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Reasons to love Connie Willis
Nov. 14th, 2007 10:58 am1) For some inexplicable-to-me reason (for which I am grateful) she writes and publishes as SF even though her books are much less obviously SF than many works by writers who publish outside the genre for mainstream where presumably they either sell better or get access to more literary acclaim. I mean, Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, which is about people traveling to an alien world and first contact there, was reshelved out of SF most places and had a lovely life in the book group world. Whereas Passage, which is one of the subtlest books I've ever read, is in SF.
I mean, it's inexplicable to me because I do assume she could make oodles more money as a mainstream lit type writer, but maybe this is just my assumption. For whatever reason I am grateful because I didn't read much non-SF as a kid and I probably would never have found her books if they weren't in the SF section.
2) She is very very polite to fangirls who forget their own names at signings due to their extreme awe.
3) She wrote, among a lot of other brilliant things, "All My Darling Daughters". This story and its presence in her body of work sort of mystifies me. I recall looking at the copyright listings in the first collection I saw it in and not seeing a magazine listing for it. Which caused me to think it was original to the collection. It's included in The Winds of Marble Arch [edited 11/15 - for some reason despite having the book on the floor by me at the time, I typed Winds from, instead of winds of], as well. It is a super creepy story. It is really scary and (I think) really quite subtle until the cumulative details hit in, at which point it hits you with this sledgehammer like BONG. This subtle accumulation of details thing is very typical, really. I particularly like how Zibet doesn't see herself as good, but as a sinner. I thought that was a very creepy piece of psychological realism.
4) The introduction to the short story "Even the Queen", where she's like, "You want me to write about women's issues, fine, I'll write about *the* women's issue."
5) Well done takes on human nature. You have to be in awe of it, cause it's a tricky tricky stance to carry off. It's so much easier to be mean and cranky about human nature, or to be oddly over idealistic about it. To look around and go "we're people, and this is stuff people do", strikes me as really hard.
6) Doomsday Book has to be one of the best novels to use SF to tell a story, ever. Plus it is really really easy to recommend to non-SF readers. (Passage is even easier to recommend to non-SF readers, but it hadn't been published yet when I used to work at a bookstore.)
So, yeah. If I had to pick a single SF writer to be my favorite SF writer for all time, the award would definitely go to Connie Willis. She is awesome. I think the whole world already knows this, though - I mean, she's won a ton of awards. So it is a constant shock to me to talk about her work to the (non genre people world) and have them go "Who? Oh, she sounds interesting!" rather than "Of course!".
I mean, it's inexplicable to me because I do assume she could make oodles more money as a mainstream lit type writer, but maybe this is just my assumption. For whatever reason I am grateful because I didn't read much non-SF as a kid and I probably would never have found her books if they weren't in the SF section.
2) She is very very polite to fangirls who forget their own names at signings due to their extreme awe.
3) She wrote, among a lot of other brilliant things, "All My Darling Daughters". This story and its presence in her body of work sort of mystifies me. I recall looking at the copyright listings in the first collection I saw it in and not seeing a magazine listing for it. Which caused me to think it was original to the collection. It's included in The Winds of Marble Arch [edited 11/15 - for some reason despite having the book on the floor by me at the time, I typed Winds from, instead of winds of], as well. It is a super creepy story. It is really scary and (I think) really quite subtle until the cumulative details hit in, at which point it hits you with this sledgehammer like BONG. This subtle accumulation of details thing is very typical, really. I particularly like how Zibet doesn't see herself as good, but as a sinner. I thought that was a very creepy piece of psychological realism.
4) The introduction to the short story "Even the Queen", where she's like, "You want me to write about women's issues, fine, I'll write about *the* women's issue."
5) Well done takes on human nature. You have to be in awe of it, cause it's a tricky tricky stance to carry off. It's so much easier to be mean and cranky about human nature, or to be oddly over idealistic about it. To look around and go "we're people, and this is stuff people do", strikes me as really hard.
6) Doomsday Book has to be one of the best novels to use SF to tell a story, ever. Plus it is really really easy to recommend to non-SF readers. (Passage is even easier to recommend to non-SF readers, but it hadn't been published yet when I used to work at a bookstore.)
So, yeah. If I had to pick a single SF writer to be my favorite SF writer for all time, the award would definitely go to Connie Willis. She is awesome. I think the whole world already knows this, though - I mean, she's won a ton of awards. So it is a constant shock to me to talk about her work to the (non genre people world) and have them go "Who? Oh, she sounds interesting!" rather than "Of course!".
