in time.
Mel--sorry,
Ish--said
no, but
Charles had better luck with
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,who
rescued him after he'd been
forced to walk the plank and
had subsequently caught
pneumonia.
Mary
took him home with her to Italy
to nurse him back to health. There,
Charles convinced her to stop
writing goopy fan-ficabout
sparkly vampires and
write something commercial, like
FRANKENSTEIN.
She
did, science fiction was born, and
Charles hurried to California to
invent the staple and expand the
magazine, stopping
in England on the way to
infect the Martians who'd
invaded London,and
try to convince H.G. Wells to
turn his account of the invasion
into a trilogy called RED
MARS, BLUE MARS, and GREEN MARS.
When
Wells refused to listen, Charles
stuck him in a time machine and
went off to help Alexander
Graham Bell invent the telephone and
Marconi invent the wireless so he
could call Orson Welles to
tell him WAR OF THE WORLDS would
make a really scary radio
program.
He
also called Hugo Gernsback to
tell him to get an award named
after himself so
Locus could win it, and
called Rod Serling to tell him
about Mary Shelley's fan fic.
"Do
you think I could make a TV
series out of it?" Serling
asked.
"No,"
Charles said, whispering.
"One, TV hasn't been invented
yet, and two, no one with an IQ
over 17 would watch it, but
TWILIGHT might make a good
title."
"Twilight?"
Serling said. "Nope, not
punchy enough."
"How
about the Twilight Area?
Or the Twilight Locale?" Charles
whispered.
"What?"
Serling shouted. "I can't
hear you. Speak up."
"I
can't," Charles whispered.
"My pneumonia came back, and
I've lost my voice. Plus,
I'm not allowed to shout.
I'm in a hospital zone."
Rod
Serling was so grateful, he
sent Charles a mimeograph
machine,and
the rest, as they say, is
history!
The
true highlight of the banquet is
the Hawaiian shirt trivia contest,
which you get to compete in if
your Hawaiian shirt is really
gaudy. Questions range from,
"How many islands does Hawaii
consist of?" (eight,
according to Wikipedia, or
possibly 137) to "What redheaded,
ukulele-playing radio host
popularized the Hawaiian shirt on
the mainland?" (Arthur Godfrey) to
"What Hawaiian-shirt and
toe-ring-wearing editor founded
the Locus Awards?" (Charlie Brown)
Because
I'd just come back from England,
all of this year's questions were
about the astonishing similarities
between the British Isles and the
Hawaiian Islands. They are
just alike.
No, really, they're both
green, they both have a royal
history, and they both like
absolutely inedible foods.
For the British, it's toad in the
hole, kidneys, and watery
cabbage. For the Hawaiians,
it's loco moco (white rice topped
with a hamburger, fried egg, and
brown gravy) and poi. And
they both like Spam. They're
practically twins.
Don't
believe it? Here's a
sampling of this year's trivia
questions (answers at the end of
the update):
1.
Both Hawaii and England have lots
of oil. Hawaii's is SPF50
and is mostly found on the
beach. Where is England's
oil supply found? And no, I
don't mean in fish and chips
fryers.
2.
Both have ideal climates.
Hawaii has balmy trade winds,
70-degree weather, and azure
skies. England has rain,
mist, drizzle, mizzle, and what
form of weather beloved by Arthur
Conan Doyle and Jack the Ripper?
3.
Both have royal princesses.
Princess Victoria Kai'ulani did
her bit for the royal family by
translating the Book of Common
Prayer into Hawaiian, and Princess
Kate is about to do her bit by
doing what? (Note: as
of this date, she's already done
it.)
4.
Both England and the United
States, of which Hawaii is one,
have been doing a lot of illegal
spying lately. The US
has the NSA, and England has The
News of the World, The London
Times, and The Sun. Who owns
them?
5.
Both proudly boast the sport of
kings. In England it's
horseracing. In Hawaii, it's
what sport originated by King
Kamehameha?
6.
Both Hawaii and England are famous
for their jewels. England
has the 106-carat Koh-i-noor
diamond. What is Hawaii's
biggest diamond?
7.
Both Hawaiian and British movies
have starred brilliant
actors. British movies have
included Laurence Olivier, Alec
Guinness, and Andrew Lee Potts of
PRIMEVAL. (Oh, come on--did
you really expect me to do this
without mentioning
PRIMEVAL?) Anyway, brilliant
actors in movies set in Britain
include Olivier, Guinness, and
Andrew Lee Potts, and stellar
actors in Hawaiian movies include
Adam Sandler, Ricky Nelson, and
Elvis Presley, who starred in what
movie set at Waikiki?
8.
Both Hawaii and England have lots
of wildlife. Hawaii has
dolphins, nenes, and tourists from
Iowa. England has red deer,
red foxes, and what animal with
impossibly short legs and a
penchant for being carried around
by the Queen or her mother?
See,
I told you Hawaii and England are
just alike.
The
top prize for the trivia contest
is a banana autographed by all the
attending authors, and lesser
prizes have included light-up neon
leis, Gilligan sailor hats, Don Ho
LPs, dashboard hula dolls,
and coconut bras.
You
might want to start studying now
for next year. And haunting
thrift stores for the perfect
Hawaiian shirt. My favorite
this year was one that was plain
blue on the front. I was
about to put an "I didn't wear a
Hawaiian shirt" sign on it when
the wearer turned around to reveal
the back of the shirt, which
sported a painting of a mermaid
which filled the entire
shirt.
Till next time,
Connie Willis
Oops, I almost
forgot. The answers to the
trivia questions
were:
1.
The North Sea
2.
Having a baby
3.
Fog
4.
Rupert Murdoch
5.
Surfing
6.
Diamond Head
7.
Blue Hawaii
8.
The corgi
July 10 - Best of Connie Willis
Roundup (Updated August 18)
With the release of The
Best of Connie Willis,
there's some new interviews
surfacing on the web with
Connie as well as various
articles about Connie.
Here's links to some of them
(with more added as I find
out):
Science Fiction/San Francisco
- Fanzine
with a report on the Nebula
Awards plus a bonus
report from Cordelia Willis
about their Jane Austen trip
(more on that to come from
Connie soon).
The
UK Release is a trade paperback
and e-book from Gollancz and is
called Time is the Fire The
Best of Connie Willis.
April
7 - An Update from Connie
Hi, everybody! Spring is
here! Or at any rate, it
will be once the blizzard
that's supposed to be coming
in tonight is over and we win
that lawsuit against
Punxatawney Phil, and I for
one am overjoyed. I hate
that No Light No Warmth No Fun
and God Help Us, Congress Is
In Session Again
Post-Christmas period.
This year,
however, it was made easier to
bear by several things:
1. I
made good progress on my
telepathy novel, currently
known as CONNECTION.
2. I
got to go to Condor, a great
SF convention in San
Diego. It's held at a
gorgeous
palm-tree-and-swimming-pool-studded
resort (I'd recommend the con
for the resort alone), plus I
got to be on great panels
about what to take with you
when travelling in time and
which our favorite Horrible
Science Science-Fiction Movie
was.
My personal
fave is 2012, which is sort of
a Greatest Hits of Bad Science
Movie. Where does all
that water which swamps the
Himalayas come from--and where
does it go afterwards?
Actually, I know the answer to
the first part of that
question. The water was
clearly left over from
Waterworld. But is there
a bathtub drain I don't know
about? And if so, could
you send a little water to the
West? We're having an
awful drought here.
At
Condor I saw Vernor
Vinge and David Brin, talked
to old friends Michael Toman,
Bill Wu, and Mark Barsotti,
and just generally soaked up
the sunshine.
3. My
bulldog Smudge became a
Broadway star! Okay,
maybe not Broadway. More
off-off-off-off-off Broadway,
but still... He played
Rufus in the University of
Northern Colorado production
of the musical LEGALLY
BLONDE. Remember how
Elle's hairdresser broke up
with her and he took her dog
Rufus, and Elle, in her first
legal case ever, gets him
back? That was Smudge.
How did
this happen? Well, just
like Lana Turner at Schwab's
Drugstore, Smudge was
discovered as we walked him
near the theater building on
campus. The director
came running out, pronounced
him as perfect for the role,
and asked him to be in the
show. He stole the
show! Six performances,
and he never flubbed a single
line or missed a cue.
And all the kids adored him!
His sister
(our daughter Cordelia, who
has had parts in numerous
musicals, has won Best in Show
at Comicon several times, and
is currently appearing in
BRIGADOON in San Jose) flew
home to see her brother's
theatrical debut, and my
sisters-separated-at-birth
Betty Williamson and Patrice
Caldwell (of Jack Williamson
Lectureship fame) sent Smudge
flowers from New Mexico (with
dog biscuits attached.)
Through it
all, Smudge remained his
sweet, funny self and did not
go Hollywood. Except for
the sunglasses. And
wanting to watch the movie
over and over, reliving his
glory days. Just like
Gloria Swanson in SUNSET
BOULEVARD. Except we
don't have a swimming
pool.
A new
collection of my short stories
is coming out from Bantam in
July. It's called THE
BEST OF CONNIE WILLIS, and has
all the Hugo- and Nebula
Award-winning stories plus a
new intro, new afterwords, and
the speeches I gave when I was
Guest of Honor at Worldcon in
LA and my Grand Master
speeches. I'll be doing
a booksigning for the new book
at the Broadway Book Mall in
Denver on July 21 and at other
places, which I'll let you
know about as they get
finalized.
I'll also be speaking at the
Longmont Public Library in
Longmont, Colorado on August
8.
I'll be attending:
The Jack Williamson
Lectureship in Portales,
NM--April 11-13
Constellation in Lincoln,
Nebraska--April 18-21
The Nebula Awards Weekend in
San Jose, CA--May 16-19
The Locus Awards Weekend in
Seattle--June 28-30
Bubonicon in Albuquerque,
NM--August 23-25
Worldcon in San
Antonio--August 29-September 2
Dec
11, 2012 - Updates Galore (with
more to come).
This has been a busy year for
Connie as well as her webmaster,
so there hasn't been much updated
here for a while. I've got a
brand new update from Connie
(below) as well as Connie's report
on her trip to New Zealand with
her family earlier in the year
(which ties in nicely with
some movie opening this
weekend). I'll have more
updates shortly (including a
special page for the Nebula Awards
Weekend where Connie was presented
with the Grand Master
Award).
Dec
10, 2012 - An update From
Connie
It's
that time of year again, only this
year it may not come, due to the
Mayan calendar thingee.
First,
an apology. I've been
incredibly remiss about keeping
everybody up-to-date on what's
been happening in the last few
months, which can be summed up as:
1.
Teaching Clarion West.
2.
Going to the Nebulas, the Locus
Awards, Bubonicon, Worldcon, VCon,
and Milehicon.
3.
Working on my telepathy novel.
4.
Working on Obama's campaign.
5.
Converting people to watching
PRIMEVAL and/or watching it with
them.
Actually,
now that I look at that list, I
can see why I've been so
remiss: I've been really
busy.
But
still...
Anyway,
a quick update:
1. My
husband Courtney and I will be
going to COSINE in Colorado
Springs on January 25 through 27.
2. THE
BEST OF CONNIE WILLIS, a
collection of all my Nebula and
Hugo-Award winning stories is in
the pipeline and coming out
soon. (I just did the
copy-edited manuscript.) I
wrote new afterwords for all the
stories.
3. I've
been working on my telepathy novel
and on a story for George R.R.
Martin and Gardner Dozois's
anthology, ROGUES. It's
about the movies and is called
"Now Showing."
4. Andrew
Lee Potts (Connor on PRIMEVAL) has
a new short out (on youtube and
the Virgin Films shorts site)
called LITTLE LARRY. It's
charming. I also recommend
RUDE AWAKENINGS (available on
Netflix) and TRUE BLOODTHIRST
(Syfy.)
5. All
the cons were great, but Worldcon
in Chicago had three special
highlights for me, two SFish and
the other not. The first was
that the con scheduled "An Hour
with Robert Silverberg and Connie
Willis," a chance for us to
chatter merrily to each other
about whatever for an entire
hour. Oh, all right, I
chattered merrily and Bob was his
usual clever, sarcastic, cynical,
totally cool self, but it was
great!
The second was
a party Random House threw for its
writers. They chartered one
of the river cruise boats which
went up the Chicago River and then
back down and out onto Lake
Michigan. We wended our way
past Chicago's beautiful art deco
buildings, which were artfully
lit, and then out onto the moonlit
lake to look at the glittering
city and the multicolored lights
from the amusement park on the
Navy Pier. Magical! If
you are in Chicago, definitely
take one of these cruises.
And speaking of
the Navy Pier, that's where we
went to see the third highlight of
Worldcon: the Stained Glass
Museum. It's not a
traditional museum. They
haven't put the art in rooms but
all along the halls of the Navy
Pier's exhibition halls stretching
for what seemed like miles.
The museum originated with E.B.
and Maureen Smith's collection,
who may have gotten the idea from
the Tiffany exhibit at the 1893
Chicago World's Fair, and it
includes all sorts of windows and
panels from Victorian houses and
Art Deco skyscrapers that were
being torn down.
And LOTS of Tiffanys.
I am a sucker
for Tiffany windows. His
colors are amazing and completely
unlike anyone else's.
Somebody said Yves St. Laurent had
a "perfect eye," like perfect
pitch only in regard to clothing
design. Well, Tiffany had
perfect pitch for color.
Lavender blues, delicate spring
greens, slaty purples, and he does
sunsets better than anyone
else.
My husband and
I try to seek out Tiffanys
wherever we go. There are
some wonderful ones in the
Presbyterian Church in Topeka,
Kansas (I know!), at the Morton
salt mansion in Nebraska, and in
the Unitarian Church just off the
Boston Commons. And of
course there are a bunch at the
Met in New York. But this
museum had a ton of them.
A couple that
stood out were one of an autumn
scene with fiery golds and
oranges, and the other was of a
summer landscape. As I said,
Tiffany does wonderful skies and
sunsets, but this was the first
window I'd seen with piled-up
summer cumulus clouds, and he'd
caught the colors perfectly!
All
right, end of update and on to the
holiday season--or the end of the
world, though why anybody thinks
the Mayans are experts, I don't
know. Their civilization HAD
its end of the world, and they
hadn't predicted IT correctly at
all. But then again, people
believed John of Toledo, who
predicted the end of the world in
1186, and Jeane Dixon, who
predicted it in 1962 (on February
fourth.) And THE NEWS
OF THE WORLD, who predicted it
every year until THEY experienced
their own private one.
The Mayans
definitely have more credibility
than any of them, so maybe they're
right. And just in case
there are, you might as well
settle back, forget your Christmas
shopping, and read a good book.
Here
are some very good End of the
World stories and books to read
while waiting for the end.
1.
"The Last of the Spode" by Evelyn
Smith
2.
THE SUNDIAL by Shirley Jackson
3.
"By the Waters of Babylon" by
Stephen Vincent Benet
4.
"When We Went to See the End of
the World" by Robert Silverberg
5.
ALAS, BABYLON by Pat Frank
6.
"Lot" by Ward Moore
7.
ON THE BEACH by Neville Shute
8.
EARTH ABIDES by George R. Stewart
9.
"The Day They Got Cleveland" by
H.L. Gold
10.
CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut
And,
if you still have time, my "Daisy,
in the Sun" and "A Letter from the
Clearys."
Oh,
and if you want to see something
where the end of the world is
narrowly averted, Season 5 of
PRIMEVAL, but you have to watch
the first four seasons to get the
full effect. Which is
actually a great idea.
On
the other hand, the end of the
world probably won't happen, and
on the twenty-second, you'll be
stuck having to listen to lots of
opining about how dumb everybody
was for believing it.
Or,
you can watch some Christmas
movies. I've listed my
favorites before on this site, but
here are a few I've discovered
since then:
THE
APARTMENT. Billy Wilder's
SOME LIKE IT HOT is his most
famous comedy, but I think this is
his best. It's sweet and sad
and cynical all at once, and has a
best last line to rival
CASABLANCA's. And it's the
only Christmas movie I know that
revolves around adultery and
suicide.
ABOUT
A BOY. This is one of
my favorite Christmas
movies. It's got two
Christmas dinners, one with
parsnip gravy and Frankenstein,
plus renditions of the truly awful
"Santa's Super Sleigh" and singing
with your eyes closed.
OFF
SEASON. It's a TV movie, but
it's got Hume Cronyn as Santa
Claus, and it's set in Florida,
and it's really charming.
TWELFTH
NIGHT. Not the Kenneth
Branagh-directed one, but the one
with Imogen Stubbs and Helena
Bonham Carter, with Ben Kingsley
as Feste. It's my favorite
Shakespeare play, and this is the
best version ever. And very
funny. Watch it on a double
bill with SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.
I
also have several Christmas
episodes of TV shows to
recommend. (Don't
gag. I know, they're usually
awful, especially LITTLE HOUSE ON
THE PRAIRIE, but there are
actually some good ones.
Including:
DR.
WHO'S A CHRISTMAS CAROL (of
course) and THE CHRISTMAS
INVASION.
The
"A Mall and the Night Visitors"
episode of FRASIER (Season
Three). This episode manages
to tackle last-minute shopping,
parental angst, and educational
toys, and still leave you in
tears. Frasier, Niles, and
Dad (and Eddie) at their
best.
The
"Silly But It's Fun" episode of
the BBC's GOOD NEIGHBORS (THE GOOD
LIFE in England). This whole
series about a suburban couple who
chuck corporate life to become
backyard farmers and their
appalled upper-crust next-door
neighbors is one of the best ever,
and it only ran four (short
British) seasons, so it's not
impossible to watch the whole
thing during this festive season,
but this Christmas episode is a
masterpiece, silly, surprising,
and a touching ode to friendship.
And
in case you were too worried about
the Mayans to enjoy Thanksgiving,
you can watch:
PLANES, TRAINS,
AND AUTOMOBILES (now as much a
Thanksgiving tradition as A
CHRISTMAS STORY and IT'S A
WONDERFUL LIFE are Christmas
traditions)
DEAR
GOD (it covers Thanksgiving and
Christmas) and
YOU'VE
GOT MAIL (ditto, plus it provides
a lead-in to spring, which is
always a good idea to be thinking
about in the depths of
winter!
Merry
holidays and here's to the first
daffodil!
Connie
Willis
May
12, 2012 - Webmaster Note:
Some updates to the website got
lost in the shuffle as I started a
new job and got have been playing
catchup for a while. I will
be in Washington D.C. for the Nebula Awards
Weekend this coming week and
will have some pictures from there
to share. SFWA did have a
short interview with Connie
recently.
In the meantime, please
check out the belated updates
posted below.
Connie
Willis Ebooks Available
Books
with Cynthia Felice - The three
titles Connie co-wrote with
Cynthia Felice are being
released as e-books by
Cynthia. Promised
Land and Water
Witch are currently
available on the Kindle with Light
Raid coming soon.
Editions for the Nook are also
in the works. Click on the
images below to take you
directly to the Amazon.com web
page for each book.
Water
Witch
Promised
Land
Light
Raid
February
26,
2012 - A late winter update from
Connie - A List of Favorites.
Hi,
everybody! It's the dead of
post-holiday winter, which is good
for absolutely nothing except
cleaning closets, having colds,
and catching up on your reading
while you wait for spring to
come. In connection with
which, several people lately have
asked me to post a list of my
favorite books.
It's impossible
to really do one properly--there
are just too many to reduce to the
top ten, all-inclusive lists of
your favorite five hundred and
sixty-eight are too long, and you
always forget something obvious,
which everybody yells at you for.
And besides,
when you put Gaudy Night on the
list, you don't really mean Gaudy
Night. You mean all four of
the Lord Peter and Harriet Vane
books: Strong Poison, Have
His Carcase, Gaudy Night and
Busman's Honeymoon. You
don't mean Twelfth Night, you mean
all of Shakespeare's
comedies. All Hallow's Eve
is just a stand-in for all seven
of Charles Williams' books, and
trying to pick between Mark
Twain's Roughing It and Life on
the Mississippi is like Solomon
cutting the baby in half.
On the other
hand, I adore book lists.
When I was in high school, the
Rocky Mountain News published an
eight-page insert of books
everybody should read. I
plowed my way through it,
conscientiously crossing out the
books as I read them, and in the
process, I found a bunch of great
stuff I would never have even
known existed otherwise, like
Kristin Lavransdatter and The
Circus of Dr. Lau. And yet,
even that list wasn't complete--it
had no children's literature,
hardly any history or science, and
no science fiction or fantasy.
But it was
still helpful, and in that spirit,
I present the following set of
lists. They are in no way
intended to be complete or even
representative. (You'll detect a
huge British slant and an equally
large leaning toward the
fantastic. (And yes, I know
there's no Dickens here, and no
Bradbury, but that doesn't mean I
don't love them.) They're
just a bunch of books, and a few
movies and TV series, which a) I
love, b) you might not have read
or seen, and c) you might like.
Or not.
Reading is an intensely personal
business. I'm always being
told by people, "You'll love this
book," and then I not only don't
love it, I absolutely loathe
it. And I've recommended
lots of things that made people
say, "What did you like about this
book again?"
But hopefully
you'll find something new and good
in here. And then you can
add it to your own list.
A few
notes:
1.
Consider these books just a sample
of that writers' works--there are
dozens of great Agatha Christie
books and Shirley Jacksons and
P.G. Wodehouses to read besides
the ones on these lists, and Tom
Stoppard wrote lots of other plays
besides India Ink, like Arcadia
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead, which are great.
2.
Charles Williams (All Hallow's
Eve) was one of the Inklings along
with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R.
Tolkien, and my favorite of
them. He had the most
unusual mind I've ever
encountered. His prose,
however, can be appallingly
convoluted, but he's worth the
slog.
3. Lloyd
Lewis (Myths After Lincoln) was
Carl Sandburg's best friend.
They worked together on the
Chicago Daily News. Carl was
writing his biography of Lincoln,
and Lloyd got interested in all
the stuff that happened after
Lincoln died. An amazing
book!
4. I
chose ten science fiction stories
rather than ten novels because
it's always seemed to me that the
heart of science fiction lies in
its shorter works. When I'm
asked to name my top ten science
fiction novels, I have to think
about it, but I can rattle fifty
science fiction short stories off
the top of my head, and the ten
stories listed here are my
absolute favorites.
5. Beany
Malone is the first book in a very
long girl's series by L.M. Weber,
a Denver writer, and they're all
great. She was writing
terrific YA before there even was
such a thing, but that's not the
only reason she's on my
list. The other is that I
got to meet her when I was in high
school, and that was the day I
realized writers were real,
flesh-and-blood people and that
writing was an actual career that
a young girl from Denver might
aspire to.
6. Into
the Woods and India Ink (and of
course Twelfth Night) aren't
books, they're plays, and are best
seen rather than read, but if
that's the only way you can access
them, then definitely read them.
7. You've
all heard me rave about Primeval
before, so I won't here (see
previous updates), except to say
that it only improves on
rewatching. Right now I'm
also obsessed with Sports Night,
an Aaron Sorkin-written series
which has snappy dialogue, a
charming sense of irony, and a
real gift for romantic comedy.
8. If I told
you one of the most sweet,
touching romantic comedies I've
seen in recent years starred Ricky
Gervais, you'd think I was crazy,
but it's true. It's called
Ghost Town. It's also got Greg
Kinnear, colonoscopies, a 1940s
nurse, Egyptian mummies and Aasif
Mandvi. And one of the best
endings ever.
Anyway, I
hope you find something on these
lists that you've never read
before and that you love.
And even if you don't, this should
get you through to spring.
Final
note: The correct answer to
Shakespeare's question, "If winter
come, can spring be far behind?"
is, unfortunately, yes.
Connie
Willis
A PARTIAL LIST OF CONNIE WILLIS
FAVORITES
MY
ALL-TIME FAVORITES 1.
KRISTIN
LAVRANSDATTER by Sigrid
Undset 2.
ALL
HALLOW'S EVE by Charles Williams 3.
TOUCH
NOT THE CAT by Mary Stewart 4.
GAUDY
NIGHT by Dorothy L. Sayers 5.
THE
HOUSE ON THE STRAND by Daphne
DuMaurier 6.
TWELFTH
NIGHT by William Shakespeare 7.
LOLITA
by Vladimir Nabokov 8.
THE
MOVING FINGER by Agatha Christie 9.
A
FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE by Peter
Beagle 10.
AN EPISODE OF SPARROWS by Rumer
Godden 11.
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER by Walter Lord 12.
MYTHS
AFTER LINCOLN by Lloyd Lewis 13.
THE UNCOMMON READER by Alan
Bennett 14.
THREE
MEN IN A BOAT by Jerome K. Jerome 15.
INTO THE WOODS by Stephen Sondheim 16.
FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot 17.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J. R. R.
Tolkien
SOME
GREAT FICTION YOU MIGHT HAVE
MISSED 1.
THE
HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley
Jackson 2.
A
ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M.
Forster 3.
A
DEATH IN THE FAMILY by James Agee 4.
INDIA
INK by Tom Stoppard 5.
GUYS
AND DOLLS by Damon Runyon 6.
THE
SEARCHERS BY Alan LeMay 7.
COLD
COMFORT FARM by Stella Gibbons 8.
THE
CIRCUS OF DR. LAO by Charles
Finney 9.
THE
MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY by G.K.
Chesterton 10.
SOMETHING
WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray
Bradbury 11.
THE MOST OF P.G. WODEHOUSE by P.G.
Wodehouse 12.
TILL WE HAVE FACES by C.S. Lewis AND
SOME GREAT NON-FICTION 1.
ROUGHING
IT by Mark Twain 2.
BORN STANDING UP by Steve Martin 3.
HOW WE DIE by Sherwin W. Nuland 4.
DAY OF INFAMY by Walter Lord 5.
THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by
Joan Didion 6.
A CHRESTOMATHY by H.L. Mencken 7.
THE DENIAL OF DEATH by Ernest
Becker 8.
CLINGING
TO THE WRECKAGE by John Mortimer 9.
THE PRACTICE OF HISTORY by G.R.
Elton 10.
IS SEX NECESSARY? by E.B.
White and James Thurber TEN
GREAT SCIENCE FICTION SHORT
STORIES 1.
"Flowers
for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes 2.
"The Light of Other Days" by Bob
Shaw 3.
"Day Million" by Frederik Poh; 4.
"We Can Remember It for You
Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick 5.
"Itsy Bitsy Spider" by James
Patrick Kelly 6.
"Bernie
the Faust" by William Ten 7.
"The Man Who Lost the Sea" by
Theodore Sturgeon 8.
"Lot" by Ward Moore 9.
"One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts"
by Shirley Jackson 10.
"Great
Escape Tours, Inc." by Kit Reed
TEN
CHILDHOOD FAVORITES 1.
LITTLE
WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott 2.
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by L.M.
Montgomery 3.
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth
Grahame 4.
THE WATER BABIES by Charles
Kingsley 5.
BEANY MALONE by Lenora Mattingly
Weber 6.
OZMA IN OZ by L. Frank Baum 7.
A LITTLE PRINCESS by Frances
Hodgson Burnett 8.
A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST by Gene
Stratton Porter 9.
HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL by
Robert A. Heinlein 10.
A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Betty
Smith
TEN
DELIGHTFUL THINGS TO WATCH 1.
PRIMEVAL
(BBC) 2.
THE OFFICE (the American version) 3.
DREAMCHILD 4.
KINKY BOOTS 5.
GHOST TOWN 6.
LOVE, ACTUALLY 7.
SHERLOCK
(BBC) 8.
THE AFRICAN QUEEN 9.
TWELFTH
NIGHT (with Imogen Stubbs) 10.
ALICE (Syfy)
OH,
AND JUST IN CASE YOU'RE INTERESTED,
A FEW OF MINE BLACKOUT
and ALL CLEAR (one book) DOOMSDAY
BOOK INSIDE
JOB TO
SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG ALL
SEATED ON THE GROUND BELLWETHER FIRE
WATCH PASSAGE
Jan
17, 2012 - An Update from
Connie in regards to the
Grand Master Award.
Hi,
everybody! I just got
terrific news--I've been named
a Grand Master of Science
Fiction, or been given the
SFWA Grand Master Award, or
been Grand Mastered by
SFWA--I'm not sure how you're
supposed to say it. But
whatever the correct phrase
is, I'm beyond thrilled!
And so honored! To have
my name on any list that
includes Jack Williamson and
Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac
Asimov and Ray Bradbury--all
of whom I absolutely
worshipped as a teenager--does
not even seem possible.
I just saw
a Kurt Vonnegut video on
Youtube about plotting, and he
was graphing the plot of
Cinderella, starting at the
bottom with her in the ashes
and then going up to the ball
and then back down to the
ashes and then way up when the
prince finds her.
"Prince comes, shoe fits,"
Vonnegut says and shoots the
line right up off the corner
of the graph. "Off-scale
happiness!"
That's
definitely the phrase for what
I'm feeling right
now--off-scale
happiness! And so much
gratitude to all the people
who helped me get
started--Gardner Dozois, who
bought my first story, and Ed
Bryant and Cynthia Felice, and
Charlie Ryan, my first
editor. And all the
friends who kept me going
through assorted bad patches
and ash-covered periods--Jim
Kelly and John Kessel and
Charlie Brown and Nancy Kress.
And all the
great fan and writer friends I
made along the way, people
like George R.R. Martin and
Melinda Snodgrass and Bob
Silverberg and Liza Trombi and
Leslie Howle and Rose Beetum
and Chris Chrissinger and Lee
Whiteside and Robert Frazier
and Terri and David Haugen
and...oh, no, I know I sound
like one of those people at
the Oscars who thank everybody
from their mom to their
childhood tap-dancing teacher,
and who keep saying, "Oh, I
know I'm forgetting
somebody...I'm sorry, whoever
you are," but I know how they
feel. Nobody gets
anywhere in this field or any
other without helping hands
and encouraging words and
shoulders to cry on. I
literally wouldn't have lasted
five minutes in science
fiction without all of the
above and countless others
I've forgotten to mention in
my excitement.
And
without all my brilliant (and
patient) editors and agents,
Sheila Williams and Anne
Groell and Ralph Vicinanza and
Shawna McCarthy and Chris
Lotts and Patrick Delahunt, my
writing would have been just
terrible! You should
have seen my first
story! I want to thank
all of them! And all of
you, faithful (and
patient) readers!
Off-scale gratitude!
Connie
Willis
Jan
16, 2012 - Connie Willis
Named SFWA Grand Master!
The
Science
Fiction and Fantasy Writers
of America today
announced that Connie Willis
will be the next recepient of
the Damon Knight Memorial
Grand Master Award at the Nebula Awards
Weekend being held in
Arlington, Virginia, May
17-20, 2012. In the SFWA
announcement, Connie
says "Being named
a Nebula Grand Master is an
unimaginable honor–quite
literally. When I began
writing science fiction as a
teenager, my biggest goal was
to actually sell a story. My
greatest castles-in-the-air
fantasy was to someday win a
Nebula Award. If you’d told
that teenaged girl that she’d
someday end up a Nebula Grand
Master, with her named linked
to those of the authors she
worshiped, demigods like Jack
Williamson, Ray Bradbury, Joe
Haldeman, and Robert A.
Heinlein, she’d NEVER have
believed it. I’m not sure I
believe it. But I’m very, very
grateful. And I’m even more
grateful that I’ve been able
to spend my entire life among
the work and the people I fell
in love with when I was
thirteen."
Congratulations to Connie!
Dec
17, 2011 - A Holiday Update
from Connie!
Hi,
everybody! Christmas is
bearing down on us, and
because you all have so much
time to read during the
holidays, Lee thought you
might like a list of my
Christmas short stories.
For a long time, I've written
Christmas stories for
Asimov's, although I wasn't
terribly regular about it
during the years I was writing
Blackout/All Clear. Here it
is. (I added "Fire
Watch" because it takes place
in December of 1940, "A Little
Moonshine" because it's set on
New Year's Eve, and "Winter's
Tale" because it takes place
in the winter.
Doh. And chunks of
Blackout and All Clear take
place at Christmas.)
Some of
these stories are up on line,
and a lot of them are in the
collection of my Christmas
stories, Miracle
and Other Christmas Stories.
Several
others are available as very
skinny books from Subterranean
Press, and some are in The
Winds of Marble Arch, my big
collection from Subterranean
Press. My story "Just
Like the Ones We Used to
Know..." was made into a CBS
TV Christmas movie called Snow
Wonder, which starred Mary
Tyler Moore.
"Adaptation"--Asimov's
December 1994
MIRACLE AND
OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIES.
"Epiphany"--MIRACLE AND OTHER
CHRISTMAS STORIES
THE
WINDS OF MARBLE ARCH
"Fire Watch"--Asimov's
February 1982
FIRE WATCH
THE WINDS
OF MARBLE ARCH
(and lots
of other places)
"In Coppelius's
Toyshop"--Asimov's December
1996
MIRACLE AND OTHER CHRISTMAS
STORIES
"Inn"--Asimov's December 1993
MIRACLE AND
OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIES
THE WINDS
OF MARBLE ARCH
"Just Like the Ones We Used to
Know..."
--Asimov's
December
2003
--the
CBS TV movie SNOW WONDER
"A Little
Moonshine"--CHRYSALIS 10
REALMS
OF FANTASY, 1994
"Miracle"--Asimov's December
1991
MIRACLE AND OTHER
CHRISTMAS STORIES
"Newsletter"--Asimov's
December 1992
MIRACLE AND
OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIES
THE WINDS
OF MARBLE ARCH
"The Pony"--Asimov's
December 1986
CHRISTMAS ON GANYMEDE
MIRACLE AND
OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIE
"Winter's Tale"--Asimov's
December 1987
IMPOSSIBLE THINGS
I have very
strong opinions about what
makes a good Christmas
story--and what doesn't.
I hate anything involving
Lifetime-Channel goopy
sentimentality and/or small
children freezing to death in
the snow. On the other
hand, I don't want to read
stories where callousness,
cynicism, or downright
meanness triumph. Mr.
Potter should not win.
This
narrows down the number of
acceptable Christmas stories
quite a bit. But here
are three (besides the list
above) that you might
like. One's actually a
poem, but never mind...
1.
THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT
EVER by Barbara Robinson
2.
"Christmas Trees" by Robert
Frost
and 3. A true
story:
There once
was a boy who loved books,
though he had very little
access to them. A girl
he knew loaned him Dickens'
PICKWICK PAPERS, and he loved
it so much that when he had
finished it, he walked three
miles to a bookshop to find
more Dickens.
When he
reached the bookshop, he asked
for the cheapest copy of DAVID
COPPERFIELD they had, and the
bookseller brought out a
battered copy and told the boy
it cost twenty-five
cents.
The boy
only had fourteen cents.
He told him that, but the
bookseller wasn't
impressed. He turned
away to wait on somebody else
while the boy stood there,
defeated, thinking
despairingly of the long walk
home.
At which
point a "tall, handsome
gentleman" came over, put his
arm around the boy's shoulder,
and asked him which book he
wanted.
He told
him.
"How much
do you need?" the gentleman
asked him, and when the boy
told him he was short eleven
cents, said, "Is that
all? Here you are.
When you get rich, you can pay
me back."
The
gentleman was a butcher--a
butcher!--whose name is
unfortunately lost to the
mists of time.
The boy was
Will Durant, who went on to
devote his life to books and
to write the Pulitzer
Prize-winning eleven-volume
STORY OF CIVILIZATION, thus
amply paying the butcher--and
everybody else--back for the
loan.
"I was so
grateful that I could not
speak," Will Durant wrote
about the butcher's giving him
the eleven cents. "I
trudged home in ecstasy over
the pleasures in store for me
in the 860 pages which I
carried under my arm."
And over "the goodness of
human nature."
May you all
have a merry holiday
season! And may you see
many manifestations of the
goodness of human nature, from
butchers and baristas and bond
traders and bellboys and
biologists. And of
course from books.
A couple of notes on the list
above from the Webmaster...
1. Snow Wonder - The CBS TV
Movie aired once on CBS and
has not turned up anywhere
else that has been
noted. For whatever
reason, it is not being
including in any cable
channel's annual deluge of
Christmas movies. I have
found some You Tube clips of
the movie posted by a fan of
the actress Poppy
Montgomery. Clip
1 includes the opening
credits while Clip
2 and Clip
3 have more scenes from
the movie.
2. Christmas Card -
STARWIND - This story may have
not been published or was a
small run of copies.
I've asked Connie for some
more details, but she's not
sure if it ever did get
published. More to come
on this one....
3. Online excerpts - I've put
in links on the three most
recent stories from Asimov's
that still have the preview
excerpt of the story
online. Just click on
the link to that issue of
Asimov's.
Nov 21, 2011 - An update from
Connie: MileHiCon, World
Fantasy, Thanksgiving, and
Primeval
Hi,
everybody!
I just got back from the World
Fantasy Con, and right
before that, Milehicon.
Both
were fun. At Milehicon,
the highlight was probably the
challenge panel on "Scariest
Robot Ever," which I won with my
brilliant defense of the Daleks,
even though I had already been
thrown off the panel.
Gardner
Dozois was the guest of honor at
Milehicon, and I got to
interview him, which is probably
the easiest job I’ve ever
had. All you have to do is
say a few key words—"Army,"
"slush pile," "plastic jumping
penis"—and he’s off and running,
telling great stories about the
awful manuscripts he’s read over
the years, or the series of news
stories he had to write for
Stars and Stripes on the subject
of, "Don’t do this, Or You Will
Die," or about convention
dinners where everyone was so
reduced to hilarity that the
poor waiter quit halfway through
the meal. (He actually made me
laugh so hard at one dinner I
snorted a piece of lettuce up my
nose and nearly killed myself.)
My favorite
Gardner memory is of an Asimov's
Award dinner in New York.
It was at a Chinese restaurant,
and we were at two big
tables. At the Analog
table, they were having an
earnest discussion of the space
program’s future and at ours
(the Asimov’s table) Gardner was
displaying his wind-up plastic
jumping penis for us—which
neatly sums up the difference
between Asimov’s and Analog.
After
Milehicon I had two days to
unpack, do my laundry, repack,
head for the airport again--in a
blizzard--and fly off to San
Diego for the World Fantasy
Convention. It was held at
a beautiful resort with four
swimming pools, dozens of
rose-lined paths, palm trees,
and gazebos and gardens and
shady bowers, all of which I
felt really guilty about because
back home my poor husband was
dealing with fifteen inches of
snow, broken tree limbs, and no
electricity. For two and a
half days.
I felt really
bad. Not bad enough to
leave San Diego, however.
Which I couldn’t because I had
toastmaster duties to
perform. (It had nothing
to do with the palm trees and
the balmy weather, I swear.)
I saw lots of
people—my friends Michael
Cassutt and Christine Valada and
Len Wein and Melinda Snodgrass
(we spent an entire breakfast
talking about Primeval), Bob
Silverberg, Daryl Gregory, Ellen
Datlow, Catherine Montrose, and
Bob Vardeman, and met lots of
new people.
I also got to
spend some time with Shawna
McCarthy, who was my editor at
Asimov’s and then at
Bantam. She was an editor
guest of honor at the
convention, and we spent a lot
of time catching up. The
other guests of honor were Parke
Godwin and Neil Gaiman (who I
know), Jo Fletcher (who I’d
never met, though we’d worked
together on the British editions
of Blackout and All Clear), and
the fantasy artist Ruth
Sanderson (who I was meeting for
the first time).
One of the
highlights of the convention was
discussing Primeval with Kit
Reed. I had found out at
the International Conference on
the Fantastic that she was a
fan, and we caught up on Season
Four and also discussed our
theories about how the resort we
were staying at could possibly
make it in this day and age.
(For the theory we eventually
arrived at, see Agatha
Christie’s At Bertram’s
Hotel. Or maybe something
really sinister, along the lines
of Kit’s short story, "The
Wait.")
Another
highlight was a "conversation" I
had with Neil Gaiman.
"Conversation" is in quotes
because it was conducted in a
ballroom with 500 people in it,
so it wasn’t quite as casual as
other conversations we’ve had,
but it was still lots of
fun. We’d agreed
beforehand we didn’t want to
discuss the usual stuff we get
asked in interviews: what
are you working on now? etc.
Instead, we
talked about why we write, who
we’re influenced by, how
exciting that moment is when you
discover a writer you’ve never
read before, and, oh, just all
sorts of things. One of
Neil’s big influences was the
Alice books, which he read so
many times he can recite them
word for word. (I believe
him.) I waxed rhapsodic
about Agatha Christie, and we
both talked about how important
it is to be excited about what
you’re writing and not just
write the same thing over and
over.
Like all good
conversations, it rambled all
over the place, and covered lots
of ground. A very fun hour
and a half. [You can see
the entire panel HERE
on YouTube]
But probably
my favorite thing of the
convention was getting to talk
to Peter Beagle. He’s
always lovely, and I was so
happy he was being given a
lifetime achievement
award. He so-o-o-o
deserves it.
I first read
his A Fine and Private
Place when I was twelve
(I was reading my way through
the library alphabetically and
had gotten to the B’s).
The novel's set in a cemetery
and is about a man who lives
there, a widow who comes to
visit her husband’s grave, a
pair of ghosts, and a talking
raven. I absolutely adored
it the first time I read it and
was astonished to find out it
had been written by a
twenty-year old.
I’m still
astonished every time I read it
(which is once every few
years). Young writers
usually have style and
imagination but not much
originality--and no knowledge of
the world. But somehow
Peter Beagle had all of the
above, even though he was
writing about middle-aged
people, grief, the nature of
true love, and death. I
believe the term is "wise beyond
his years."
His wisdom,
compassion, and decency shine
through everything he writes,
but they’re all on full display
in A Fine and Private
Place, plus his
brilliant sense of irony.
If you haven’t read it, you
definitely need to.
*
*
*
The fifth
season of Primeval
started on BBC America on
November 12th and is on
Saturdays (at 7 my time).
(Warning: this is a series
that needs to be watched from
the beginning to get the maximum
effect. The first three
seasons are out on DVD, and
Season Four is up on YouTube.)
I’ve watched
all five seasons, but we’re also
glued to the set every Saturday
night, watching it again.
You’ve all
heard me rave about Primeval
before. One of my favorite
SF authors, Kit Reed, loves it,
too, and so does author and
screenwriter Melinda
Snodgrass--I got her hooked.
(She’s blogged about it.
You can read
her
comments at her blog,
Busted Flush (www.melindasnodgrass.com.)
And
lots of people I’ve met at
conventions are as addicted as I
am.
I can’t say
much about Season Five without
doing spoilers, so I won’t,
except to say that it’s
great--and that, once again,
like the end of season three, if
the five seasons are all there
is, it’s a very satisfying
ending, but that there’s also a
great cliffhanger to make you
desperate to see Season
Six. (I’m always impressed
with their ability to do both
things at the same time.)
I can also
say this: the other day I
read a review of Season Five,
and it set me thinking about the
nature of the series and why I
like it so much.
The reviewer
was complaining about one of the
characters stopping in the
middle of trying to ward off a
horrible disaster to rescue a
civilian. "You're trying
to save the world and you stop
to save one girl and her stupid
dead girl friend," the reviewer
wrote. "I don't buy
it. The world is much more
important."
But
that’s the whole point of
Primeval: the bad guys are
always totally focused on saving
the world. They’re certain
they’re right, they’re sure that
what they’re doing is more
important than anything else,
and they’re willing to sacrifice
anything--and anyone--to reach
their goal.
The good guys
want to save the world,
too. ("We'll probably have
to save the world before bedtime
again, professor!") But,
unlike the bad guys, they never
lose sight of who and what
they’re saving it for.
They aren’t willing to sacrifice
people, principles, or
relationships in the name of a
Greater Cause.
They are,
however, more than willing to
sacrifice themselves to save
others, and do so
frequently. They’re
willing to die to protect their
friends. And total
strangers. But they always
keep it firmly in mind that it’s
the individual, the innocent
bystanders, the civilians, that
they’re fighting for.
The bad guys
talk a lot about "saving
humanity" and "the greater
good," but never seem to
translate that desire into
saving specific people.
I know, I
know, sometimes a person or a
group of people have to die to
save others. I spent eight
years writing about World War
II. But I’m always
distrustful when people start
saying, "You can’t make an
omelet without breaking a few
eggs." For one thing, you
can bet the person speaking is
not one of those "eggs" he plans
on breaking.
And I can’t
tell you how many defenses of
Joe Paterno and Penn State I’ve
read in the last couple of weeks
that talk about how they had to
cover up Sandusky’s "shower
incident" to protect the
football program. I mean,
think how much good
Sandusky and Paterno and Penn
State have done over the years!
As Russell
Baker says, "Usually, terrible
things that are done with the
excuse that progress requires
them are not really progress at
all, but just terrible things."
What I’m
trying to say is that Primeval
understands that, and that’s why
I love it. Along with its
humor, Lester’s dry sarcasm, the
dinosaurs, its lovely sense of
irony, and of course, Connor’s
being ridiculously adorable!
*
*
*
Happy
Thanksgiving to everybody!
I’m actually descended from
Governor Bradford of the
Pilgrims (Pilgrims were not
Puritans! People always
get the two confused.
Pilgrims wore colors and had a
sense of humor. Puritans
didn’t.) So in my
great-great-great something
grandfather’s words:
"They began
now to gather in the small
harvest they had, and to fit up
their houses and dwellings
against winter, being all well
recovered in health and strength
and had all things in good
plenty... All the summer there
was no want; and now began to
come in store of fowl, as winter
approached...and besides
waterfowl there was great store
of wild turkeys, of which they
took many, besides venison, etc.
Besides, they had about a peck
of meal a week to a person, or
now since harvest, Indian corn
to that proportion."
and
"Thus out of small beginnings
greater things have been
produced by His hand that made
all things of nothing and gives
being to all things that are;
and, as one small candle may
light a thousand, so the light
here kindled hath shone unto
many, yea in some sort to our
whole nation…"
and
"All great and honorable actions
are accompanied with great
difficulties, and both must be
enterprised and overcome with
answerable courage."
And from his
great-great-something
granddaughter: Have a
happy Thanksgiving! Watch
the Macy’s Parade and eat lots
of turkey or spaghetti carbonara
(Calvin Trillin’s vote for what
we should eat on Thanksgiving)
or quinoa or whatever! And
take a sec to think about what
you’re grateful for. For
me it’s Starbuck’s eggnog lattes
and the new Sherlock series and
Kit Reed and my terrific family
(including the Pilgrims) and Jon
Stewart and the new Muppets
movie--and, of course, Primeval.
It’s in Denver, so if you
want a book personalized, I’d be
happy to do that. Ron and
Nina Else, who run the Book
Mall, are great. They also
have hardbacks of Passage
and my Christmas short story
collection, Miracle
and Other Christmas Stories,
plus lots of collectable
editions of my stuff and pretty
much everything of mine in
paperback.
* * *
I'll be going
to Cosine in Colorado Springs in
January.
Connie
Willis
Nov
21 - World Fantasy Videos
from YouTube
Connie's Conversation
with Neil Gaiman
World Fantasy Awards Ceremony
with Connie as Toastmaster
Oct
12, 2011 - "All About Emily"
in December Asimov's plus
limited edition cover art.
The December issue of Asimov's
Science Fiction Magazine has hit
the shelves at Barnes & Noble
bookstores and likely other stores
that still carry Asimov's . You
can read an excerpt of the story
on the December
issue's
page.
Subterranean Press has release the
J. K. Potter cover for the limited
edition
of "All About Emily" that
will be shipping at the end of the
year.
Sept
14, 2011 - An Update From
Connie - Worldcon &
Bubonicon
Hi, everybody. I just got
back from the double whammy of
Worldcon in Reno and Bubonicon
in Albuquerque where I had a
great time!
All of this
year's Worldcon, Renovation, was
fun, but the highlights were:
1.
Winning the Best Novel Hugo
Award for Blackout/All
Clear. People always ask
me if the awards still mean a
lot to me, and the answer is
yes! I'm always as nervous
and convinced I'm going to lose
as I was the first time--when I
did lose, to George R.R. Martin,
a fact he has never let me
forget and which he reminded me
of only three days ago at
Bubonicon. And when I win,
I'm just as thrilled as I was
the first time.
This Hugo was
especially important to
me. Blackout/All Clear was
a labor of love. I have
always adored World War II and
especially the London Blitz, and
the entire eight years I worked
on the book, I was convinced
that A) I couldn't do justice to
the Blitz and the civilians who
played such a critical part in
winning the war, B) I was never
going to finish the stupid
thing, and C) that if I did, no
one would like it.
So
winning--and even more
important--having so many people
tell me what the book meant to
them--was wonderful.
2. The
Hugo itself. This year's
award is gorgeous. The
rocket, created by Peter Weston,
was lovely, and the base was
designed by a French artist,
Marina Gelineau, who designed it
in layers of glass in which are
embedded the images of
prehistoric creatures. It
immediately made me think of
Primeval, even though that
probably wasn't what the artist
intended, and the centipede that
poisoned Stephen and the giant
bug that nearly killed Connor,
and the beetles that overran the
lab. They make it even
more perfect--it's my Primeval
Hugo!
Which brings
me to the best (and worst)
moment of the convention:
3.
Meeting Paul
Cornell onstage after the
Hugo Awards. We were
waiting to have our pictures
taken and he thanked me for
mentioning Primeval in my
acceptance speech and told me
he'd written an episode for the
show (the mammoth episode in
Season 2, with that great moment
for Lester and the charming
interlude with Connor and Abby
in the church singing (of
course) "All Creatures Great and
Small"). At which point my
daughter and I totally disgraced
ourselves with gushing:
"Oh, gosh, Mr. Cornell, this is
such an honor. I love the
show, and that's one of my
favorite episodes! We have
it totally memorized,"
etc. A total fangirl
moment. How embarrassing!
I got to have
dinner with Paul Cornell and his
wife in Bubonicon, where I
attempted to apologize and
redeem myself, but probably
failed. Well, but it is a
terrific show, and the mammoth
episode was great!
4. The
panels. I was put on an
"Essentials of Casino Gambling"
panel for some reason, even
though my expertise consists
entirely of playing nickel video
poker, a game whose charms are
that you're not being able to
lose that much even if you play
for days and you are able to
draw to inside straights, even
though everywhere else in life
that's a terrible idea.
It's a terrible idea in nickel
poker, too, but all you can lose
is a nickel. And there's a
certain excitement in being able
to do something so ill-advised
and foolhardy. And if the
gamble pays off, you can play
for weeks on your winnings.
The panel
also gave me a chance to talk
about one of my favorite
movies: the original
Ocean's 11 (no relation to the
George Clooney ones, except that
they rob casinos). The
original stars Frank Sinatra and
the Rat Pack, and has a
devilishly well-constructed
script by George Clayton
Johnson, an SF author who wrote
the novel Logan's Run and some
classic Twilight Zone
episodes. When Dean Martin
says, "The odds are with the
house," he's not just talking
about Vegas, and the movie's
ending is terrific!
I was also on
panels about "The Big Bang
Theory (the TV show, not the
cosmological event) and one
called "The Geek Gets the Girl,"
both with Kristine Katherine
Rusch, one of my favorite people
to be on a panel with. We
had a great time discussing
Leonard, Sheldon, Penny and
Wolowitz, and I managed to bring
up Primeval (Connor and Abby,
one of the best "Geek Gets the
Girl" romances ever done on TV)
a number of times.
Actually, I
managed to bring up Primeval on
every single panel I was
on. And at my reading and
my kaffeeklatsch. And on
the Stroll with the Stars.
(In case I didn't say this
before, Primeval's a great
show. Watch it. From
the beginning. The first 3
seasons are out on DVD and
Seasons 4 and 5 will be on BBC
America in January (See earlier
updates.)
5.
Reno. Back in the day,
this was the Divorce Capital of
the U.S. Women came here
from New York and L.A. in the
thirties and forties to get
quickie divorces. Well,
comparatively quick. It
took six weeks to establish
residence, which were spent on
dude ranches with lots of cute
bronco-busters, and then one day
to get a no-fault divorce.
(See The Women and Merry Wives
of Reno and Maisie Goes to
Reno.)
Nowadays,
it's famous for the Mustang
Ranch brothel, which all the
taxis sport signs for.
It's also known for its wedding
chapels and for its casinos,
which the two main hotels for
the convention were located
in. Which means all meals
were eaten in neon- and
smoke-saturated casinos with
lots of bells and
jangling-jackpot sounds.
One restaurant had giant orange
jellyfish hanging from the
ceiling and the other one
enormous nude Roman sculptures
which revolved. (This was
still far more tasteful than the
creepy statues at Caesar's
Palace which move and open their
eyes. That should
definitely be Reno's
slogan: More Tasteful Than
Vegas.)
All in all, a
very fun convention.
Bubonicon was
a nice, easy coming-down
experience from Worldcon (like
those special pressure chambers
they put you in after deep-sea
diving so you don't get the
bends by surfacing too
fast.) I was on great
panels discussing the end of the
world, what writers do in their
spare time (I told them I
watched Primeval) and the end of
the world. Yes, two "how
will the world end?" panels,
which were remarkably hopeful
and upbeat, even though
Hurricane Irene was raging on
televisions just outside the
room.
I also got to
talk about irony for an hour,
which is always fun. And
to see lots of great
people: Walter Jon
Williams, Melinda Snodgrass, Ian
Tregillis, Joan Saberhagen, and
George R.R. Martin, who ordered
me to address him as "Number One
New York Times Bestselling
Author George R.R. Martin, the
American Tolkien," and when I
refused, said mean (and
completely untrue) things about
Primeval.
I'll have an
update later about my Rockette
story, which is coming out at
Christmas, and the novel I'm
working on. And Seasons 4
and 5 of Primeval which Cordelia
and I just finished
watching. Oh, my
gosh! Wow! It's a
good thing Paul Cornell's not
here.
In the
meantime, end trans. (As Whoopie
Goldberg would say.)
Connie Willis
Sept
12th - All About Emily
Novelette News
Subterranean Press
will have a limited
edition of Connie's new
Christmas novelette, All About
Emily,
available soon. If
you subscribe to their
email list, you will have
a chance to win an Advance
Readers Copy (details
here).
There will be a 400 copy
signed and numbered
leatherbound edition and
2000 trade cloth bound
hardcovers.
Dust jacket and
interior illustrations are
being done by J. K.
Potter.
Aug
20 - Blackout/All Clear is
Hugo Best Novel winner Connie won her
11th Hugo Award for
Blackout/All Clear at the Hugo
Awards ceremony at Renovation.
Locus Online has a full
list
of winners. The
awards ceremony should be
viewable to watch on the Worldcon
Ustream
page.
July
31 -Two Updates From Connie
(read them in
chronological order)
"Hi,
everybody!
I just got back from
Seattle, where I emceed the
Locus Awards Banquet,
attended the Science Fiction
Hall of Fame inductions, and
had a great time!
The Locus Awards Banquet is
one of the most fun things I
get to do. It's sort
of a cross between the
Nebula Awards and a scene
from Beach Blanket
Bingo. In tribute to
founding Locus editor
Charlie Brown, everyone
wears Hawaiian shirts.
If you don't, you have to
wear a badge that says, "I
didn't wear a Hawaiian
shirt" and it makes you
eligible to win one.
We gave away six really
lovely ones this year.
There's a Best Hawaiian
Shirt competition and a
trivia competition ("What
pilot of a spaceship in a TV
series wore Hawaiian shirts
until he was dumb enough to
agree to be in the movie
version and got lunched?"*)
There are prizes--this
year's were Gilligan hats
and Gumby flamingos in hula
skirts--and the grand prize
is a plastic banana
inscribed with celebrity
signatures. (It used
to be a real banana, till
people complained it turned
black before they could sell
it on eBay.)
This year in honor of
Gardner Dozois's being a
Hall of Fame inductee we had
a special event: a
Gardner Dozois singalong of
all the songs he's taught me
and hundreds of science
fiction fans. We sang
Emily Dickinson's "Because I
Could Not Stop for Death" to
the tune of "The Yellow Rose
of Texas," (if you don't
believe me, try it
yourself. We also sang
Robert Frost's "Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening" to
the tune of "La Cucaracha,"
and portions of "The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner" to the
theme from Gilligan's
Island. It was very
fun.
Thanks to Liza Trombi, the
Locus staff, and my lovely
and talented assistant Gary
Wolfe, the banquet came off
without a hitch, except for
major heckling from Gardner
and his partner-in-crime
Nancy Kress, who were
punished by having to wear a
grass skirt (Nancy) and a
flowered coconut-shell bra
(Gardner), though that
didn't appear to inhibit
them at all.
Oh, and
we gave out the Locus
Awards, too, and
Blackout/All Clear won for
Best Science Fiction
Novel. I was very
excited.
After the
awards we all changed out of
our Hawaiian shirts and into
something fancy and trooped
over to the EMP-SF Museum
for the Hall of Fame
ceremony. This year
Terry Bisson was the emcee,
and Harlan Ellison, Gardner
Dozois, illustrator Vincent
Di Fate, and graphic novel
artist Moebius (Jean Giraud)
were inducted.
Neither
Moebius nor Harlan were able
to come, but Vincent
Di Fate was there, and he
gave a charming
speech. And it was my
very great honor to
introduce Gardner
Dozois. I've sent my
speech along so you can see
it here [available
as a PDF].
Gardner
gave a great speech,
everyone got to look at the
glass bricks commemorating
each of the inductees, and
we then all went to a
champagne reception in their
honor (the inductees, not
the glass bricks.)
And
then the next day I taught
an all-day workshop on
romantic comedy at Hugo
House. And somewhere
in there I did a reading
with Terry Bisson.
And then
I came home, collapsed on
the couch with a cold I'd
caught somewhere along the
way, and watched episode 4
of Season 5 of Primeval
repeatedly. Only two
episodes to go, things are
in a terrible mess, and I am
worried sick about what's
going to happen to
everybody.
This is
such an appropriate
comeuppance for me
(Primeval, not the
cold.) I've spent
years telling readers who
were anxiously awaiting the
end of some story I'd read
part of at a reading or the
second part of Blackout/All
Clear that waiting was part
of the price readers
pay--and now here I am!
Maybe I'd
better keep this in mind in
regard to my next book, and
hurry up and get busy
writing it. As soon as
I get over this cold.
More
later.
Connie
Willis
SECOND UPDATE
I'm over my cold, I've been
working on my UFO novel, I
finished my Rockette story,
and now it's only a few
weeks till Reno. There
truly is no rest for the
wicked. But at least
I'm sane again
(comparatively) now that
I've finished watching
Season 5 of Primeval.
I was so worried about what
was going to happen,
especially to Connor and
Abby, that I literally
couldn't sleep nights.
And now I
can't tell you, since I hate
people who do spoilers and
Season 5 won't be on BBC
America till sometime next
fall. But--oh, my
gosh! Season 5 was so
good!
Anyway,
as I said, I finished my
story, which is called "All
About Emily," and which is
about a robot who wants to
be a Rockette. It's
going to be in the December
issue of Asimov's and then
Subterranean Press is
bringing out a special
limited
edition, like they
have with Inside Job and
D.A. I loved writing
this story because it gave
me an excuse to do all this
research about the Rockettes
and Radio City Music Hall,
which came this close to
being torn down. But
not all stories have unhappy
endings, even in real life,
something I find I need to
remind myself of now and
then.
I'm
really looking forward to
Worldcon in Reno. I'm
doing lots of stuff there,
including panels with
Kristine Kathryn Rushch,
James Patrick Kelly, Harry
Turtledove, and Michael
Swanwick. Here's
the schedule as it stands
now:
Wednesday
at 4 p.m.--a panel on "The
Real Revenge of the
Nerds: Geek as
Hero" (I plan to talk
about Connor)
Wednesday
at 6 pm.--a panel on "Nevada
as a Setting for SF and
Fantasy"
Thursday
at 4 p.m.--a panel on
"Understanding Casino
Gambling"--(a natural; I am
the world's acknowledged
expert on nickel video
poker)
Thursday
at 8 p.m.--The Liars' Panel
with James Patrick Kelly and
Jay Lake
Friday at
1 p.m.--a panel on "Who Is
This Robert E. Lee
person?--How Much Background
Info is Really Needed in
Historical SF?"--(they got
the title from me--somebody
really did ask me once who
this Robert E. Lee person
was)
Friday at
3 p.m.--I'm being
interviewed, along with
Robert Silverberg, Gary K.
Wolfe, and Jonathan Strahan,
on guest of honor Charles N.
Brown. I only wish
Charlie could be there.
Saturday
at noon--a panel on "The
Craft of Writing Short
Science Fiction and Fantasy"
Saturday
at 3 p.m.--a panel on "The
Big Bang Theory--The TV
Show, Not the Cosmological
Theory" (I plan to talk
about Leonard--and Connor)
Sunday at
11 a.m.--I'm reading from my
new novel.
Sunday at
noon--a panel on
"Chronological
Dissonance: Modern
Archetypes and Morals in a
Historical Setting," which
sounds intimidating, but is
actually about how any of us
travelling back in time
would be caught as impostors
within seconds.
I'll also
be autographing at some
point and doing a
kaffeeklatsch and some sort
of walk with fans, since
apparently they're worried
that no one will ever go
outside the casino.
And
somehow I am determined to
find a little time to play a
little nickel video poker
and talk to anyone who wants
to about Primeval,
especially people who've
seen seasons 4 and 5.
I'm about to explode from
not being able to talk to
anybody about it!
Really
looking forward to seeing
everybody there!
Connie
Willis
*Wash on Firefly
and Serenity
June
25 - 2011 Locus Awards
Best Science Fiction Novel
Blackout/All
Clear was awarded Best
Science Fiction Novel at the
2011 Locus Awards in Seattle
today. Tor.com
has the full list of
winners. If you'd like to
relive the live coverage via
CoverItLive at the Locus web
site, go to
this link. Look for
additional links to pictures and
other coverage soon.
June 25 - UK Releases of
Blackout and All Clear Gollancz
in the UK has released Blackout
in hardback, trade paperback,
and ebook in June with a
release of All
Clear scheduled
for October. Below are
the UK covers.
June
8 - Catching Up With Connie
Apologies for not getting
any updates online for a
while. Personal life and
con running took over the
webmasters spare time for a
while. Let's catch
things up in reverse
chronological order, mostly
dealing with award news:
------------------------------------ May 26 - Video
Interview with Connie via
Lore-online The Not-Yet-Live Lore-Online.com has posted a short video interview
with Connie Willis to
YouTube.
--------------------------------------------
May
22 - Blackout/All
Clear gets Best
Novel Nebula Award
Blackout/All Clear was awarded
Best Novel at SFWA's
Nebula
Award Weekend in Washington,
D.C. The Greeley
Tribune in Greeley, CO, had this
report
on her award, Connie's
seventh. Denver's Westword
blog also had this
article.
---------------------------------------------
May 11 - Blackout/All
Clear is Locus Awards
Finalist
Locus
Magazine
announced the finalists
for
the Locus Awards to
be awarded at the Science
Fiction
Awards Weekend
happening June 24-25 in
Seattle, WA.
Blackout/All
Clear is a finalist
for Best Science Fiction
Novel, along with
Surface Detail,
Iain M. Banks (Orbit UK; Orbit
US)
Cryoburn,
Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
Zero History,
William Gibson (Putnam; Viking
UK)
The Dervish House,
Ian McDonald (Pyr; Gollancz)
------------------------------------
April
24
- Blackout/All
Clear
nominated for Best Novel
Hugo
Renovation
announced the nominees
for the Hugo Awards to be
given out at the convention in
August and Blackout/All
Clear made the Best
Novel list. Other Best
Novel nominations are:
Cryoburn by
Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) The Dervish House by
Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr) Feed by Mira Grant
(Orbit) The Hundred Thousand
Kingdoms by N.K.
Jemisin (Orbit)
Renovation has made available a
Hugo Voter's packet with
electronic versions of many of the
nominees. Voting deadline is
Sunday, July 31, 2011
-------------------------------------------
Feb
28 - Nebula Ballot Best Novel
Nomination SFWA
has announced the nominations
for
this year's Nebula Awards
and Blackout/All Clear is
nominated for Best
Novel. The full list of
novels nominated are:
The Native Star,
M.K. Hobson (Spectra)
The Hundred Thousand
Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin
(Orbit UK; Orbit US)
Shades of Milk and
Honey, Mary Robinette
Kowal (Tor)
Echo, Jack
McDevitt (Ace)
Who Fears Death,
Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)
Blackout/All
Clear, Connie Willis
(Spectra)
The awards will be presented
during the Nebula
Awards Weekend May 19-22 at
the Washington Hilton in
Washington, D.C. You do not
have to be a SFWA member to
attend.
Jan
23 - A Note for Hugo Nominators
from the ConnieWillis.net
Webmaster
It
is that time of year when
members of the previous
year's WorldCon (AussieCon
4) and the upcoming
WorldCon (Renovation)
fill out their nominating
ballots for the Hugo
Awards to be given
out at WorldCon in August.
Many authors on their
blogs and websites have
been pointing out what
they have published in
2010 that is eligible for
the Hugo Awards. As
you just might know,
Connie Willis published
two books in 2010, Blackout
and All Clear,
which are really two
volumes that make up one
big book Connie has
always made it clear that
it is one book, not two
separate books, so the
general consensus is that
the two books should be
nominated as one work
instead of nominating one
or the other. So, if
you are filling out a Hugo
nomination ballot, the
best way to nominate
Connie's work is to list
it as
Jan
20 - An Update from Connie
Primeval and Churchill MID-JANUARY
UPDATE
I
usually hate January.
It's dark and cold and dark
and Christmas is over and
there aren't any decent
movies to go to because we
already saw "The King's
Speech" and "Tangled" at
Christmas and for some
reason people think it's a
good idea to release movies
about dead children and
suicide when you're already
depressed, and Congress is
back in session and it's
dark and the sun is never
going to return.
But
not this year. This
year I've loved
January--well, not loved it,
exactly. I mean, it's
still dark, but from January
first there's been something
to look forward to every
week: a new episode of
PRIMEVAL.
My
daughter and I are
hopelessly addicted to the
show, and no, it's not just
as a friend of mine said,
that Andrew Lee Potts is
"ridiculously adorable,"
although that is certainly
true.
But this
British show (it's on BBC
America right now and has
been on Syfy) is also really
well-written, fast-paced,
full of unexpected twists
and turns, and very
involving. Everyone
we've introduced to the show
(we gave it to lots of
people for Christmas) has
loved it.
A NOTE OF CAUTION: If
you've never watched
PRIMEVAL, don't start
watching the new
season. Buy the DVDs
of the first three seasons
or rent them from Netflix or
watch them on your computer
first. In order.
From the
beginning.
This is like BABYLON 5 or
LOST. It has to be
watched from the beginning.
And don't give up if the
first few episodes seem like
"The A-Team Fights
Dinosaurs." Things
will get very interesting
very soon.
So why do I like
it so much? Let me
count the ways:
1. Andrew Lee Potts is
ridiculously adorable.
The way this all happened
was that I saw the Johnny
Depp ALICE IN WONDERLAND
(which I liked--sort of),
and my husband and I then
had an Alice film festival,
including the 1930s version
(with Cary Grant and W.C.
Fields), the 1960s British
version with Dudley Moore
(which was even worse than
ARTHUR), and DREAMCHILD (my
favorite movie of all time.)
When I
told my friend Rose Beetum
what we were doing, she
said, "Oh, then you need to
watch the ALICE that was on
Syfy."
I did,
fell in love with Andrew Lee
Potts's Hatter, bought the
miniseries for my daughter,
and she also fell in love
and found out that he'd been
in PRIMEVAL. I didn't
think Connor could possibly
be any better than Hatter,
but he was, and we were--and
are--completely
hooked. Harrison Ford
who?
2.
The series is really
well-written. It's got
foreshadowing (your key to
quality literature),
interlinking plots, clever
dialogue, and stunning
reversals. My daughter
bought the DVDs before I
did, so she was several
episodes ahead of me, and
when I got to a particularly
surprising turn of events, I
called her at five in the
morning her time.
"Hello, Mother," she said
calmly. "I presume
you've just seen Episode 6."
"Yes," I
said. "Oh. My. God."
A couple
of days ago a friend called
me nearly as early. "I
just watched Episode 6," she
said. "Oh, my
God." And then my
brother...well, you get the
idea. And Episode 6 is
nothing to what happens in
Season 2.
3.
In spite of all the
rampaging dinosaurs,
PRIMEVAL is one of the best
romantic comedies I've seen
in a long time, second only
to Jim and Pam on THE OFFICE
and of course, Syfy's
ALICE. Or as Connor
says, "It isn't every day
you meet a potential
girlfriend. And find a
dinosaur."
4.
It's very funny.
Humor's hard to get right,
especially when you're
killing off characters, but
PRIMEVAL strikes just the
right note. Connor's
very funny, and Cutter's got
a dry wit, but my favorite's
Lester, who's the best
paper-pushing bureaucrat
ever.
5.
It's really well-written,
full of subtlety and
nuance. I know, I
know, it sounds ridiculous
in a show about
dinosaur-hunting in
modern-day London, but it's
true. One of my
favorite episodes actually
explores the whole notion of
knighthood--from a medieval
knight trying to kill a
dragon (well, actually, a
dracorex) to a
damsel-in-distress trying to
save it. And a kid in
a "Working Class Hero"
T-shirt trying to rescue a
flying lizard from the
clutches of e-Bay. And
who knew dragons were
actually herbivores?
6.
The characters are
terrific. When I saw
the first episode, I
thought, "Okay, we have your
curmudgeonly scientist, his
love interest, his ex-wife,
the handsome action hero,
the geeky computer nerd, the
hot blonde, the military
guy, the government
bureaucrat who stands in
their way. Got
it." I thought I knew
exactly where this was going
(and where it would have
gone if this were an
American series.)
Instead, nothing turned out
the way I thought it would,
and everyone revealed
surprising--and sometimes
upsetting--depths.
Even the dinosaurs.
7.
Finally, I've been really
impressed with the writers'
skill in plotting. At
the end of Season 3, they
did something I didn't think
could be done. After
the third season (those
short British seasons of six
or ten episodes), the show
was cancelled. Two
years later, it's, as they
say in their ads, "Back from
Extinction," but at the time
regular writers knew that
last episode was the last
one ever. And it
managed at the same time to
be one of the most exciting
cliffhangers ever and--if it
really had been the end of
the series--a totally
satisfying ending.
Don't see how that's
possible? Neither did
I till I saw it.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not
secretly working for BBC
America or ITV or anything,
and we're not getting a
kickback for all the people
we've convinced to buy the
DVDs (including the poor
hapless clerk who waited on
me in Barnes and Noble.)
But I'll
admit my judgment may be
clouded by how cute Andrew
Lee Potts is, although my
husband loves PRIMEVAL,
too. (Though his
judgment may be clouded by
how cute Hannah Spearritt
is. And Lucy Brown.
And Ruth Kearney.)
Or this
could all just be a sort of
January Madness brought on
by exposure to too much
March Hare. But
anyway, it's getting me
through till the sun starts
coming up at a reasonable
time.
But I
think the truth is
PRIMEVAL's just a great
show. And I can't wait
till next week.
MID-JANUARY
UPDATE 2: A
CORRECTION/RETRACTION
I told a story on my book
tour about how Alexander
Fleming's father saved the
boy Winston Churchill from
drowning. The story
goes that Churchill's father
was so grateful that he
offered to send Fleming's
son Alex to school, Alex
became a doctor and
discovered penicillin, which
then saved Churchill's life
again when he got pneumonia
during World War II.
I had
read the story years ago in
a book about the war, and it
had never occurred to me
that it wasn't true, but
according to Snopes.com
and other sources,
apparently it's not.
No record exists of
Churchill's having nearly
drowned or of the elder
Churchill paying for
Alexander's education, and
when asked about it Fleming
called it a "wondrous
fable."
It's
apparently not even true
that Churchill was given
penicillin for his
pneumonia--instead it was
sulfa drugs, though in 1946
Churchill did consult with
Fleming about a staph
infection he'd had which had
resisted penicillin, and the
drug was beginning to be
used around the time of
Churchill's pneumonia.
In my
defense, the story goes back
almost as far as the report
of Churchill's pneumonia,
and the original version
(which appeared in Coronet
Magazine in December 1944)
seems to have been written
by a Washington, D.C.
newsman, Arthur Gladstone
Keeney, who worked in the
Office of War Information
during World War II.
It's too
bad the anecdote's not
true--it was such a great
story. But it's only
great if it's true, and
apparently it's not.
Sorry for spreading a story
that wasn't true, everybody.
The other
part of the story I told,
about Captain Michael Burns
saving Audrey Hepburn's life
with penicillin is
true. I got it from
Burns's obituary in the New
York Times.
Connie Willis
Dec
21 - A Holiday Message from
Connie
-------------------------
Connie
Willis here. Merry
holidays, everybody!
I love Christmas--the
carols, the lights, the
cookies, the
present-wrapping, the
wretched behavior of my
fellow man.
Honestly, people behave
worse during the "season
of good will" than any
other time of the year.
In
Starbucks (where I write)
the other day, I overheard
a man ranting about the
laziness of the poor and
how their poverty and
homelessness were their
own fault. "Are
there no prisons?" I
wanted to quote at
him. "Are there no
workhouses?"
And
then there are our elected
representatives, defeating
health care benefits for
ailing 9-11 responders,
filibustering unemployment
benefits, and saying
things like "We should not
be giving cash to people
who are basically going to
blow it on drugs" (Senator
Orrin Hatch) and "...quit
feeding stray
animals. You know
why? Because they
breed. You're
facilitating the problem
if you give an animal or
person an ample food
supply." (South Carolina
Lt. Governor Andre
Bauer) Why don't
they just come straight
out and say, "Then they
had better die and
decrease the surplus
population?"
Scrooge
is alive and well, and
it's depressing to think
that a hundred and
forty-three years later,
the message of Dickens' "A
Christmas Carol" is still
being ignored.
However, like Scrooge's
nephew Fred, I am
determined to "keep my
Christmas humor to the
last," and with that in
mind, here are some of my
favorite seasonal quotes:
"We
shall
soon be having Christmas
at our throats again."
P.G.
Wodehouse
"We
are
having the same old things
for Christmas dinner this
year...relatives."
Mark
Twain
"Friends
are
God's way of apologizing
to us for our relatives."
Anonymous "There
are
three things you never
want to see on a Christmas
present:
One size fits all.
Fun for all ages.
Removes unwanted
hair."
Jim
Mullen
"Christmas
is
the day that holds time
together."
Alexander
Smith
"Christmas
is
1940 years old and Hitler
is only 51. He can't
spoil our Christmas."
Sign in
a London shop
during
the Blitz
"I
have
always thought of
Christmas as a good time;
a kind, forgiving,
generous, pleasant time; a
time when men and women
seem to open their hearts
freely, and so I say, God
bless
Christmas!"
Charles
Dickens
I
say "God bless Christmas!"
too. Also God bless
Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the
Solstice, Festivus, and
the whole holiday
season! I hope you
have a great holiday,
everybody!"
Connie
Willis
Nov
10 - All Clear Notes and
Reference Material - An
update from Connie
I'm back from my ALL CLEAR
book tour and had a greattime. I got to see
lots of people in Seattle,
Portland, San
Diego,
and Phoenix. But it's nice
to be back home.
I
promised I'd talk about some
of the things I couldn't
put in ALL CLEAR, and here
they are. As with BLACKOUT,
there
were tons of things I found
out while doing my
research that I wasn't able
to use. Some stuff there wasn't
room
for, and some didn't fit the
story I was trying to
tell.
[
The rest of this update is
quite long and I've made it
available initially as a PDF
which you can read here]
All Clear Book Tour (updated
10-18, 2010)
The book tour for All Clear
starts on October 19th at the
Tattered Cover in Denver,
CO. Check the schedule
below for other book store stops
over the next month or so.
Tuesday, October 19 –
DENVER, CO Time:
7:30pm Tattered
Cover Colfax Avenue 2526
East Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO
80206
Friday, October 22 -
KENSINGTON, MD *NEW* Time:
7:00 pm Rockville - Borders 11301
Rockville
Pike Kensington, MD 20895 Capclave 2010 Author Guest of Honor Rockville, Maryland Oct 22-24, 2010
Monday,
October
25 - DENVER, CO *NEW* Time:
7:00pm Broadway
Book Mall 200
S. Broadway, Denver, CO 80209
Tuesday, October 26 –
SEATTLE, WA Time:
7:30pm University
Bookstore 4326
University
Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105 (Event
to be held at Kane Hall, Room 210.
$5 fee if not purchasing a
book) Wednesday,
October
27 – PORTLAND, OR Time:
7:00pm Powell’s
Books, Cedar Hills
Crossing 3415
SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton,
OR Thursday, October 28 –
SAN DIEGO, CA Time:
7:00pm Mysterious
Galaxy 7051
Clairemont
Mesa Blvd., San Diego, CA 92111 Friday, October 29
– PHOENIX, AZ Time:
7:00pm Poisoned
Pen 4014
N. Goldwater, Ste. 101,
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Friday, November 12 - Fort
Collins, CO
7:00 pm Old Firehouse Books 232
Walnut Street, Fort Collins, CO
80524
Saturday, November 20,
Albuquerque, NM
3:00 pm Page
One Books
11018 Montgomery NE, Albuquerque,
NM, 87111
Oct
18 - An Update From Connie!
Hi,
everybody.
Connie Willis here. A
lot's happened since my last
update. I'm all better
from my gall bladder
surgery--though I'm still
mad my surgeon wouldn't let
me go to Albuquerque for
Bubonicon, but I have
something really sad to
report.
My
agent Ralph Vicinanza,
who'd been my agent for
over twenty years, died
suddenly a couple of
weeks ago of an
aneurysm. The news
of his death was like
being hit upside the
head with a baseball bat
for all his friends and
clients (I was both),
and it's still sending
shock waves through the
publishing world.
Ralph was the biggest
agent in science
fiction--he handled
dozens of clients,
including George R.R.
Martin and Stephen King,
and there's simply
nobody who can replace
him.
He
was not only a really
good agent, but a
wonderful friend to
me. I always felt
that he cared more about
me as a person than he
did about how much money
I could make him, and I
can't count the number
of times I called him
sobbing and he talked me
down out of whatever
crisis it was. He
even put up with me for
the eight long years it
took me to finish
BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR,
for six of which the
book was late. I
don't know what I'm
going to do without
him. And I really
don't know what science
fiction is going to do
without him.
I was
lucky to be able to
attend Ralph's funeral
and to see and talk to
many of his friends,
though the trip was sort
of a nightmare.
The funeral was in
Yonkers, and New York
was in the grip of a
gale, the tail end of an
East Coast hurricane, so
roads were flooded and
trains shut down, and
everyone who actually
made it to the funeral
looked like a drowned
rat. But that was
all somehow appropriate,
a sign of how wrong
things had gone with
Ralph gone. If
he'd been there, he
would somehow have made
it all work in spite of
the difficulties.
In
more cheerful news, ALL
CLEAR comes out on
October
nineteenth. (Note:
it's the second half of
a book. BLACKOUT
is the first half.
They're not two books,
or a book and a sequel,
or the first two
installments of an
endless series.
They're one
book--BLACKOUT-ALL
CLEAR.)
I'm
going to be doing a lot
of signings. (See
schedule.) Several
are places I went to for
BLACKOUT, and I'm
looking forward to
seeing everybody in
Seattle, Portland, and
San Diego again.
I'll also be going to
the Poisoned Pen in
Scottsdale, Arizona, and
to Page One in
Albuquerque, and I'll be
doing several signings
in Colorado.
I
can't say a lot about
ALL CLEAR for fear of
giving away what
happens, but I can say
that Polly and Eileen
and Mike start out ALL
CLEAR in trouble and get
in a lot worse trouble
before the end of the
book, and that you
haven't seen the last of
Alf and Binnie. Or
Colin.
And
that you need to keep in
mind that this is World
War II we're talking
about, and that sixty
thousand English
civilians died.
And no, I'm not telling
you anything else.
I do
sympathize. I've
been watching the BBC
series PRIMEVAL--my
daughter Cordelia's
already watched the
first three seasons, and
I've been begging her to
tell me what happens to
no avail. She
won't even confirm
whether my theories are
right or not, the little
brat.
(Note:
I do recommend
PRIMEVAL. The
characters are great,
the plotting is very
clever, and Andrew Lee
Potts is possibly the
cutest thing I've ever
seen.)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy
ALL CLEAR and that I get
to see you all sometime
soon. I just
bought my Reno Worldcon
membership, so hopefully
I'll see you all then,
if not before.
Till
then, I'll be working on
some new short stories
and my Roswell alien
abduction novel, which
will be one book,
repeat, one book.
I promise.
Connie
Willis
Oct
17,2010
Oct
17 - Website Updates &
Other News
ConnieWillis.net Blog
changes location The
ConnieWillis.net
blog
has moved from the
blogspot.com site to a site
located at azsf.net. It
can now be reached via http://www.azsf.net/cwblog.
I have not yet been able to
move the existing postings to
the new location, so it
will remain as an
archive of previous posts.
New Visual
Bibliography for Novels A new Visual
Bibliography
page has been completed
for the Connie Willis Novels
and collections. You can
access it directly here.
One
for the short fiction is
forthcoming, but is not yet
ready.
UK Release scheduled
for Blackout
and All Clear. Gollancz has obtained
the rights to Blackout
and All
Clear for the
UK. According to Amazon.co.uk,
Blackout
is scheduled for a June 16,
2011 hardcover release with All
Clear scheduled for
an October 20, 2011 hardcover
release. However, the Orion
Books/Gollancz website
lists it as a March 2011
release.
Aug
15, 2010 - An Update From
Connie!
An Update and Hello to
Everybody:
Hi, Connie Willis here. Sorry I've
been out of the loop for
awhile. I suffered a minor
detour--gall bladder
surgery. I'd been having
problems for some time, and just
after I got back from doing the
Locus Awards in Seattle in late
June, things reached a crisis, and
tests showed my gall bladder was
the culprit. The threshold
for surgery is 30 per cent of
function; my gall bladder was at 4
per cent, so I was whipped in,
several holes were drilled, and
the offending organ was sucked out
with a straw (or at least I think
that's what the surgeon said the
laproscopy entailed.) I'm
recuperating nicely, though at
this point (two weeks out) I'm
still taking lots of naps and
watching tons of TV (which has to
be bad for you, especially the
Hallmark and Lifetime
Channels.) My biggest
problem is that I'm not allowed to
drive, so Courtney's been having
to take me to Starbucks and the
library, which he has been very
nice about. But I feel tons
better than before I had the
surgery. It's clear my gall
bladder had become the enemy and
was slowly poisoning me, just like
Ingrid Bergman in NOTORIOUS,
except without the Nazis.
In other news, we had a great time
in Seattle, in spite of my not
being able to eat anything.
I love doing the Locus Awards
Banquet, and we had a great crowd,
who nearly all wore Hawaiian
shirts and participated gleefully
in the festivities. Greg
Frost and I taught a writer's
workshop on various aspects of
"The Periodic Table of the Writing
Elements" and spoke to the Clarion
students (enjoining them to flee
from a writing career while there
was still time), a library, and a
terrific group of readers at the
University Bookstore, which is one
of my favorite places to go.
On the writing front, the galleys
are now turned in, the book is in
production, and ALL CLEAR is
scheduled to come out on October
nineteenth, preceded by the trade
paperback of BLACKOUT, which will
be released some time in
September. Bantam is sending
me on tour for ALL CLEAR at the
end of October and beginning of
November, so I hope I'll see some
of you then. ( Note: For
anybody who hasn't read BLACKOUT
yet, BLACKOUT-ALL CLEAR is one
novel which was too long to be
published in one volume and so was
split in two by the
publishers. I apologize in
advance to anybody who reads the
book without knowing that--I tried
to tell everybody I could--and
hope you aren't so mad you don't
read the second. I solemnly
promise it's ONLY two volumes, not
the teaser beginning to a
fifteen-volume series or
something, and that the book
reaches an actual and
complete ending in ALL
CLEAR.)
I've started working on a couple
of short stories and a new novel,
about which more later. Hope to
see you all soon.
Connie
Willis
Aug
15, 2010 - All Clear Book Tour
taking shape Locations and dates are
being set for the All
Clear Book Tour.
Cities and dates will be added
to this post as they are
announced.
July
7, 2010- Subterranean Press
Limited Editions Update As expected, the Limited
Edition (both numbered and
lettered) of Blackout has sold
out from the publisher.
Their latest update on
the
status of All Clear was
that they had sold nearly 80% of
them. If you missed out on
Blackout, copies of may still be
available from some online
retailers.
A
Blackout Bibliography
by Connie Willis
When I was on
my tour, a bunch of
people asked if I could
put together a
bibliography of the
books I used to research
BLACKOUT.
I
can't. There were
hundreds of them, many
of them obscure books in
libraries I visited when
I was travelling--and
with many of them, I had
to read an entire book
to glean a line or two I
could use. But
here are some of my
favorites.
NOTE:
The books listed here
are related specifically
to BLACKOUT. I'll
do the ones related to
ALL CLEAR--books about
Ultra, the Intelligence
War, the Christmas
raids, the V-1 and V-2
rocket attacks, and
VE-Day--when ALL CLEAR
comes out.
NO
TIME
TO WAVE GOODBYE by Ben
Wicks
An
in-depth look at the
evacuated kids, with
lots of
reminiscences--and some
horror stories--from the
kids themselves.
This was my favorite
book about the evacuees.
GOOD
NIGHT,
MR. TOM by Michelle
Magorian
A
painstakingly researched
and heart-wrenching
children's novel about a
gruff old man and the
boy he reluctantly takes
in when London's kids
were evacuated to the
country during the war.
THE
MIRACLE
OF DUNKIRK by Walter
Lord
The
first thing you need to
do when you've got to
research something is to
find out whether Walter
Lord wrote a book about
it. If he did, it
will almost certainly be
the BEST book written on
the subject, as witness
DAY OF INFAMY (his book
on Pearl Harbor) and A
NIGHT TO REMEMBER (the
sinking of the
Titanic.) When I
was researching PASSAGE,
I read everything ever
written about the
Titanic and can say with
absolute certainty that
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER is
the best Titanic book
ever written. THE
MIRACLE OF DUNKIRK is
Lord's account of the
miraculous rescue of the
British Army (and a
bunch of the French)
from the beaches of
Dunkirk and all the
events leading up to it.
SPITFIRE
SUMMER
by Malcolm Browne
A
very good book about the
summer of 1940 and the
Battle of Britain, when
the badly-outnumbered
RAF managed to hold off
the Luftwaffe with grit,
great flying, baling
wire, spit, and high
humor. Churchill
was spot-on when he
said, "Never have so
many owed so much to so
few," and SPITFIRE
SUMMER tells exactly how
it happened.
MRS.
MINIVER
by Jan Struther
Although
you're probably more apt
to know about the
movie than the novel,
the book is really good,
too. It's a
collection of short
newspaper pieces on life
during the war and the
runup to it, told in
classic British
understated style.
They started out being
breezy, domestic
columns, but as the war
approached, they turned
into something else
entirely. I also
recommend the Academy
Award-winning movie
starring Deborah Kerr.
Some other good movies
are: MRS.
MINIVER
HOPE
AND GLORY--the Blitz
from a ten-year-old
boy's point of view
MRS.
HENDERSON PRESENTS--the
story of the Windmill
Theatre, which had naked
girls and "never closed"
MISS
PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A
DAY--a great picture of
London on the verge of
war
HANOVER
STREET--you knew I'd
find a way to work
Harrison Ford in
somehow, didn't
you? The plot's a
bit far-fetched, but the
Blitz stuff is great.
SPITFIRE--the
classic 1942 movie which
tells the story of the
plane that won the
Battle of Britain,
starring Leslie Howard
(Gone with the Wind,
Pygmalion) who would be
shot down the following
year
DANGER
UXB--the high-tension
BBC story of a bomb
disposal squad; the
forerunner to THE HURT
LOCKER
And
as far as the attack on
Pearl Harbor goes,
forget PEARL
HARBOR. Watch TORA
TORA TORA, a wonderfully
researched and
incredibly exciting
movie.
BACKS
TO
THE WALL by Leonard
Mosley
This
was the first book I
read on the Blitz, and
it's one of the
best. It not only
gives you the big
picture, but the
personal stories of the
people caught in the
Blitz, from nine
year-old Sheila
Hardiman, the first
person killed, to a bomb
disposal expert to a
young woman who made the
mistake of sleeping with
a German and ended up in
Holloway Prison.
1940
by
Lawrence Thompson
This
book, which takes you
through the year of the
Blitz month by month,
was invaluable to
figuring out what
happened when (and gives
you a good perspective
of everything else that
was going on in the
world.)
THEIR
FINEST
HOUR by Winston
Churchill
This
book, and the other
five: THE
GATHERING STORM, THE
GRAND ALLIANCE, THE
HINGE OF FATE, CLOSING
THE RING, and TRIUMPH
AND TRAGEDY, are story
of the war from the man
who ran it, a man who
also happened to be one
of the great writers of
the twentieth
century.
THE
HOME
FRONT by Susan Briggs
The
war from the civilian
point of view.
This book has everything
you need to know about
rationing, the blackout,
the Home Guard, Digging
for Victory, scrap
drives, utility
clothing, and gas masks,
plus a recipe for Lord
Woolton Pie, made from
potatoes, cauliflower,
and oatmeal. Yum!
WAITING
FOR
THE ALL CLEAR by Ben
Wickes
The
war from the horse's
mouth--interviews with
dozens of people who
lived through the war,
from nurses to Jewish
refugees to midwives who
delivered babies with
bombs falling all around
them.
THE
M.O.
DIARIES
In
the 1930s the British
government began a
program to find out what
the British people were
thinking by paying them
a shilling a week to
write down their
"observations" and
thoughts in a
journal. I'm not
sure what they had in
mind or if it was a
success. The
important thing is that
when the war began,
nobody thought to stop
it. The government
kept on doling out
shillings, and the
people kept on writing
down their
observations. As a
result, we have one of
the broadest and most
diverse records of how
war affects people ever.
Usually
wars are recorded by
journalists,
politicians, and
professional writers,
and World War II is no
exception. You can
read Virginia Woolf's
and C.P.Snow's and
Churchill's takes on the
war. But thanks to
the M.O. Diaries, you
can also read how the
war looked to bus
drivers and Lyons Corner
waitresses and munition
factory workers--an
absolutely treasure
trove of detail.
They're
collected in a variety
of places. My
favorite is LIVING
THROUGH THE BLITZ by Tom
Harrison. For
women's points of view,
there's also WARTIME
WOMEN: A
MASS-OBSERVATION
ANTHOLOGY, edited by
Dorothy Sheridan.
DIGGING
FOR
MRS. MILLER by John
Strachey
A
clearly-autobiographical
novel about an ARP post
during the Blitz, and
one of my
favorites. It's
exciting, horrific, and
funny, all at once.
ONE
FINE
DAY by Mollie
Panter-Downes
The
collected columns of
Mollie Panter-Downes,
which originally
appeared in the pages of
THE NEW YORKER, which is
where I first read them,
and where I recommend
reading them if you
can--there, among the
ads and theater reviews,
you get the full effect
of how these must have
looked to Americans
still not in the war
yet. She's not so
much trying to cover the
Blitz as record her
personal impressions of
it, and she's got an
incredible eye for
detail, as witness her
account of Oxford Street
after the bombing that
destroyed John Lewis.
SO
THIS
IS LONDON by Edward R.
Murrow
If
you don't know who
Edward R. Murrow was,
you need to rent GOOD
NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, the
story of how he stood up
to Senator Joe McCarthy
when everyone else was
afraid to. But
before See it Now and
Person to Person and his
stellar career as a TV
journalist, he was the
American war
correspondent who did
radio broadcasts from
London during the Blitz
and the voice of the
Blitz for most
Americans. SO THIS
IS LONDON is the
riveting collection of
those broadcasts,
frequently done under
fire, including the one
beginning, "As I speak
to you now, St. Paul's
Cathedral is burning to
the ground."
You
need to hear them if you
can, but reading the
book's an experience,
too.
ST.
PAUL'S
IN WARTIME by the
Reverend W.R. Matthews
This
book, written by the
then Dean of St. Paul's,
was my Bible for all the
ST. Paul's stuff in
BLACKOUT and ALL
CLEAR. It's hard
to come by, and I wasn't
able to get hold of a
copy till after I wrote
"Fire Watch" (Dave
Langford found one and
sent it to me, bless
him) but it was
invaluable in writing
the new book, although
it failed to give enough
details about the
stained-glass
windows. To get
that, I had to keep
asking volunteers until
somebody went and got a
modern-day version of
Mr. Humphreys, who was
old enough to remember
what I needed to know. THE
LITTLE
PRINCESSES by Marion
Crawford
This
book was written by the
governess for Princesses
Elizabeth and Margaret
Rose, and, although it's
a memoir, it's also one
of the fullest accounts
of the royal family's
lives and activities
during World War II.
And
finally, LONDON'S
WAR
by Sayre Van Young
I
didn't find this till a
couple of years
ago. I wish I'd
had it from the
beginning. It's a
tour guide to London,
but with a
difference--this one
tells you all the places
where things during the
Blitz happened, from the
buried War Rooms in
Whitehall where
Churchill drove
everybody crazy by going
up on the roofs in his
pajamas and Wellingtons
to watch the raids, to
the shrapnel damage on
the walls of the
Victoria and Albert
Museum. There are
also a bunch of walking
tours and lots of
fascinating side bars.
And
if you should happen to
be going to London,
you've got to go to St.
Paul's Cathedral
(natch), the War Rooms,
and the Imperial War
Museum. They not
only have great
exhibitions on the
Blitz--the last time I
was there, they were
doing one on the
evacuated kids--but
their gift
shop/bookstore is to die
for and is where I found
lots of the above-listed
books.
Good
reading!
Blackout
on New York Times Bestsellers
List!
According to official sources,
BLACKOUT will hit #34 on The
New
York Times bestseller list
for fiction on February
21st.
Blog
Updates - Also, on the Connie Willis.net blog are
some more pictures from the
signing tour including ones from
the Borderlands Books signing.
An Update from Connie! February
17, 2010
Hi,
everybody!I just got back
from my book tour--sort of.I
still have a signing in Texas on
Friday and assorted local
signings.Thank you all for
coming to my signings.It
was great to see everybody!And
especially thanks to everyone
who showed up at Borderlands
in San Francisco, where the
weather was absolutely
wretched.And in Seattle, where
you had to miss the first part
of the Superbowl.Or
the Superbowl ads.Which
ad was your favorite?I
loved the Paris Google ad and
hated the married
guy/Dodge one.
Anyway, everywhere I
went, people asked me the same
two questions:
1.How
did
you get interested in time
travel? and2.Did
you have to do a lot of
research for BLACKOUT?
A
lot of people also said they
wished I'd listed the books
I'd used to research the novel
at the end of the book.Novels
don't
ordinarily have
bibliographies, but I promised
I'd list some of my favorite
research books on this site as
soon as I've looked up all the
titles and authors.
In the
meantime, I'll answer the
second question:
How did you
get interested in time
travel?
That's
actually
kind of hard to answer.The
first time travel novel I ever
read was Robert A. Heinlein's
THE DOOR INTO SUMMER.It's
a great book--all about a guy
who gets betrayed by his
girlfriend and his best
friend, so he decides to have
himself cryogenically frozen
so he can get as far away from
them as possible.But
when he wakes up in the
future, he finds out...well, I
don't want to spoil it.All
I'll say is that the story
involves his going back to the
past again, and that there's a
terrific little girl, Ricky,
in the book, and a great cat
named Pete, which were more
than enough to get me hooked
on time travel.
But I'm not sure that
was my first intro to time
travel.That
may have been Robert Nathan's
PORTRAIT OF JENNIE or an
episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE,
like the one where the guy
keeps telling his psychiatrist
he's been to Pearl Harbor
during the Japanese attack.Or
it might have been one of Jack
Finney's stories, or C.L.
Moore and Henry Kuttner's
"Vintage Season," about
decadent jet-setter-like time
travelers who come back to our
time from the future to
see...well, I don't want to
spoil that either.And
I don't know which came first.
All I know is that as
soon as I heard about time
travel, I fell in love with
the idea.I loved the possibility
that we could go back to the
past and change mistakes we
made--which I am always
wishing I could do--and that
we could go see the St. Louis
World's Fair or the Colossus
of Rhodes or Lincoln giving
the Gettysburg Address.And
that we could change
history--shooting Hitler in
Berlin in 1934 or knocking the
gun out of John Wilkes Booth's
hand.
And I loved all the
games writers played with the
contradictions of time
travel--the grandfather
paradox and the "chicken and
egg" paradox.(In case you don't know
that one, it goes like this:You
go back in time and tell
Einstein the answer is E
equals mc squared, and he
"discovers" it, and it ends up
in your science textbook,
where you read it, and that's
how you knew about it so you
could tell him, but in that
case where did it come from in
the first place?)I
loved reading stories where
the authors explored all the
possibilities of those
paradoxes, from Heinlein's
"All You Zombies" to Harry
Harrison's "The Men Who
Murdered Mohammed," especially
Fredric Brown's "The Yehudi
Principle," where the story's
first and last lines form a
continual time loop. But my favorite time
travel stories were those that
showed us how time travel
could redeem us and/or break
our hearts, like Bob Shaw's
"The Light of Other Days" and
Philip K. Dick's "A Little
Something for Us Tempunauts."
You can do so many things
with time travel--go to the
past (and future), change
history, jumble up the pieces,
mess with events and people in
all sorts of fun ways, fix
your mistakes, experiment with
all the might-have-beens,
cause never-thought-of
consequences, and play
mind-twisting games. Best of
all, you can use time travel
to illuminate the way time and
memory affect--and trap--us.And
to gain an understanding of
history and time itself.It's
no wonder I love it.
Connie Willis
CONNIE
WILLIS'S FAVORITE TIME TRAVEL
STORIES (AND MOVIES)
"A Little Something for Us
Tempunauts"by
Philip K. Dick "The
Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw
THE HOUSE ON THE STRAND by
Daphne DuMaurier "A
Christmas Carol" by Charles
Dickens THE DOOR INTO
SUMMER by Robert A. Heinlein
"Great Escape Tours, Inc," by
Kit Reed "Vintage
Season" by C.L. Moore and Henry
Kuttner
SLIDING
DOORS
"Behold the Man" by Michael
Moorcock THE FINAL
COUNTDOWN "Child By
Chronos" by Charles Harness
"Me, Myself, and I" by William
Tenn ME, MYSELF, I (a
totally different story) "Air
Raid" by John Varley BRING
THE JUBILEE by Ward Moore "Brooklyn
Project" by William Tenn RUN
LOLA RUN "The Men Who
Murdered Mohammed" by Harry
Harrison "The Yehudi
Principle" by Fredric Brown
THE KID "The Little
Black Bag" by Cyril Kornbluth
THE NAVIGATOR:A MEDIEVAL ODYSSEY "Up
the Line" by Robert Silverberg
"All You Zombies" by Robert A.
Heinlein "By His
Bootstraps" by Robert A. Heinlein
MEMENTO
Connie
Willis Guest Blogging on
Suvudu
Connie will be guest blogging
on Suvudu
and will also be answering
questions in the comments.
Follow this
link to the first
post. This section will be
updated with links to subsequent
posts on Suvudu.
Reviews,
Articles, and Pictures from
the Blackout Tour
I've posted several blog
posts with links to various
online articles and have also
posted some pictures from the
Mysterious Galaxy signing and
the UNC Reception. You can
see those currently on the ConnieWillis.net
Blog.
World
Fantasy Convention 2011 Guest
Announcement
The
2011 World Fantasy Convention
in San Diego has announced
several of their guests,
including Connie Willis.
Announced so far is Author Guest
Neil Gaiman, Editor Shawna
McCarthy, and Toastmaster Connie
Willis.
Connie Reads from Blackout
I have posted three
videos on YouTube with Connie
talking about Blackout
and reading from it taped at LA
Con IV.
Clip
1 - Connie talking about Blackout
and All Clear
Connie's publisher has made
available an excerpt from Blackout
at
this
location.
Blackout
Book Tour dates announced!
Connie
will
be doing a short book tour to
coincide with the release of Blackout.
All
of these booksellers should be
able to take online or phone
orders if you don't live in the
area or can't make it to the
signing. So far, the
signings include:
I'm
finally
done with my two-volume time
travel to the Blitz novel,
BLACKOUT-ALL CLEAR! Oh,
frabjous day! Calloo,
callay!
BLACKOUT comes out February
second, and ALL CLEAR will be
out in the autumn. And I'm
done, I'm done, I'm done!
Okay, okay, I know I said I was
done with the Blitz novel in the
fall of 2008. And last
spring. And this
November. And it's still
not done. I still have the
copyedited manuscript and the
galleys to do for the second
volume, ALL CLEAR, and there are
days when I think I'll never be
done, that like Zeno's frog, I
will just keep halving the
distance to completion without
ever getting there.
However, I am sort of done, and
the first volume, BLACKOUT, is
coming out in February.
Honest. I've seen the
cover, the reviewers' copies
have been sent out, and assorted
booksignings have been set
up. (See schedule
above.) And, as my
daughter so aptly put it, "If
you're hit by a bus now, you
don't have to worry about some
hack finishing your novel."
And I must be done because I A)
am sleeping much better; B) am
several inches taller, due to
that giant albatross no longer
hanging around my neck; and C)
my family says I have been much
nicer lately. I have also
been beginning to think about
other projects. Every time
I've had a glimmer of a story
idea over the last few years,
I've had to firmly squelch it
because I had no time to work on
anything else, but now I can
actually write other stuff, and
the ideas have begun bubbling
up. There's a story I've
been wanting to write about a
robot who wants to be a
Rockette, and one about Satchel
Paige, who was the greatest
baseball pitcher who ever lived,
but who never got to play in the
Majors till he was past his
prime. And I can't wait to
get started on my Roswell--Area
51--alien-abduction--romantic
comedy novel, tentatively titled
The Road to Roswell.
But first I need to dig out from
the mess I made while writing
the novel, answer six years'
worth of e-mails, send out my
Christmas letter (I know it's
already January!), catch up on
six years' worth of laundry, and
find out what Glenn Beck and
Sarah Palin have been up
to. (Surely they've gotten
over their initial dislike of
President Obama by now.)
I also plan to catch up on my
reading. I just finished
The Chimes, one of Charles
Dickens' Christmas novels, and
it was terrific. It was
also clearly the prototype of
It's a Wonderful Life, right
down to the suicide attempt,
which I did not know.
Right now I'm reading Screwball
(about the great movie comedies
of the thirties) and can't wait
to start UFOs and the Murder of
Marilyn Monroe, which I got for
Christmas, and which promises to
tell me just how she was
"murdered by U.S. government
officials because she knew too
much about the Roswell UFO
coverup!" Which I also did
not know.
In the meantime, I'm looking
forward to seeing you--I
hope--at one of my book tour
stops and signings or at a
convention soon.
A belated Merry
Christmas-Hanukkah-Solstice-Kwanzaa-Holiday
Season, a Deliriously Happy New
Year, and Good Reading!
Connie Willis, Jan
2010
CONNIE
WILLIS DONATES PAPERS TO UNC
Connie
Willis
is donating her manuscripts, her
library of editions of her own
books, her research books for
BLACKOUT-ALL CLEAR, PASSAGE, and
other works, her awards, and her
other papers to the library of
her alma mater, the University
of Northern Colorado. She
attended the university (then
Colorado State College) in
Greeley, Colorado, from 1963-67,
where she received a BA in
English and elementary
education. The donation of
her papers will be celebrated by
a reception on February ninth
(location and time TBA)
The library plans to digitize
her papers and prepare them to
be made available to scholars
and other institutions.
UNC is also the repository of
many of James Michener's papers,
including the manuscript of
Centennial, and has a display of
his papers and a replica of his
office. UNC has also named
a dormitory after Connie Willis
and Mildred Hansen, the first
female editor of the Greeley
Tribune. The Hansen-Willis
Dormitory is on Tenth Avenue at
Twentieth Street.
Locus
Magazine - An excerpt from
the interview published in the
October issue.
Studio
360 Now Online with Connie
NPR's Studio
360's
Time Travel episode was
broadcast on Jan 1st and is now
available to listen to online and
they've also made available
several video clips from the
tapingincluding this
one with Connie Willis and
David Goldberg talking about time
travel.
Connie
Willis on NPR's Studio 360 This
week
Connie
Willis
will be in New York on Tuesday,
Nov 17th, to take part in a live
recording of NPR's Studio
360 at the Jerome
L. Greene Performance Space.
The show is sold out, but they
supposedly will offer a live
webcast on the website at 7 pm
ET which will likely stay
available. Once I have more
details on when it will be
broadcast on the radio and
associated links for that, I
will post them.
Their web site describes the
show as:
On November 17, Studio 360 takes
you where no audience has gone
before: traveling through time.
In this live show hosted by Kurt
Andersen at WNYC's The Greene
Space (taped for later
broadcast), scientists and
artists explain why time travel
is more than an idle fantasy.
Astrophysicist David Goldberg (A
User's Guide to the Universe)
unravels the physics of time
travel. Sci-fi writer Connie
Willis tells us what to do if
your journey through time goes
awry. Simon Wells, the
great-grandson of H.G., shares
his obsession with the classic
The Time Machine. Musical
sensation Janelle
Monae performs her
28th-century funk. And Mike
Daisey drops by to give us
advice from the future.
Studio 360's "Science &
Creativity" explores the
intersection of art and science.
The series is supported in part
by the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation
Blackout
and All Clear
Updates
Blackout is
scheduled for release on February
2nd, 2010 in hardcover and e-book
from Spectra. Also in the
works is a limited
edition from Subterranean
Press of both Blackout
and All Clear. Subterranean
Press's
announcement has a fairly detailed
blurb about the book, which some
might consider spoilers, so I'll
only put a
link to it here on the web
page.
Look for more news
about and from Connie here soon!
Science
Fiction Hall of Fame
Weekend and Update From Connie
Connie was honored with being
inducted into the Science Fiction
Hall of Fame in Seattle in late
June. She also was
toastmaster for the Locus
Awards. Here's a message
from Connie on the activities:
THE BOOK: My two-volume
novel is at long last done (though
still only partly revised.)
I've turned in the Volume 1
revisions and am now working on
Volume 2's. The book will
come out as BLACKOUT (Spring 2010)
and ALL CLEAR (six months
later.) I'm very excited.
THE LOCUS AWARDS BANQUET:
The banquet was this last weekend
at the Courtyard Marriott by Lake
Union. It was so fun.
We had a sellout crowd and nearly
everyone wore their Hawaiian
shirt, some of which were even
more dazzlingly garish than I
could have hoped. Gordon Van
Gelder's (an Hawaiian sunset) was
almost blinding and required
sunglasses. People
who did not wear Hawaiian
shirts--or a Hawaiian dress (a la
my daughter) or a shirt with
"Hawaiian" writtten on it in Magic
Marker (editor Eric Raab) or, in
one instance, a Hawaiian
kilt--were tagged by me with a
sign saying, "I did not wear a
Hawaiian shirt". These
included Ted Chiang, who obviously
did not get the message and was
dressed in a very cool-looking
suit (or perhaps he had wanted to
dress up for the Hall of Fame
stuff, which was immediately
following.) These people had
the chance to win a Hawaiian
shirt, and those were fab,
too. One had Hawaiian
drinks--mai tais, etc.--on it and
another was a combination Hawaiian
shirt/bowling shirt, which you do
not see every day. I myself
had on a Hawaiian shirt depicting
a rocket launching from NASA,
which you do not see every day
either.
People who did as they were told
and had their Hawaiian shirts got
to participate in the Hawaiian
shirt/trivia contest. This
year's questions were all about
Hawaii AND science fiction, such
as: "In what SF movie did
people use time travel to try to
stop the attack on Pearl Harbor?"
and "The on-land scenes of what
terrible waterlogged SF movie
starring Kevin Costner were filmed
in Hawaii?" Greg Bear--who
was wearing a terrific Lilo and
Stitch (science fiction and
Hawaii) shirt and is really really
smart--won the contest.
First prize is an autographed
banana, which will no doubt appear
soon on E-Bay, but there were
lovely gifts for everyone,
including flip-flop key chains,
dead parrots, and those blowy
things that kids have at parties,
all of course Hawaiian.
As to the Locus Awards themselves,
I'll only say that nearly
everybody who won was there,
including Gardner Dozois (badly
behaved), Eileen Gunn (very badly
behaved), Ellen Datlow (who is the
only person I know who can make a
Hawaiian shirt look stylish),
Paolo Bacagalupi, Michael Whelan,
Ted Chiang, and Jennifer Brehl,
who we once again persuaded to do
the hula to "We're Going to a
Hukilau." The Locus
Awards Banquet is one of my
favorite things to do every
year. It's the ultimate
audience-participation event in
science fiction and everybody has
a great time, although some people
take it way too seriously.
One person told me that if they'd
known how hard the trivia quiz
was, they'd have studied.
Keep in mind that the first-place
prize is a banana. If you
decide to come next year, do NOT
study. Do, however, wear a
Hawaiian shirt or face the
consequences.
THE HALL OF FAME INDUCTIONS:
What can I say? I was so
honored to be inducted, especially
the same year as Michael Whelan,
the illustrator Frank R. Paul, and
Ed Ferman. It was
lovely. It didn't seem
right to be getting honored,
though, when being in science
fiction all these years has been
its own reward. I've loved
every minute of it--well, not
quite every minute, but you know
what I mean. Aside
from awards ceremonies, the
highlights of the weekend were
finding a great Greek restaurant
in Fremont which had baklava ice
cream, seeing the famous troll
under the bridge, going to Archie
McPhee's (did you know they now
have a gummy haggis?), talking to
Nancy Kress and Karen
Joy Fowler and John Kessel, and
having a great breakfast with
Terri and David Haugen and one of
those magical science fiction
dinners with my family and Charles
N. Brown and Amelia Beemer of
Locus, Gary Wolfe, and Gardner
Dozois. We had rockfish
(which is more art than food) and
sang all sorts of show tunes and
poems. (Did you know that
Charles saw Ethel Merman on
Broadway in Annie Get Your
Gun? And that Gary Wolfe
knows the scores to--oh,
everything, as does my
aughter? And that you can
sing the entire "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner" to the theme from
Gilligan's Island? We were
all reduced to helpless delight
and laughter by the time the
dinner was over, and it reminded
me all over again why I love this
field and the people in it.
OTHER NEWS: I'm planning to
go to Worldcon in Montreal and to
the World Fantasy Convention this
year since it's in San Jose
I just agreed to be a guest of
honor at Capclave in October of
2010, and am going to Bubonicon
this summer. The rest of the
time I'm trying frantically to
finish the revisions to the novel
and get them in.
Hall
of Fame Inductees and Presenters
Connie
with new inductees plaques
Connie's
Plaque
Thanks to Cordelia Willis
for the photos.
Aug
5, 2009 - We're Back, Catching
Up Due to varous things
including moving and several
conventions, I've not had an
update for a while. It's
time to play catchup..
April 2nd,
2009 Update
All Clear - Editing
of All Clear is still in
process. Hopefully we'll
have an update from Connie in the
near future.
Connie to join the Science
Fiction Hall of Fame The Science Fiction Museum has
announced that Connie Willis will
be one of the inductees at the
2009 Science
Fiction
Hall of Fame ceremony in
Seattle June 26 & 27.
Also being inducted are
Edward L Ferman, Michael Whelan,
and Frank R. Paul. Connie will
also be hosting the Locus
Awards ceremony happening
that weekend as well.
Nov 23 - An
Update From Connie
The novel is now really turned
in, though there's still tons of
work (and cutting) to be done on
it, so I won't really feel like
celebrating until that's done and
the book's formally accepted and
everything. I worked on the Obama
campaign and I'm still deliriously
happy about the election a week
later and having a little trouble
with withdrawal, though I am
busily watching Sarah Palin's
Victory Tour? which is helping
some.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Oct 10 -
Online Interviews and a New
Short Story
Rocky Mountain News
Interview & Story
For the A
Dozen On Denver series
of stories in the Rocky Mountain
News, Connie Willis has
contributed a new short story and
has also done an interview. For
the interview, go
here, for the short story,
"New Hat", including an mp3 of
Gabriella Cavallero reading the
story, go here.
Mur Lafferty Interview From
BaltiCon 42. On Mur Lafferty's I
Should be Writing 2.0
blog, she has posted a two part
video interview with Connie from
BaltiCon 42. Part
1
Part
2
BaltiCon Podcast Connie
Willis Interview On the Balticon
Podcast site, they have
recently posted their podcastinterview
with Connie Willis, BaltiCon
42's Author Guest of Honor.
High Plains Library District
Foundation Fundraiser Gala
Article An article
from
the Greeley Tribune reports
on the fundraiser that Connie was
honored at.
Sept 18 -
Upcoming Events
Sept 27th - High Plains Library
District Workshop, signing, and
Gala. The High Plains Library
District (Connie's home libraries
in Greeley and Weld County ) is
honored to have Connie as the
featured event for our one
community reads - Big Read 2008 -
Fahrenheit 451. On September
27th, she will be giving a
workshop for writers at 1:00 and
at 2:00 a general talk on science
fiction and Ray Bradbury. In the
evening, she will be receiving the
First Annual High Plains Library
Distinguished Author award.
Below is the press release
for the SciFi Fundraising Gala.
Sci-Fi Author Connie Willis
to Be Honored at
High Plains Library District
Sci-Fi Fundraising Gala
Wonder Woman, Medusa and a few
aliens are already confirmed guests
at this year's High Plains Library
District Sci-Fi Fundraising Gala to
be held on September 27th at the
Greeley Country Club from 7 to 10
pm. Greeley sci- fi/fantasy author
Connie Willis will be awarded the
High Plains Library District
Distinguished Author Award. The
gala, sponsored by the High Plains
Library District Foundation, is part
of this year's Big Read 2008:
Fahrenheit 451. The gala will
feature some far out fun and
entertainment including a dessert
buffet, costume contest and dancing.
Get your favorite sci-fi/fantasy
costumes ready and join us for this
exciting evening of fantasy and fun.
Tickets for the Sci-Fi Gala are $50
and can be purchased by contacting
the Foundation at (970) 590-9881 or
online at www.Blacktie-Colorado.com.
Proceeds from the gala and the
auction will be used to support The
Big Read and other library
programming.
In conjunction with the gala, there
will also be an online auction
including items such as an art print
from sci-fi artist Michael Whelan, a
subscription to SciFi & Fantasy
Magazine, jewelry and more. The
auction will run throughout The Big
Read, September 21st to October
31st. To bid on items, go to www.Blacktie-Colorado.com. (Note:
I'm trying to find out a direct
link to the auction for the
website).
The Big Read is an initiative
designed to restore reading to the
center of American culture by
bringing communities together to
read, discuss, and celebrate one
book. This year High Plains Library
District is encouraging the
community to read the classic Sci-Fi
novel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray
Bradbury.
For more information, please visit
the Big Read details at MyLibrary.us
.
Nov 16th & 17th - Writing
Workshop and Talk in Seattle
Connie will once again be
participating in the Writing
Fantastic
Fiction Workshop Series
sponsored by the NW
Media Arts group at the
Richard Hugo House on Sunday, Nov
16th in Seattle, WA. On
Monday, Nov 17th, she will be
doing a reading as part of the Fantastic
Fiction
Salons, also at the Richard
Hugo
House.
Sept 18 -
Catching up on the News -
Another Hugo, and More.
San Diego Comic Con -
Connie drew a good crowd for her
spotlight panel and signed a lot
of books. Some details were
posted on the Connie
Willis
Blog.
Denvention 3 - Connie
participated at Denvention 3 in
many panels including a reading
and several signings. She
presented two awards at the Hugo
Award ceremony then was awarded
her 10th Hugo award for "All
Seated on the Ground".
Again, details on the Connie
Willis
Blog.
All Clear - Connie
was confident at WorldCon that she
was going to have All Clear
finished and delivered to her
publisher within a couple of
weeks. I'm
hoping to have an update on that
soon.
A Dozen on Denver - The Rocky Mountain News is
celebrating Denver's 150th
Anniversary by commissioning
stories from local writers about
Denver, called A
Dozen on Denver.
Connie is one of the writers
listed and her story should be
turning up soon.
Philadelphia Science Fiction
Society -
Connie gave a talk at the
Philadelphia Science Fiction
Society on Sept 12. I
haven't found any reports on the
talk, though.
July 22 - Connie's ComicCon
Schedule (Updated)
Connie will be doing two panels
at the Comic
Con International Convention
in San Diego and several autograph
sessions. Here are the details as
they stand now:
Thursday, July 24
5:00-6:00 Looking at Our World:
Eye on the Past - Authors
discuss how they use and abuse
history to inform their fictional
stories. Panelists include Connie
Willis (Passage), Jacqueline Carey
(Kushiel's Legacy), Max Allan
Collins (Deadly Beloved), Peter
David (Tigerheart), Naomi Novik
(Victory of Eagles), and Jess
Winfield (My Name Is Will: A Novel
of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare).
Moderated by Maryelizabeth Hart of
Mysterious Galaxy. Room 8
Friday, July 25
12:30-1:30 Spotlight on
Connie Willis - Time travel,
hula hoops, flying saucers, church
choirs, and other proofs of Chaos
Theory in action! Multiple Nebula
and Hugo Award–winning science
fiction author and Comic-Con
special guest Connie Willis
(Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of
the Dog) reveals the outer reaches
and inner secrets of writing
science fiction. Room 10
Note that both of those rooms seat
only around 280-300 people, which
could easily fill up with fans.
It may seem like a lot, but
when there are around 125,000
attendees, the rooms can fill up
quickly. The
group panel with several notable
authors will definitely fill up.
Autographing in the Sails
Pavillion
Looking at Our World: Eye on
the Past
Connie Willis, Jacqueline Carey,
Max Allan Collins, Peter David,
Naomi Novik, Jess Winfield
Thursday AA6 6:00 pm–7:00 pm
Connie will also be doing
a couple of signings at the
Bantam/Spectra Booths that are
part of the Random House set of
booths (Booths 1128-1136) in the
exhibit hall.
Friday, July 25th - 5pm to 6 pm -
Connie Willis Bantam Spectra Booth
Signing
Sunday, July 27th - 11 am to 12 pm
- Connie Willis Bantam Spectra
Booth Signing
July 15 - All
Clear Update - Not Quite
Done.
Reports from Balticon and
elsewhere about the status of All
Clear had indicated that All Clear
was finished and turned in.
That is not the case.
In an email correspondence
with Connie, she indicated "It's
not. It's very, very
close, but as you know there's a
very great difference between
that and finished." So,
no it has not yet been turned in
to her publisher and reports of it
having been completed were
premature.
June 22 -
Locus Awards
Results
At the annual Locus Awards held
in Seattle, Connie Willis's
collection The Winds of Marble
Arch and Other Stories was
awarded Best Collection.
That is Connie's 10th Locus
Poll Award. Congratulations
Connie! The full
list
of winners can be seen on
the Locus
Magazine Website.
June 2nd -
All Clear Update, Hugo
Nomination All Clear Finished - As
reported on the Connie Willis Blog,
in one report on Connie's GoH talk
at BaltiCon 42, she indicated that
All Clear was finished and
just needed some tweaking before
being turned into the publisher.
I hope to get some more
details from her soon on when it
is likely to hit the stores.
Hugo Nomination - A
belated mention of "All Seated on
the Ground" being nominated for
Best Novella for this year's Hugo
Awards. Details on the full
list of nominations and voting
deadlines can be found at the
Denvention 3 Hugo
Awards page. The Hugo
Awards will be presented on
Saturday night, August 9th.
May 24th -
BalticCon News Connie Willis is being honored
as Author Guest of Honor this
weekend at BaltiCon
42. Look
for links of blog reports about
the convention over the next few
days on the Connie
Willis Blog. In
one
report
about opening ceremonies,
with news about Greeley, CO, where
Connie is from, being hit by
tornadoes, Connie indicated that
her house did not receive any
damage. She had heard from her
husband on the phone about it
after she deplaned and before she
had gotten to the voice mails of
people asking if she was OK.
May 24th -
Locus Poll Nominees
Catching up with a bit of news.
Nominations for the Locus
Poll Awards include two for
Connie Willis. "All
Seated on the Ground" has been
nominated for best Novella and The
Winds of Marble Arch and Other
Stories has been nominated for
Best Collection. Connie will be
emceeing the Locus
Awards
Ceremony, for which tickets
are still available, on
June 21st in Seattle, WA..
April 4th -
Hugo Nomination & Jack
Williamson Lectureship
"All Seated on the Ground" has
been nominated for best Novella
for the 2008 Hugo
Awards that will be
presented at this year's WorldCon,
Denvention
3, being held in August in
Denver, CO. Details on
voting can be found on the Hugo
Awards section of the
Denvention 3 web site.
Congratulations to Connie
for the nomination!
2008 Williamson Lectureship
- April 11 in Portales, NM Connie will be speaking at the 2008 Williamson
Lectureship, being held on
April 11th at Eastern New Mexico
University in Portales, NM.
Joining her will be Stephen
Gould and Christopher Stasheff.
March 15th -
Connie News Round-up
One Book, One
Batavia -
Doomsday Book Batavia, Illinois, has
chosen Doomsday Book as the One
Book, One Batavia 2008 selection. As
part of this selection, Connie
Willis will be making two
appearances in Batavia on March
20th. One at noon at the Batavia
Public Library for the Books Between
Bites lunch session and that night
at the Batavia High School at 7 pm.
Full details on on the One
Book, One Batavia page.
Starship Sofa Podcast
The works of Connie Willis are
featured on the new edition of the Starshp Sofa podcast, #80 (direct
liink
to the mp3 file)
This week the StarShipSofa smacks
into on of the brightest stars in SF
and that is Connie Willis. Join Tony
C Smith on his own personal voyage
of discovery into all things Connie
Willis.
Locus Awards and Science
Fiction Hall of Fame Awards Connie Willis will emcee
the Locus Awards banquet happening
as part of the Science Fiction
Awards Weekend at the Science
Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame
in Seattle Washingron on June 20
& 21. Locus has a
registration form online here
, but there's not much information
online yet about the actual weekend.
In the March issue of Locus,
they do have an ad with more detail
indicating that there will be a
reception on Friday night sponsored
by the Clarion West Workshop, a
special interview of an author done
by Nancy Pearl of Book Lust, and
other events and panels during the
weekend. Once there is more
detailed information online, I'll
point to it.
Locus Poll Voting Ends April
15th Voting in the annual Locus
Awards Poll is open until
April 15th and there are several
entries by Connie eligible for
awards. All Seated on
the Ground is listed for
Best Novella and The Winds
of Marble Arch and Other
Stories is up for best
Single-Author Collection. Both
J.K. Potter (All Seated) and
John Jude Palencar (Marble Arch)
are listed in the best artist
category.
Nov 30th -
Catching Up On the Latest News
New Interviews First of all, there's been a
couple of recent interviews with
Connie you should check out.
The
Rocky
Mountain News had an
interview in October with Connie.
The picture that went with
the article showing Connie's
awards is no longer on the
website. The Finding
Wonderland
interview is good and also
lists some of Connie's favorite
short stories and novels.
Books update Subterranean Press is
doing a second printing of The
Winds of Marble Arch and Other
Stories and is now shipping
the limited edition (mine looks
very nice). Note that some
copies of the first edition are
still available on Amazon
and likely still at Camelot
Books (who also have the
limited edition available as well
as the other Subterranean
Press books). All
Seated
on the Ground is now at the
printers and should be shipping
soon.
Oct 18 - All Seated on
the Ground - In Asimov's AND
Subterranean Press Release
The December 2007 issue of Asimov's
has started arriving in subscriber's
mailboxes and should soon be turning
up on the bookstore shelves.
The Connie Willis novella "All
Seated on the Ground" is featured on
the cover and Asimov's has the first
part of it available to read
online. Subterranean
Press has also announced
they have a short novel
version of it to be released
in late November/early December.
Like D.A.,
it
will be available in a signed
limited edition and a trade edition.
The cover will be by J.K.
Potter.
Oct 16 -
Winds of Marble Arch
Availability
The Trade edition of The Winds of
Marble Arch and Other Stories
is now officially sold out from the
Publisher, Subterranean
Press. They also
indicate that the lettered edition
is sold out as well with the limited
edition likely to sell out soon.
Amazon
still indicates they have the book
in stock and other online
booksellers such as Camelot
Books also have copies
on hand.
Sept 24 -
Connie Willis.net Blog A blog has been set up for
notes and news on conniewillis.blogspot.com.
Currently, I will be keeping
track of reviews and blog entries on
the new collection and other reports
as well as likely cross-posting the
news posted here.
Sept 23 - New
Novella in Asimov's in December
Asimov's Science Fiction will
feature the new Connie Willis
Novella "All Seated on the Ground."
Connie read part of the story
at Bubonicon in August and I'm
looking forward to hearing the rest
of the story.
In the December preview of the
Oct/Nov issue, Sheila Williams
writes "December issues always
provoke an unusual feeling within
all who work on monthly
publications, for we find ourselves
in festive fictional surroundings
months before the holidays
themselves take place. We at
Asimov’s have not decorated our
offices for the holiday season quite
yet, (a glance in the direction of
my calendar reveals the month to be
July, and subscribers will receive
the issue in October, making
everyone confused). No matter—for
us, it is a Christmas in July, and
what better way to celebrate than by
introducing a wonderful new holiday
novella by one of science fiction’s
most admired, popular, and
award-winning writers: Connie
Willis. In her first holiday-themed
story for Asimov’s since December
2003’s “Just Like the Ones We Used
to Know” (a story I recall reading
during a particularly humid summer
thunderstorm), Ms. Willis entertains
again with the tale of a mysterious
alien entourage whose purpose upon
Earth is not entirely clear. The
mystery of their mission only
deepens as the aliens are taken
through a bustling shopping mall
during the frantic holiday
season—the events thereafter are
sure to surprise and delight you.
This will undoubtedly be considered
one of the best stories of the year,
so don’t miss “All Seated on the
Ground”!
The Clarion
West workshop has announced
that Connie Willis will be an
instructor for their 2008 session
along with Paul Park, Mary
Rosenblum, Cory Doctorow, Sheree R.
Thomas, and Chuck Palahniuk.
The 2008 session will run from
June 22nd through August 1st.
August 5th - Winds
of Marble Arch and Other Stories
News Subterranean Press has
released the cover image for The
Winds
of Marble Arch and Other Stories
by John Jude Palencar. The
book should be shipping later this
month. A few reviews of the book are
turning up online including Rambles.net
, a review in the August issue of
Locus Magazine by Gary K. Wolfe, and
this starred review from Publisher's
Weekly "Willis makes brilliant
short fiction look easy in this
collection of 23 novellas and short
stories, which display a powerful
range of sensibility, from poignant
tenderness (“Inn”) and heartbreak
(“Samaritan”) to close-to-the-bone
satire (“Even the Queen”) and
blackest savagery (“All My Darling
Daughters”). The title novella
illustrates many of Willis’s
strengths. Starting from some
inexplicable meteorological
phenomenon like a blast of fetid air
no one else in London’s Tube tunnels
can feel or smell, “The Winds of
Marble Arch” whirls its hapless
narrator through one strange event
after another, until finally his
troubled marriage reaches an
otherwise impossible transformation
into “leaves and lilacs and love.” A
bizarre snowstorm leads to a whole
new fast-cut understanding of
Christmas in “Just Like the Ones We
Used to Know,” and another eerie
blizzard brings the collection to a
masterful close in “Epiphany,”
opening a door between our puny
reality and the Great Carnival
around and above us all, even though
we rarely perceive it. Willis’s gift
promises that signs are everywhere;
we just have to learn to recognize
them."
Clarion
West announced that
Connie Willis will be one of the
instructors fot the 2008 session
along with Paul Park, Mary
Rosenblum, Cory Doctorow, Sheree R.
Thomas, and Chuck Palahniuk.
It will take place June 22nd
through August 1st, 2008 in Seattle,
WA.
May 18
- Connie Willis on Book Lust The Connie Willis interview
with Nancy Pearl is now available to
view on the Book
Lust web site. It is
currently the main interview on the
page. You can also link
directly to the specific show here.
It
is in Real Player format and I'd
recommend upgrading to a newer
version if you have an older version
of Real Player. The show is
also available as a podcast via
iTunes.
May 3 -
Nebula Awards & Locus Awards
Update May 11-13, Nebula
Awards Weekend - Connie is
attending the Nebula Awards in New
York. This will be her 25th
Nebula Awards. She is
scheduled for the signing on Friday
night. It is not clear if she
is doing any other official
activities this year.
June 15-16, Locus
Awards - As has been the
tradition, Connie will be the M.C.
for the Locus Awards, happening as
part of the Science
Fiction
Hall of Fame Awards Weekend in
Seattle, WA.
April
30 - 2007 Jack Williamson Lecture
Reports
Last weekend was the 31st
annual Jack
Williamson
Lecture in
Portales, New Mexico. Connie
Willis was one of the presenters and
Walter Jon Williams reported on
the weekend on his
blog. As John indicated, they
published a Jack Williamson memorial
chapbook that has contributions of
many of the authors including Conniw
Willis. Details on ordering
can be found on the Hafner
Press web site.
Another online report on the weekend
can be found in the online edition
of the Clovis
News
Journal.
Steven Gould had a short
report with links to his
previous posts about Jack
Williamson.
April 6
- D.A. News - Cover & Reviews Subterranean Press has
released the cover for the D.A.
release. A few reviews have been
turning up including Publisher's
Weekly and SF
Signal.
I couldn't do a direct link to the
review in PW, but they call it
"cheerfully tongue-in-cheek" and
concludes with "Willis (Inside
Job) turns a cherished SF
theme completely inside out. "
Best
of Appearance: According to
a table of contents listing on SF
Signal of The Best Science
Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year
Volume 1, D.A. will also be included
in that collection. It is
being edited by Jonathan Strahan and
published by Night Shade
Books.
Hugo
Nomination
- Not this year, maybe next?
D.A. was mentioned on a
couple of Hugo Awards recommendation
lists, but did not make it onto the
ballot. It is likely it did
not garner enough votes because not
enough people had read it since it
had been published only in the Space
Cadets collection. It may be
that with the Subterranean Press
release, that will make it still
eligible for nomination next year
for the Hugo Awards presented at Denvention
3.
April 6
- Seattle NW Media Arts Reports A short report on Connie's
Fantastic Fction Workshop and
Reading in Seattle can be found at
the NW
Media Arts Livejournal.
I'm keeping an eye out for the
interview mentioned in the report
that may be turning up on the Book
Lust TV show in Seattle (and
hopefully available to view online).
Jan 23
- Space Cadets Book Availability
Update
L.A. Con IV is now making available
the Space Cadets book via Amazon and
Ebay through one of the LA Con IV
committee member's online
stores. Follow the links
below: Lyzard13
Shop at Amazon.com - Space
Cadets Lyzard13
Store at Ebay.com - Space
Cadets
Jan 20,
2007 - NW Media Arts Events Feb
25-26 Events in Seattle, WA Connie Willis will be taking
part in two events in Seattle
presented by NW
Media
Arts
at the Richard Hugo House.
First is The Writing
Fantastic
Fiction Workshop series on Feb
25th, where Connie will teach a
class on Fantastic Miracles of Rare
Device: The Techniques and Tropes of
Science Fiction. On Feb 26th,
she will talk as part of the
Fantastic Fiction Salon.
Full details at the linked pages.
Jan 15,
2007 Subterranean Press
announces D.A.
The Connie Willis novelette "D.A.",
originally published in the L.A. Con
IV collection Space Cadets, will be
published by Subterranean Press in a
limited edition signed and numbered
hardcover book and a Trade Edition
hardcover. It is to be
published in June, 2007. Full
pre-order details are available at this
page.
Jan 15,
2007 - Connie Willis.net Amazon
aStore. If you need to catch up on
your Connie Willis and related
novels, I now have set up a Connie
Willis.net Amazon.com aStore
with all of the currently available
books through Amazon.com. I do
get a small percentage from each
sale that will go towards webhosting
fees for this site (and to
help pay for those limited editions
:) I plan to expand it to
include some of Connie's favorite
authors and books as well.
Dec 12th -
Subterranean Press announces THE
WINDS OF MARBLE ARCH AND OTHER
STORIES
Subterranean Press officially
announced their Connie Willis career
spanning short story collection,
titled THE WINDS OF MARBLE ARCH
AND OTHER STORIES. It
will be 600+ pages with 250,000+
words and will be released in a
lettered, limited and trade edtion.
The cover will be done by John Jude
Pelencar. Full details on the
Subterranean Press order
page.
Dec 8th - Space
Cadets Book Still Available From
LA Con IV L.A. Con IV
still has copies of the regular
edition of the Space Cadets
collection featuring the Connie
Willis novelette "D.A.". It
also features stories by Larry
Niven, Nancy Kress, Kay Kenyon,
David Brin, Harry Turtledove, Kevin
J. Anderson, Greg Benford, David
Gerrold, Mike Resnick, and more.
They do not yet have anything
set up to order it via the LA
Con IV web page, however you
can order one by sending an email to
make arrangements for payment to
Elayne Pelz [elayne (at)
socal.rr.com]. Cost is $25 for
the book and $5 for shipping.
Dec 5th -
Publishing Update The December issue of Locus
Magazine has an updated
Forthcoming Books list and the
listing for All Clear
for a May release is no longer
there. They do list the
forthcoming Subterranean
Press short story collection,
A Connie Willis Treasury, for
an August 2007 release.
Dec 4th - L.A. Con
IV Pictures The L.A. Con IV website now has
a ton of pictures from the
convention in the
L.A. Con IV Gallery including
many with Connie including Opening
Ceremonies, the Guest of Honor
Speeches, the Hugo Awards and some
of her panels. They do not yet have
much annotation, so searching for
Connie does not turn up much as of
yet.
Nov 19th - 2006 -
Jack Williamson 1908-2006 Noted Science Fiction author
Jack Williamson passed away on
Friday, November 10th. A
memorial service on November 16 in
Portales New Mexico featured many
authors paying tribute to him,
including Connie Willis.
Patricia Rogers has posted
pictures from the service and
reception on Flickr.
Nov 19, 2006 -
News Roundup/Catchup
Upcoming
releases
Bantam Spectra has All Clearlisted as a May, 2007 release.
Indications from Connie is
that this will be the first half of
the story.
In the November issue of Locus
Magazine, they report that a
comprehensive (250,000 words) Connie
Willis short story collection is in
the works from Subterranean Press.
No details yet on when it is
expected. Editors of Asimov's indicated a
new short story is coming from
Connie in a future issue of
Asimov's.
LA Con IV
(WorldCon) Followup
The Space
Cadets Collection edited by Mike
Resnick was released at LA Con IV
featuring the Connie Willis
novelette "D.A.". The story
has been well received and has
already turned up on the NESFA
2006 Hugo Recommendations
list. It was available at L.A.
Con IV in a trade edition as well as
a signed and numbered limited
edition. I'm attempting to track
down details on how it can be
purchased. The signed and
numbered edition did sell out at the
convention, but copies of the
regular edition may still be
available.
SFRevue
has the text of Connie Willis' Guest
of Honor speech from LA Con IV
in their October issue.
August 28, 2006 - Connie
Willis Wins 9th Hugo Award
Connie Willis was awarded the Best
Novella Hugo Award, her 9th Hugo
Award, at LA Con IV in Anaheim, CA
over the weekend.
More pictures from the weekend
will be posted here soon.
For more pictures from the
Hugo Awards Ceremony (which Connie
was also the emcee), visit the MidAmerican
Fan Photo Archive.
December, 2006 -
CBS adapted the Connie
Willis novella Just Like
the Ones We Used to Know
as Snow
Wonder for a
holiday movie of the week.
It aired Nov 20th,
2005 on CBS and came in second
in the ratings behind ABC and
ahead of NBC's The Poseidon
Adventure movie.
According to the CBS
Ratings Press Release "CBS
SUNDAY MOVIE "Snow Wonder"
(9:48-11:48PM) scored an 8.2/14
with 11.77m viewers. "Snow
Wonder" was up +22% in
households and +17% in viewers
compared to the MOVIE's
season-to-date delivery. "
Connie Willis at
Anticipation, Worldcon 2009
Photo by Kyle
Cassidy
Connie Willis is the award winning
author of Doomsday Book,
Passage, To Say
Nothing of the Dog, Bellwether,
Blackout/All
Clea, Crosstalk, and The Road
To Roswell.
Connie has been awarded 11 Hugo
Awards, 11 Locus Poll Awards and 8
Nebula Awards. Her stories have an
epic feel to them and range from
laugh out loud funny to deadly
serious. Her latest novel, The
Road to Roswell, was
published in June 2023..
June 28,
2023 – 7 pm – Connie will be
having a meet and greet at 7
pm on Wednesday, June 28, in
Greeley, CO at The Midnight
Oil Bookstore, 827 10th
Street, Greeley, CO 80631
. Details at their
website,Booksatmidnight.com
June 29,
2023 – 6 pm – Old Firehouse
Books signing at The Old Town
Library at 201 Peterson St,
Fort Collins, CO 80524 .
Details on theOld
Firehouse Books web site.
They will ship signed
books (US only) if you
can’t make it to the signing.
July 2,
2023 – 1 pm – Connie will also
have an event at 1 pm Sunday,
July 2 at the Broadway Book
Mall, 316 S Broadway, Denver,
CO 80209. No event link yet
(and their online website does
not reflect their current
location)
Bubonicon
54
August 25-27, 2023
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Connie will be a program
participant his year.
If you know of any other
appearances that you would like me
to list, please let
me know.
Upcoming and Recent Releases for
Connie Willis
Early
Connie Willis Ebooks Available
Books
with Cynthia Felice - The three
titles Connie co-wrote with
Cynthia Felice are being
released as e-books by
Cynthia. Promised
Land and Water
Witch are currently
available on the Kindle with Light
Raid coming soon.
Editions for the Nook are also
in the works. Click on the
images below to take you
directly to the Amazon.com web
page for each book.
Water
Witch
Promised
Land
Light Raid
ALL
CLEAR - Released October 19,
2010 In
Blackout, award-winning
author Connie Willis returned to
the time-traveling future of
2060—the setting for several of
her most celebrated works—and sent
three Oxford historians to World
War II England: Michael Davies,
intent on observing heroism during
the Miracle of Dunkirk; Merope
Ward, studying children evacuated
from London; and Polly Churchill,
posing as a shopgirl in the middle
of the Blitz. But when the three
become unexpectedly trapped in
1940, they struggle not only to
find their way home but to survive
as Hitler’s bombers attempt to
pummel London into submission.
Now the situation has grown even
more dire. Small discrepancies in
the historical record seem to
indicate that one or all of them
have somehow affected the past,
changing the outcome of the war.
The belief that the past can be
observed but never altered has
always been a core belief of
time-travel theory—but suddenly it
seems that the theory is horribly,
tragically wrong.
Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the
historians’ supervisor, Mr.
Dunworthy, and seventeen-year-old
Colin Templer, who nurses a
powerful crush on Polly, are
engaged in a frantic and seemingly
impossible struggle of their
own—to find three missing needles
in the haystack of history.
Told with compassion, humor, and
an artistry both uplifting and
devastating, All Clear is
more than just the triumphant
culmination of the adventure that
began with Blackout. It’s Connie
Willis’s most humane, heartfelt
novel yet—a clear-eyed celebration
of faith, love, and the quiet,
ordinary acts of heroism and
sacrifice too often overlooked by
history.
BLACKOUT
OUT
FROM BANTAM SPECTRA IN
FEBRUARY
The first volume of Connie
Willis's long-awaited two-book
time travel novel, titled
BLACKOUT, will be out from Bantam
Spectra on February 2nd, to be
followed by the second volume, ALL
CLEAR, in the autumn.
BLACKOUT-ALL CLEAR is set in
Connie Willis's time-travel world
of Oxford, Mr. Dunworthy, and the
net, a world previously visited in
"Fire Watch," DOOMSDAY BOOK, and
TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG.
This novel is set in World War II
England and tells the stories of
several time-traveling historians
who are being sent on assignment
to different parts (and times) of
the war. Mike is going to
Pearl Harbor, Polly's going to be
a shopgirl in London at the height
of the Blitz, Eileen is already in
northern England with a bunch of
children--two of them very
difficult--who've been evacuated
from London, and Michael's
roommate Charles is busy preparing
to go to Singapore in the months
before the invasion by the
Japanese. But their plans
almost immediately go awry, and
that's not all that's going
on--the lab has suddenly decided
to cancel dozens of drops, Mr.
Dunworthy's worried about
something, and seventeen-year-old
Colin is determined to get to the
past by hook or by crook. There's
a lot going on in World War II, as
well--the evacuation of Dunkirk
and V-1 attacks, dogfights and
rationing and a plot to make
Hitler think the D-Day invasion
will be at Calais instead of
Normandy. To say nothing of
tube shelters, crossword puzzles,
scrap drives, land girls,
Shakespearean actors, and
Bletchley Park, and there's more
than enough stuff for three or
four novels. But there's
only one--split into two volumes,
BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR--and
they're both done, and, no, there
won't be any sequels.
Blackout is being
released on Feb 2, 2010 with All Clear
being released in late 2010.
Subterranean Press also has a limited
edition of both books, for
which you can pre-order a set with
matching numbers.
The Christmas
novella All
Seated
on the Ground has been
published in a limited and trade
edition by Subterranean
Press in December
2007. As with D.A.,
J.K Potter did the cover art.
Other recent releases include the
novellette D.A.,
published by Subterranean
Pressin a trade edition and a
limited edition.
Subterranean Press has also
published The
Winds
of Marble Arch and Other
Stories: a Connie Willis
Compendium in a
trade edition, a limited
edition, and a lettered
edition. The cover to the
Compendium was done by John Jude
Palencar. The
original printing of all three
editions have sold out and
Subterranean Press also did
a second printing that is now also
sold out from the publisher, but
still available through other
booksellers.
Connie's other
recent published works, the
novella of Inside Job
from Subterranean
Press and the hilarious
chapbook Roswell, Vegas,
and Area 51: Travels with
Courtney from Wormhole
Books
There are a
couple of new Connie Willis short
stories being published
soon. 
Coming
soon from Subterranean Press is 
A new
collection of my short stories
is coming out from Bantam in
July. It's called THE
BEST OF CONNIE WILLIS, and has
all the Hugo- and Nebula
Award-winning stories plus a
new intro, new afterwords, and
the speeches I gave when I was
Guest of Honor at Worldcon in
LA and my Grand Master
speeches. I'll be doing
a booksigning for the new book
at the Broadway Book Mall in
Denver on July 21 and at other
places, which I'll let you
know about as they get
finalized.
L.A. Con IV
still has copies of the regular
edition of the Space Cadets
collection featuring the Connie
Willis novelette "D.A.". It
also features stories by Larry
Niven, Nancy Kress, Kay Kenyon,
David Brin, Harry Turtledove, Kevin
J. Anderson, Greg Benford, David
Gerrold, Mike Resnick, and more.
They do not yet have anything
set up to order it via the 
