Connie Willis

[Kathy Li]

I'm going to a signing tomorrow night for Blackout. I have been waiting for this book longer than I been waiting for AWoM. Seriously. It's been over 8 years since Passage (Willis's last novel). There's only one little hitch. The wait's still not over. The book got so big it's been split into two volumes. We get Blackout now, and All Clear in the autumn.

Did I mention Connie Willis shares an editor with George R.R. Martin?

Anyway, if you haven't read Connie Willis, I highly recommend her books. I love them to pieces, most particularly the ones with Mr. Dunworthy and the time-traveling Oxford History Department.

She writes two kinds of books: one that are incredibly funny, and ones that are rip-your-guts-out good. A lot of her books involve puzzles that sort of coalesce and snap into shape at the end. She's an amazing writer, and iirc, has more Hugos and Nebulas than anybody else.

[Nights Mistress]

On the upside, two Connie Willis books!

But on the downside, if it's anything like The Doomsday Book, it will cut off just when we desperately are terrified for the characters' continued survival.

Eviiiiil

[Birdhead]

I read my first Connie Willis - which I'm pretty sure I picked up remembering how highly you write of her, Kathy - just this year. It was Uncharted Territory, which the Amazon reviews indicate is not one that most readers think highly of in comparison to her other works. On the other hand, there are one or two comments in the reviews which convince me that the reviewer just did. not. get. it, for example and don't highlight this text if you haven't read this book, I REALLY MEAN IT, the review which complained that it was soooo badly written because they didn't realise that the POV character was a woman until half-way through the book. Um, really? And it doesn't occur to you that maybe you weren't supposed to figure it out? Like, maybe, that was the whole point? You moron? At any rate, I very much enjoyed it. I thought it was a thoroughly funny satire, with several laugh-out-loud moments, of an old-fashioned type of SF (think, say, Powell and Donovan of Asimov's Robot short stories), along with a reasonably thoughtful treatment of the blatant colonialism/imperialism that is generally involved in SF from all periods, while simultaeously reading like a fun and not at all dreary SF novel in its own right. Willis promptly moved - well, not to the top of my list, because I really shouldn't buy any more books til I read the five or six that are at the top of my list at the moment, and I really want to buy more books SOON (new DD, Diana Wynne Jones, Megan Whalen Turner, and Karen Healey's debut this year! In fact, all of those by the end of April, so it's going to be a busy few months for excited book-buying)... at any rate, Willis is definitely close to the top of my list!

[Kathy Li]

Public libraries are good good things. If you liked Uncharted Territory, a lot of her other books are going to blow your mind.

BTW, two pics from tonight's signing. I have to remember not to crack open the book until the weekend. The last time I thought I'd "just start" a Connie Willis, I ended up reading all. night. long. I was going to stop around 2:00am. Then 3:00am. But then I hit That Bit in Passage, and that's all she wrote. There was no way I was stopping until the whole book was done. Even better, I might do as she suggested and simply wait until vol. 2 is also in hand. Given how deadly her cliffhangers can be...

[Kathy Li]

I actually managed to hold off reading Blackout until All Clear was released. I'm so glad I did.

So, I'm going to the Connie Willis signing for All Clear the second half of Blackout on Thursday. If anybody has any questions, let me know. I have to say the books kept me up all night. I slammed back all 1100 pages of both books in a day and a half. And it was worth it.

The signing tour schedule, btw, is here. She started today in Denver (closest to her home town), then it's a city a day for the rest of the week: Seattle, Portland, San Diego, and Phoenix. Then on November 13, Fort Collins CO. And on Nov. 28 Albuquerque, NM.

If you live far far away from these cities, then the best I can do is send you to the Tattered Cover's Authors on Tour Live website, where they podcasted her signing for Blackout. BTW, Blackout is now in trade paper.

[Kathy Li]

meteorite, this one's for you... !

Turns out the day after she signed in San Diego, she was in Arizona. And the person who interviewed her for that signing was Laurie R. King. Happiness. The video's a bit annoying in parts; there are idiot ads, the mikes go wrong, the camera person has to "add interest" by moving the camera at all the wrong times, and at one point someone turns on a vacuum cleaner so you can't hear a word being said. But it's still worth viewing if you have the hour and ten minutes to spend.