From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Aug 26 10:31:57 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!dtix!darwin.sura.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!ig!dont-reply-to-paths From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis Message-ID: <9208241326.AA20031@presto.ig.com> Date: 25 Aug 92 20:42:16 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Lines: 69 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper The gist of DOOMSDAY BOOK can be summed up in two sentences: "It's no fun to come down with an unknown disease in 14th Century England. It's not much better in the 20th Century." The first part may seem obvious, the second less so (though the parallels to AIDS are definitely there). One of the main things Willis does is show us that our comfortable notions about how we're protected by technology and medical advances are based as much, if not more, on wishful thinking as on hard facts. Willis does this be telling two stories in parallel: one of Kirvin, who has traveled back to 14th Century England to study it first-hand, and one of the rest of her research team left behind (ahead?) in the early 21st Century. Kirvin was sent back to 1320, well before the Black Plague burst into Europe (and hence England) in 1348. So why does she fall ill almost immediately upon arriving? And why, in spite of all her language training and her embedded translator, is she unable to understand or make herself understood to anyone around her? Back (forward?) in the future, things are not much better. Immediately after sending Kirvin back in time, the technician collapses with an unknown flu-like illness, and cannot report the exact coordinates Kirvin landed at. (There is almost always drift from the target coordinates, and Kirvin can't be retrieved unless her landing coordinates are known.) He lies delirious for days, while Kirvin is lost and more and more people in the present fall ill. Obviously there are a lot of elements of mystery, and far be it for me to ruin any of them for you. Suffice it to say this is a book about sickness and plagues and dying, and how people react to it. Many reviewers have lauded Willis for giving an accurate portrayal of a plague in a pre- Industrial, pre-germ-theory society. But to students of history, this won't be particularly new, although Willis does her usual excellent job of giving us realistic people we can believe in and care about. No, it is the parallelism that is unique here. For all our progress, Willis says, a new disease can easily bring us back to the problems of 600 years ago. Consider the Influenza Epidemic of 1917 to 1919 which killed 25,000,000--the same number as the Black Plague of 1348-1666. Yes, the world population was higher in 1918, but the Black Plague lasted over three hundred years, the Influenza Epidemic only three. (During the Influenza Epidemic, 4600 people died in one week in Philadelphia.) And millions died of the bubonic plague in India between 1921 and 1923. Even with the more advanced technology of Willis's 21st Century, all is not easy. Technology can break. People can make mistakes. Things can go wrong. And people can die. Willis even keeps the reader in the dark about the ending, not an easy task given the book's structure, but she manages to set up the situation so that more than one outcome is possible. (I hope this is sufficiently vague.) I am not entirely happy with the ending, but it's a minor quibble. I strongly recommend DOOMSDAY BOOK, for what it teaches about the reality of history (if you don't have a strong background in history), and for what it teaches about the reality of the present (even if you do). (And for all those people who think Willis writes only humorous fiction--this will change your mind.) %A Connie Willis %T Doomsday Book %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D July 1992 %O trade paperback, US$10.00 %G ISBN 0-553-35167-2 %P 445pp Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From /tmp/sf.4258 Tue Feb 1 03:22:30 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.reviews:450 alt.books.reviews:1878 rec.arts.books:72316 soc.history:29317 rec.org.sca:55525 rec.arts.sf.written:44151 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!udel!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: danny@orthanc.cs.su.oz.au (Danny) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,alt.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,soc.history,rec.org.sca,rec.arts.sf.written Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Book Review - Doomsday Book Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia Message-ID: <1993Dec19.035459.18124@cs.su.oz.au> Date: 20 Dec 93 03:00:49 GMT Lines: 60 title: Doomsday Book by: Connie Willis publisher: Hodder and Stoughton 1993 subjects: science fiction other: 650 pages, A$14.95 summary: parallel plagues in 1348 and 2054 In general I strongly dislike time-travel stories with their attendant implausiblities, but sometimes they have other qualities which redeem them. _Doomsday Book_ is set in 2054, when time travel is run of the mill but everything else is, rather implausibly, pretty much like the present. (The only real exception is a random collection of tech gadgets such as video phones and laser candles.) Kivrin, a female undergraduate history student at Oxford, is to be the first person sent back to the Middle Ages (to 1320), because - wait for it - no qualified historian is available!. Everything goes wrong with the mission (the bungling incompetence of the academics organising it is, unfortunately, quite plausible), and she is delivered instead to 1348, the year the Black Plague reached England. Meanwhile a flu epidemic has hit 2054, and Oxford is quarantined. The bulk of the book consists of parallel accounts of the effects of the two epidemics, and this is worked out much better than the time-travel setup. Despite the weaknesses in the science and the implausible 2054 Oxford, I enjoyed _Doomsday Book_ a lot. (I much prefer well-written books with lousy science to engineering manuals dressed up as novels!) I'm not sure it deserved its Hugo award (shared with _A Fire Upon the Deep_), but _Doomsday Book_ is definitely worth a read, especially if you are interested in epidemiology (used to produce a rather clever "detective problem") or medieval English history. -- %T Doomsday Book %A Connie Willis %I Hodder and Stoughton %D 1993 %O paperback, A$14.95 %G ISBN 0-450-57987-5 %P 650pp %K science fiction Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au) 19/12/93 ----------------------------------------------------------------- this review may by requested from any Internet site via $ finger 'books=Doomsday_Book%danny@orthanc.cs.su.oz.au' a list of my other book reviews may be obtained with $ finger 'books%danny@orthanc.cs.su.oz.au' and individual reviews extracted similarly $ finger 'books=Title_From_Index%danny@orthanc.cs.su.oz.au' ----------------------------------------------------------------- Comments on my reviews are always welcome. Criticism of any kind is particularly appreciated - anything from pointing out spelling mistakes to disagreement with the basic assumptions of the review. ----------------------------------------------------------------- From /tmp/sf.4258 Tue Feb 1 03:24:07 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!apple.com!amd!netcomsv!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: Connie Willis: Impossible Things Message-ID: Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1993 06:32:00 GMT Lines: 40 Connie Willis's new anthology, "Impossible Things", is preceeded by the standard editor's blurb assuring the readers that they're holding one of the best anthologies of the last couple of decades. The odd thing is, for a wonder, it's the unvarnished truth. I'm not sure why the stories work as well as they do. "Good writing", I suppose, but it seems a copout to leave it at that. Dozois describes the stories as having a 'delayed kick', a 'hidden edge', and there's something to that: Willis has a knack (exhibited in some of the stories) for giving a story an ending that casts the entire story in a different light. These aren't trick endings; they're endings that cause the emotional weight of the story to suddenly be redistributed. In "The Last of the Winnebagos", for example, the extinction of the dogs, and the changes surrounding it, don't stop being important, but somehow with the ending, the story becomes a story about the narrator, not just a story observed through the narrator's eyes. "The Last of the Winnebagos" was wasted on me. I could appreciate what she was doing without particularly enjoying it. I preferred her comic stories. Fortunately, this anthology contained some of her best, including "Even the Queen", her latest Hugo winner. Willis was saying, at Worldcon, that her neighbors think she's strange enough writing sf, without her having to explain that she just won a prize for writing a story about menstruation -- and that the advice she got from Gardner Dozois was "Tell them it's a period piece!" Some of the stories didn't work for me. "Schwartzchild Radius", for example, or "Chance". A good enough author -- which Connie Willis is -- can manipulate the reader's reactions and sympathies, but there's an element of bullying in it. Even those stories are good, though. The better stories in the collection are excellent. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope From /tmp/sf.4258 Tue Feb 1 03:34:30 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!darwin.sura.net!udel!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: Evelyn.Chimelis.Leeper@att.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: IMPOSSIBLE THINGS by Connie Willis Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9312140916.ZM8721@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> Date: 15 Dec 93 00:23:06 GMT Lines: 57 IMPOSSIBLE THINGS by Connie Willis Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-56436-6, 1994, $5.99. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper This is the new collection of Connie Willis stories. Oh, that isn't enough to explain why you should run out and buy it? How about the fact that the eleven stories here have collected seven Hugo nominations (with two wins) and five Nebula nominations (with three wins)? Still waiting? Jeez, what a demanding audience. Okay, for those of you who want hard science fiction, there's "Schwarzschild Radius." For horror fans, we have "Jack," a somewhat different look at the London Blitz. For the conspiracy theorists, there's "Winter's Tale," about who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. For those who are fed up with political correctness, try "Even the Queen" and "Ado." The former takes a somewhat non-standard approach to "women's liberation"; the latter says that at the rate we're going, "Winter's Tale" will become irrelevant. And for those who have ever attended a science fiction convention, "At the Rialto" will have a real ring of familiarity. "Chance" and "Time Out" both deal with how we look at the past and lost opportunities, and both also reflect the perspective of the "housewife," a term that Willis has often applied to herself. "In the Late Cretaceous" displays her knowledge of the world of academia (as do many of the other stories as well--the faults and foibles of our education system seem to be a recurring theme in Willis's work). And "The Last of the Winnebagos" and "Spice Pogrom" round out the line-up. If it seems that eleven stories isn't very much for 496 pages, it's because Willis writes as many novellas and novelettes as she does short stories. Indeed, last year she was nominated for the Hugo in all three categories, a unique achievement. (In 1971, Harlan Ellison was nominated in both of the TWO short fiction categories that existed then, but no one other than Willis has hit three in a year.) And Willis seems to know which length to use for which stories: her short stories never seem abrupt, nor her novellas padded. I HIGHLY recommend IMPOSSIBLE THINGS. (Her previous collection, FIREWATCH, is supposed to be re-issued as well, and I recommend that also.) %T Impossible Things %A Connie Willis %C New York %D January 1994 %I Bantam Spectra %O paperback, US$5.99 %G ISBN 0-553-56436-6 %P 496pp -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | ecl@mtgpfs1.att.com / Evelyn.Leeper@att.com From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:08:54 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.reviews:609 rec.arts.books:89461 alt.books.reviews:3630 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: ecl@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews Subject: UNCHARTED TERRITORY by Connie Willis Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 17 Jun 1994 05:37:57 GMT Organization: The Internet Lines: 49 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9406161313.ZM1333@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu UNCHARTED TERRITORY by Connie Willis Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-56294-0, July 1994, 149pp, US$3.99. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. Or, for the classically impaired, "Sometimes even good old Homer nods." [Horace] Anyone who's read my reviews knows I am a fan of Connie Willis's writing. So of course I looked forward to this, especially after hearing the first part read at Boskone last year. Alas, UNCHARTED TERRITORY did not live up to my expectations. UNCHARTED TERRITORY is another of Willis's jibes at "PC" (political correctness, not personal computers). She can do this very well (as in "Ado"), but here the jokes fall flat, at least for me. It may be that the make the novella length there had to be a bit too much padding. Willis can write well at any length, but I suspect here she had to write at novella length and the story wouldn't support it. Here her target is those who want to preserve planetary ecosystems and protect indigenous cultures from technological contamination--only here the indigenous peoples know a good thing when they see one. But around this Willis has added a romantic triangle--well, more like a pentagon, with three veteran surveyors, a new surveyor, and an alien. This part seemed unnecessary to the rest of the story. Of course, I can't be totally negative on this. It has its moments, and some of the interplay is quite funny. And after all, one of the main characters *is* named Evelyn. %A Willis, Connie %T Uncharted Territory %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D July 1994 %G ISBN 0-553-56294-0 %P 149pp %O paperback, US$3.99 -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "The Internet is already an information superhighway, except that ... it is like driving a car through a blizzard without windshield wipers or lights, and all of the road signs are written upside down and backwards."--Mike Royko (not Dave Barry!) From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Dec 12 10:35:56 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!news.hal.COM!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: ingram@u.washington.edu (Doug Ingram) Subject: Review of _Doomsday_Book_ by Connie Willis Message-ID: <3c8umq$p8f@nntp1.u.washington.edu> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 07:08:04 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 116 Doomsday Book by Connie Willis Review copyright (c) 1994 by Doug Ingram Every once in a while, I manage to overcome my general stodgy nature and venture out to the bookstore to buy a new book based solely on a hunch. This hunch is usually related to a book winning some sort of award I respect, such as the Hugo or Nebula, but sometimes I shamefully admit that something as simple as the cover art can draw me in. Given the rather drab cover of the newest version of _Doomsday_Book_, then, it must have been its award-heavy resume. I've had good luck in the past with award-winners, so what the heck? The overall plot of the book starts out promisingly enough. It is a few decades in the future in England. Historians have begun to use time travel to observe various historical periods first-hand, overcoming all the objections which I'm sure would have been raised by anyone familiar with speculative fiction dealing with time travel. Fortunately for the historians, Willis' version of time-travel has some odd rules that seem to disallow paradoxes. The way this works in the book is never clear, but it is worth suspending disbelief. A young female historian named Kivrin has volunteered to go back to the Middle Ages in England about 30 years before the arrival of the Black Plague. This expedition is about to occur over the objections of Kivrin's tutor, Mr. Dunworthy, who is worried that the actions of Kivrin's advisor, Mr. Gilchrist, are endangering Kivrin's life. This is because Gilchrist is acting as department head due to the absence of the real chairperson on vaction. As acting chair, Gilchrist plays fast and loose with the rules in order to arrange what Dunworthy thinks is a very unsafe trip for Kivrin. Despite Dunworthy's protestations, the transfer of Kivrin to the middle ages does take place. Soon, Kivrin wakes to find herself in the countryside of England in the 1300's while in the present day, the problems begin. First, the technician who oversaw the time transfer (or "drop") falls ill. Before he goes completely unconscious, he tries to tell Dunworthy that something went wrong with the drop, but Dunworthy can't determine what exactly went wrong. Soon it becomes clear that the technician is only one of the first of a great many cases of an outbreak of a mutant flu virus that creates a near-panic and quarantine conditions for a large part of England. As the first of many parallels between two times, Kivrin soon finds herself somewhat ill and eventually is caught in the middle of the outbreak of an unknown sickness herself. Fortunately, Kivrin is taken in by a small family where she befriends two small children, Agnes and Rosemund, as well as the rest of a somewhat suspicious household (many of whom don't quite know what to make of a woman found alone in the country with some odd habits). In the present, Dunworthy keeps trying to determine the problem with the drop, but the technician remains too ill and Gilchrist impedes Dunworthy at every step. And so Dunworthy and Kivrin both try to overcome the immense problems faced in each of their respective ages in order to get Kivrin home safely with her observations of life in the Middle Ages. In _Doomsday_Book_, it felt to me as if Willis were trying to write a speculative fiction version of Barbara Tuchman's famous _A_Distant_Mirror_. Willis wanted to give a vivid portrait of life in the Middle Ages and to tell a story about the problems inherent with time travel, all the while drawing dramatic parallels to the present. Unfortunately, the book fails on the plotting level and only remains modestly interesting as a historical work. The various subplots in this book are all fairly pointless (except for a few in Kivrin's time that attempt to demonstrate what life was typically like) or, in the case of events needed to drive the story, the subplots seem to plod on forever. For example, I grew very tired of the countless times Dunworthy would try to talk to the technician to find out what went wrong with the drop. By halfway through the book, Willis hasn't gotten past the maddening and repetitive stage of having the technician say "Something's wrong" over and over. The characters in the present are all fairly forgettable, if not downright annoying. As I briefly stated, the subplots taking place in Kivrin's time tend to be somewhat more interesting and at least advance the cause of the book as a historical novel. I was interested in what would happen to the various members of the family that Kivrin stayed with, much more so than any character in Dunworthy's time. Perhaps the book would have been stronger had it spent twice as much time in the past, developing the story there and the relationships some more. Many subplots simply ran out of time and/or space because so much time was spent in the present following inane details. I can see why so many people liked this book. After all, it is quite an ambitious undertaking to write a compelling SF story and a relevant and interesting historical account. Unfortunately, there are plenty of better SF stories out there, and there are better historical accounts of the Middle Ages as well. I could get a much more satisfying experience from reading _A_Distant_Mirror_ (for history) and one of many plague novels (_The_Stand_ and _The_White_Plague_ to name a couple off the top of my head). I know that Willis is a well-liked author and that this is a fairly popular book with many critics. Maybe how much you like it will depend upon just what you are looking for in a book. I just couldn't find anything here that I hadn't seen done much better in other novel. The seeds of an interesting story are here, but Willis loses her way by concentrating too much on the most uninteresting parts of her tale. It is a rare thing for me to do, but I don't recommend this novel. Doug Ingram -- ingram@u.washington.edu // "Carpe Datum." More SF reviews: http://www.astro.washington.edu/ingram/books.html %A Willis, Connie %T Doomsday Book %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-553-56273-8 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Feb 13 18:10:28 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.movies Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!news.tele.fi!uunet!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: ecl@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper) Subject: REMAKE by Connie Willis Message-ID: <9501311336.ZM9359@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: The Internet Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 22:51:36 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 83 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:722 rec.arts.books.reviews:291 rec.arts.movies:207249 REMAKE by Connie Willis Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37437, 1995, 176pp, US$11.95 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper In the future, Hollywood will be able to do even more amazing things with computer graphics than they can now. The patching up of scenes in THE CROW after Brandon Lee's death will be nothing compared to remaking BEN-HUR with Sylvester Stallone--even though Stallone is dead. Or if you prefer, you can go to the Happy Endings Theater and see a version of CASABLANCA where Victor is killed by the Nazis and Rick and Ilsa can go off together. (Well, Hollywood would probably think this was a happy ending.) But the flip side of this is that no one is making NEW movies anymore. The best an aspiring actor can hope for is to have his or her face digitally superimposed over someone else's in an already existing movie. Our first-person narrator makes a living editing old movies. His current job is to edit out all references to "AS"s (addictive substances), making this story at least a cousin to Willis's "Ado." But he has also met an aspiring dancer, one who wants to *really* dance in the movies, not just have her face digitally combined with someone else's body. Where this quest leads her and the narrator is the story of this book. (By he way, this is a novel, according to my word count estimate, rather than the novella it was described as at ConAdian--and the price is correspondingly higher than they said also.) Willis shows a real love for old movies similar to what she displayed in her short story "Miracle." Does it seem as though there are a lot of themes recycled here? Or is this also a self-referential joke on the idea of remakes? Or maybe it's just that Willis uses the constructs she is most comfortable with to tell her story. The problem, I suspect, is that readers who are not as familiar with old movies, and in particular old musicals, may not enjoy it as much as those who are. Then again, Willis's understanding of movies may not be that of others either. She seems to say that the musical died in 1965. That is, the first-person narrator claims that Michael Caine said that "the musical had kicked off in 1965" (although later it is said by someone who merely looks like Michael Caine). This implies that Willis, or Caine, or the Caine look-alike think that FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, GREASE, ALL THAT JAZZ, FAME, VICTOR/VICTORIA, A CHORUS LINE, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, or any number of recent Disney animated films aren't musicals. (And that's only talking American films. In India, *everything* is a musical. In Jaipur, I saw a musical remake of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE. After that, almost nothing that Willis imagines would surprise me in if came to pass.) I would be more inclined to say that the musical has developed; more recent musicals use the music in a very different way than older ones. Just compare CABARET with movies from the 1930s which used nightclub numbers, or FAME with 42ND STREET. There is also some sloppy editing here. A character called "Heada" (as an intentional misspelling of "Hedda") is accidentally called "Hedda" once or twice, someone should tell the proof-reader about the use of the semi-colon as the separator in lists where the items containing commas within them, and there is at least one line completely missing from the top of page 131. In spite of all these complaints, I found the book a moderately enjoyable read. I suppose I've started to expect every Willis story to be deep, insightful, and riveting, and I've forgotten that she does a good job at just telling a story as well. REMAKE serves to remind me of that, and to bring back some of the magic the movies used to have. Maybe I'll go watch CASABLANCA--in black and white, with the original ending. %A Willis, Connie %T Remake %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D January 1995 %G ISBN 0-553-37437 %P 176pp %O trade pb, US$11.95 -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place." -Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg on her visit to Auschwitz From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Mar 13 13:36:56 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!mn6.swip.net!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!tube.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!newsxfer2.itd.umich.edu!chi-news.cic.net!nntp.coast.net!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Subject: Review: BELLWETHER by Connie Willis Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Evelyn C Leeper Lines: 59 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Intelligent Agents Group X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 00:00:17 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 59 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:909 rec.arts.books.reviews:1398 BELLWETHER by Connie Willis A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1996 Evelyn C. Leeper Though Willis has been saying at conventions that her next book would be a time travel story set in the late 19th century, this is not that book. Rather, this is a story set in the present, with statistician Sandra Foster researching fads. As part of this Willis, starts each chapter with the description of a fad of the past: hula hoops, the jitterbug, diorama wigs, etc. I say that this is the present for two reasons First, there is the statement that it's Monday, October the second--which makes it either 1995 or 2000. Second, the fads described as being current (Power Rangers, the Lion King, and angels) are active now, but probably will have been supplanted by the year 2000. In fact, this isn't really a science fiction novel at all, but more in line with Willis's other "social satires." (Many people have said that her "In the Late Cretaceous" is not science fiction either.) One thing that adds to the realism in BELLWETHER is Willis's description of how the corporate culture works, even in hi-tech environments. She ranks with Scott Adams (creator of the "Dilbert" comic strip) in capturing the insanity of many corporate philosophies. For example, in a brain-storming session on objectives for "Guided Resource Intuition Management," one person lists: 1. Optimize potential. 2. Facilitate empowerment. 3. Implement visioning. 4. Strategize priorities. 5. Augment core structures. When asked by Foster how she did that so fast, she replies that those were what she always wrote down. I figure that this list alone will save me hours at work. The problem with BELLWETHER is that while individual parts are funny and pointed, the whole doesn't seem to go anywhere. Willis writes very good novellas, and for me this might have been better at that length. As it is, it seems drawn out--drawn out, mind you, not padded. (They're not the same thing.) I like the writing, and I like the humor, and maybe I'm looking for more point than a short humorous novel is supposed to have. But when I finished BELLWETHER I felt vaguely dissatisfied. %T Bellwether %A Connie Willis %C New York %D March 1996 %I Bantam Spectra %O trade paperback, US$11.95 %G ISBN 0-553-37562-8 %P 256pp -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | eleeper@lucent.com <==NOTE NEW ADDRESS "People are worried about online porn on the Internet. It's the endless `Who's better--Kirk or Picard?' threads that *should* scare them." -- Jim Mullen, _Entertainment Weekly_ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Mar 25 15:33:48 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!news.sgi.com!uhog.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: hewett@flinthills.com (Kevin B. Hewett) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Subject: A review of _Promised Land_ by Connie Willis and Cyntia Felice Date: 14 Mar 1997 01:13:32 GMT Organization: KNOWLEDGE IS A TWO-EDGED SWORD Lines: 53 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1232 rec.arts.books.reviews:2365 _Promised Land_ by Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice A review by Kevin B. Hewett copyright 1997 This novel by the coauthors of _Light Raid_ and _Water Witch_ is about coming of age and the shattering of childhood's myths and preconceptions for the reality of adult life. It is also about the rediscovery of forgotten delights and the finding of adult love and happiness. The novel begins with the return of Delanna Milleflores to her home planet of Keramos upon the death of her mother. She has been away off planet at an exclusive boarding school for the previous 15 years since she was 5 years old. She plans to be home for only a day, long enough to settle her mother's affairs and sell the family farm. Unfortunately, her planet's archaic laws and her late father's will preclude her from selling the farm. Indeed, by those laws she finds herself already married to her family's nearest neighbor and farming partner. During the course of her journey out to the farm, and the reality of life on a frontier, agricultural world she slowly begins to realize that everything her mother wrote to her about life on Keramos was either false or twisted beyond recognition. As the myths are shown to be wrong and the truth emerges, Delanna's outlook on life is altered. After overcoming her humiliating introduction to life on Keramos during the five thousand mile journey to the farm, she begins to enjoy the flora and fauna of her world. Later, she appreciates the continuous gossip of people living on farms separated by hundreds of miles who communicate via ham radio. Her final change is when she realizes that her "husband" is actually worthy of her love and help. The plot of this intricate novel is complex with many twists and turns. The characters, especially Delanna and her "husband" Sonny, are well rounded and complete with their own faults and failings. Throughout the novel, we watch as the characters grow and change their outlook on life. Their interaction with each other, as well as with the local flora and fauna make this an enjoyable novel to read. Indeed, one turns each page in anticipation of the next encounter of Delanna with her home world's weather, animals, plants, or the members of the community of which she unwillingly finds herself a part. %A Willis, Connie and Cynthia Felice %T Promised Land %I Ace %C New York %D February 1997 %G ISBN 0-441-00405-9 %P 362 pp %O hardcover, US$21.95 Kevin B. Hewett | Dept. of Chemistry | KNOWLEDGE Kansas State University | IS A Manhattan, Kansas | TWO-EDGED hewett@flinthills.com | SWORD hewett@ksu.edu | From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Apr 15 13:40:43 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!uninett.no!sn.no!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!EU.net!enews.sgi.com!news.corp.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!uhog.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "Uncharted Territory" by Connie Willis Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 08 Apr 1997 18:15:11 GMT Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists Lines: 58 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1251 "Uncharted Territory" by Connie Willis A Postview, copyright 1997 p-m agapow A collection of a novella and two short stories: "Uncharted Territory" - Finn and Carson are two famous and daring explorers, charged with charting a new planet. But the reality is somewhat different, with them squabbling, hamstrung with a eager but ignorant new partner, a soap opera being made of their life, technology smugglers and an obsessive non-interference policy. "Fire Watch" - a time traveller arrives in London during the Blitz, to save St Paul's from incendiary bombs and saboteurs. "Even the Queen" - in an age where women routinely refrain from menstruation, an harassed judge struggles with family politics after her daughter joins a regressive cult. Connie Willis is always enjoyable, if now perhaps a little predictable. If you've read "At the Rialto" or "Remake" or, to a lesser extent "The Doomsday Book," then "Uncharted Territory" will feel very familiar. This is not to say that it is derivative or a rehash of her previous work, but that her style is fairly established. There a lot of good things about her style: a quiet and dry humour, a dab hand at characterisation and an honesty as well. The last being illustrated in the title story by natives trying to sell their own planet out from under their own feet, thanks to the "hands-off" exploring power. But there is a sense that Willis tells her stories for the twist in the tail, the big hook or joke or shaggy dog line at the end. Where the story is extended, as the title novella is, the strain starts to show. "Uncharted Territory" isn't a bad story, but is a little long for the destination it finally arrives at. Those looking for hard science will also be a little disappointed, as they will in any Willis work. Technology is just a background detail to her and the characters and the world more important ingredients. Actually the entire novella could be short-circuited by use of modern satellite surveying techniques, but so what. Far shorter and much punchier is "Fire Watch," featuring some gloomy and realistic bombing raid scenes. Shorter again and giving even more bang- for-buck is "Even the Queen," where dialogue and details are tossed rapidly past the reader. One ends up with the weird situation where the centre piece of the collection is outshone by the successively shorter and more auxiliary pieces. Perhaps a little slight, perhaps a little overlong, "Uncharted Territory" is still great fun. Enjoy it guiltlessly over your next holiday. [***/interesting] and a Howard Hawks comedy on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Connie Willis %B Uncharted Territory %I Hodder and Stoughton %C London %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-450-61748-3 %P 218pp %O paperback, Aus$12.95 paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/] "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire." From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Apr 17 14:23:52 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!linkoping.trab.se!malmo.trab.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!Cabal.CESspool!bofh.vszbr.cz!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!18.24.4.11!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Subject: FIRE WATCH by Connie Willis Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 09 Apr 1998 13:54:33 -0400 Organization: none Lines: 59 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1851 rec.arts.books.reviews:2471 FIRE WATCH by Connie Willis Bantam, ISBN 0-553-26045-6, 1998, 336pp, $6.50 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper The collection, first published in 1985 and long out of print, contains twelve stories--eleven reprints and one story original to this volume. The fact that not only is a publisher willing to publish a single-author collection, but to *reprint* one that was published thirteen years ago, is an indication of Willis's stature in the field. Nominated for 17 Hugo awards and 11 Nebula awards, and the winner of six Hugos (for DOOMSDAY BOOK, "Fire Watch," "The Last of the Winnebagos," "Even the Queen," "Death on the Nile," and "The Soul Selects Her Own Society ...") and six Nebulas (DOOMSDAY BOOK, "Fire Watch," "A Letter From the Clearys," "The Last of the Winnebagos," "At the Rialto," and "Even the Queen"), Willis has opportunities other authors just dream of. The Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning "Fire Watch" is the story of one history student's time travel project to the London Blitz. Well-deserving of its awards, it is doubtless the best story in the book, and in many ways a precursor to Willis's DOOMSDAY BOOK and TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG. But other stories are worthy of note also. "Lost and Found" and "Daisy, in the Sun" are both strange apocalyptic tales, though in very different ways. "All My Darling Daughters" (the one new story) is a bizarre little piece--it's easy to see why this had difficulty finding a market, but it has become a classic. "The Sidon in the Mirror" was also nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula and its alien feel is an interesting juxtaposition to the "just plain folks" feel of most of Willis's other works. There is, of course, some fluff of the sort Willis has become known for: "The Father of the Bride," "And Come from Miles Around," "Mail-Order Clone," and "Blued Moon." The last, in particular, is highly recommended; it has some of the funniest scenes I've seen in print, and did garner a Hugo nomination. "Samaritan" covers some fairly old ground, though the characters do hold the reader's interest through it. I thought, though, that "Service for the Burial of the Dead" and "A Letter from the Clearys" were just average. In 1985, I said that the $14.95 the trade paperback would cost seemed a bit steep and people might want to wait for a paperback edition. Since the paperback edition was thirteen years in coming, this was probably bad advice, even if it is somewhat cheaper now. Willis's more recent works can be found in the 1994 collection IMPOSSIBLE THINGS, also from Bantam and even still in print (ISBN 0-553-56436-6, $6.50). The eleven stories in it share seven Hugo nominations (with two wins) and five Nebula nominations (with three wins). At the time it came out, the re-issue of FIRE WATCH was promised, but that took four years. %T Fire Watch %A Connie Willis %C New York %D May 1998 %I Bantam %O paperback, US$6.50 %G ISBN 0-553-26045-6 %P 336pp Evelyn C. Leeper | eleeper@lucent.com +1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824 "What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane?" "I'm not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of beetles." From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 18 13:48:52 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: rrhorton@concentric.net (Rich Horton) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 17 May 1998 15:36:03 -0400 Organization: Concentric Internet Services Lines: 92 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: kangaroo.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1904 To Say Nothing of the Dog, By Connie Willis Bantam, 1998, $23.95 ISBN: 0553099957 Review Copyright 1998 Rich Horton _To Say Nothing of the Dog_ is one of Connie Willis' time travel stories, sharing a milieu with her award-winning novelette "Fire Watch" and her award-winning novel _Doomsday Book_. I'm very fond of both previous stories. _Doomsday Book_, however, was marred to some extent by a certain mismatch of tone between the farcical events of the 21st century setting from which her time travelers set out and the tragic events of the 14th century into which her protagonist travels. In addition, some major plot points of _Doomsday Book_ were implausible in the extreme. For me, the emotional power of the 14th story, and the character of Father Roche, were sufficient strong points to overcome my discomfort with some of the clunky bits. This current novel almost seems a response to some criticisms of _Doomsday Book_. If the former book was primarily a tragic story of the Plague, this book is a screwball comedy set in the time of Jerome K. Jerome's classic (and highly recommended) late Victorian comedy, _Three Men in a Boat_. Indeed, the title of this book is the subtitle of Jerome's. This is the second screwball comedy about time travel in two years, after John Kessel's _Corrupting Dr. Nice_ (1997). Willis seems to be saying, if this is a screwball comedy, darn it, I can have implausible plot points, and outrageous coincidences, and my tone can be as goofy as I want. But a funny thing (so to speak) happened on the way to Coventry, and this novel turns out to have a serious and moving center to it after all, albeit in the context of a generally very funny book. What's more, Willis' point derives nicely from her story's outrageous coincidences, almost too overtly so, as if the book points at its faults and says "I meant it that way". Which brings me to my misgivings about a novel that I ended up liking quite a bit. The whole machinery of the plot is set in motion by some generally unbelievable actions. The protagonist and narrator, Ned Henry, a 30ish "historian" in 2057, has been trying to get to Coventry Cathedral just prior to the pivotal bombing in 1940, which destroyed the Cathedral but which may have indirectly turned the Battle of Britain against Hitler. He wants to rescue the Bishop's Bird Stump, a hideous item which the historians (read time travelers) need to help convincingly furnish a rebuilt Cathedral. For plot purposes Willis invents a syndrome she calls "time lag," which happens when people time travel too often, and results in confusion, difficulty hearing, excess emotionalism, and such like. The only cure is rest, and Henry's superior, Mr. Dunworthy of _Doomsday Book_, decides the only place he can rest is in the past, out of reach of the fearsome Lady Schrapnell. Unfortunately, Dunworthy decides to have Ned complete one little tiny task for him in the past, returning an anachronistic item from 1888 to it's proper time, before resting. But Ned is so time-lagged he doesn't quite realize what it is he needs to return, and there isn't enough time to properly brief him. All these machinations strain credibility, really even beyond the rather loose requirements of a screwball comedy. Moreover, the whole plot centers about the tendency of the structure of Time to resist alteration, which necessarily requires the reader to think about the mechanics of Willis' time travel setup. Unfortunately, in my opinion this setup doesn't really stand up well to being thought about too carefully. At least for the first few chapters, I was simultaneously entertained by the comic goings on, which are prime Connie Willis in her madcap mode, and irritated by the blatant plot manipulation. However, after a bit I calmed down and accepted the premise as given, and I quite enjoyed the story. I won't detail the rest of the plot, which is quite complicated, though in the end nothing much is really accomplished, which becomes part of the point. We are treated to a brief river journey, an homage to the trip which makes up the action of Jerome's novel. Indeed Willis cannot resist having her characters encounter Jerome and his friends Harris and George, to say nothing of their dog, Montmorency, which I found a bit over-indulgent of her. We are also treated to a thematically central and also quite funny ongoing rant by an Oxford Don on the subject of the Great Man theory of History vs. his opponent's belief in Natural Forces, to the origination of the jumble sale, several nice love stories, and lots more. As I've said, though I have reservations, I ended up really enjoying this book. At the surface level there is the shall I say typical good fun of Connie Willis in her screwball mode. Beyond this, the book engages in some Sfnal dialogue with earlier SF such as Asimov's _The End of Eternity_. And, finally, it all comes together to mean something, and I was quite moved by the final metaphors, which touch on the importance of details to history, and on the worth of grand indulgences like cathedrals. %A Connie Willis %T To Say Nothing of the Dog %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D January 1998 %P 434 pp (SFBC ed.) %G 0-553-09996-7 %O HC, US $23.95 -- Rich Horton Homepage: www.sff.net/people/richard.horton From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Feb 11 16:26:03 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Mariann T. Woodward" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 07 Feb 1999 18:00:15 -0500 Organization: Beat That! Creations Lines: 93 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2258 To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis Review Copyright 1999 Mariann T. Woodward Time travel is one of those delicate concepts that we all like to explore but, since we have no realistic or rational frame of reference beyond the theoretical, the time travel story can fall flat on its face. Connie Willis made an art of the time travel story, first with her award-winning novel, The Doomsday Book (1992), and now with this one. In Willis' latest novel, To Say Nothing of the Dog, the consequences of time travel is explored in three significant time periods: Victorian England, the 1940s during the Nazi blitzkrieg of WWII, and the twenty- first century where Lady Shrapnel (the name itself is extremely accurate as this character's voice is piercing) is planning the reconstruction down to the smallest detail of Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a German bombing raid. Ned Henry is assigned to the task of locating the bishop's bird stump, a nicknamed vase of horrendous design. Because Lady Shrapnel wants everything perfect down to the smallest detail, Ned must find out what happened to this item before the cathedral's consecration. Thus begins his adventure. After fourteen "drops" into the 1940s in search of the bishop's bird stump, Ned is exhausted and suffering from severe time lag. He cannot go on, but he and his supervisors know that if he attempts to rest in their now, Lady Shrapnel will only find him and insist he continue his search. So he is sent back to the Victorian era, barely prepped on the culture, times, history, and customs, with a secondary task in addition to his doctor-ordered rest: repair the incongruency in the slipstream or else the entire world as he knows it will collapse. Quite the task for a man who's supposed to be resting, eh? Along the way, he meets a fish-obsessed professor, a spoiled brat (well, actually several spoiled brats; must be the culture), a butler with a tendency to read despite his mistress's dislike (of course, she is a woman who also believes in spirituals and mediums, but that's another story), a nearly drowned cat named Princess Arajumand, and the love of his life, Verity Kindle, another time traveling visitor in search of the bishop's bird stump. Verity is also the same individual who caused the whole problem in the first place by bringing something forward in time when she wasn't supposed to. The time travel plot in To Say Nothing of the Dog is flawless. The incongruity causes numerous slippages in the time continuum, and even the slightest misstep causes considerable harm for the future. While Lady Coventry pushes for her Cathedral to be finished, Ned and Verity simultaneous attempt to complete their task and repair what went wrong. I found myself trying to figure out the mystery along with Ned and Verity, stumbling as they did when ideas collapsed and breathing a sigh of relief when a step in the right direction was taken. The overall results, regardless of the situation, were hilarious, to say the least. Willis has a sharp eye for detail for Victorian society and customs; I learned much about the upper class in this book, and it never once felt like a history lesson. As Ned learned how to deal with his situation, I learned a little bit, too. It also helped that Willis has a terribly wicked sense of humor. Subtle and cutting, the jabs at all of those quirky customs within Victorian society sparked frequent giggles from me. Ned's comments on his situation, his companions, and his frustrations, even though they were terribly serious under the circumstances, still prompted a good laugh. I found myself grinning even when Ned was in his own time as well. The title of the book comes from a line in Jerome K. Jerome's 1888 Three Men In A Boat, a selection from Victorian vaudeville humor, and it's entirely appropriate in a two-fold manner. Willis' style is clearly reminiscent of the wry, occasionally sarcastic, humor of the period. And, of course, Ned has much to say about Cyril, the English bulldog he finds as his companion, with as much personality as any of the human characters in the book. I thoroughly enjoyed every page of To Say Nothing of the Dog. The cover is now torn from accompanying me to work, to school, and the like, but it's been patched up to last for many readings to come. As usual with a book I'm really enjoying, I found myself staying up just a few more minutes past bedtime so I could read a just a few more pages. It's a book I'll be keeping in my collection, and although Willis has already won six Nebula and six Hugo Awards for her work, she is most definitely an author to watch! Grade: A %T To Say Nothing of the Dog %A Connie Willis %I Bantam Books %D 1998 %G ISBN 055357-5384 %O $6.50 (paperback) ** remove REMOVE from e-mail addy to reply ** For more reviews, please visit my home page: http://members.aol.com/deerskin/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 24 16:11:57 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!washdc3-snf1!news.gtei.net!news.ums.edu!haven.umd.edu!hecate.umd.edu!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Aaron M. Renn" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 13 Aug 1999 12:09:19 -0400 Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Lines: 51 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2428 To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis Review Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: I Hated It To be blunt, I thought it sucked out loud. This is the first novel in years that I could not bring myself to finish. Had it been shorter I would have slogged through it. But after 150 pages of misery I just couldn't bear the thought of 350 more. This is ostensibly a humorous time travel romp through Victorian England. Something from the past has been brought forward to the 21st century, disturbing the time stream. Intrepid time traveller Ned Henry was sent back to make things right, and lands squarely in the middle of absurdity gone ballistic. I didn't laugh even once. The whole thing reminded me of an old Mad Magazine parody of Shakespeare, though with the difference that if this had really been Mad, I would have been rolling on the floor grasping my stomach in pain from laughing so hard. Alas, I found myself nodding off instead. The title is taken from the book "Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog)" by a person with the unlikely name of Jerome K. Jerome. Willis beats us over the head with quotes from it and references to it. Supposedly her book also is littered with allusions to numerous other 19th century works, but since I'm just a poor white boy from Laconia, Indiana, I haven't read any of them and so miss the joke. Even if I got it all though, I suspect I'd still find this book terminally dull. To be fair, it is inevitable with a work of humor that some people just aren't going to get it, and even if they do might not find it funny. I'd sure hate to live in a world where everyone had the same sense of humor. In this case, I appear to be part of that minority (a minority of one so far as I can tell) that just didn't connect with Willis on this one. But I promised myself when I started writing these reviews that I'd call 'em like I saw 'em, and I have to put To Say Nothing of the Dog on my to be avoided at all costs list. This books is nominated for a Hugo this year. Needless to say I didn't vote for it. %A Willis, Connie %T To Say Nothing of the Dog %I Bantam %D 1998-12 (original publication 1998-01) %G ISBN 0-553-57538-4 %P 493 pp. %0 mass market paperback, US$6.50 Reviewed on 1999-08-09 -- Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 2 12:33:52 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!howland.erols.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Subject: Review: "Bellwether" by Connie Willis Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 19:40:43 EST From: Anoop Sarkar Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Message-ID: Organization: Software Agents Group X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Lines: 73 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 943899536 267 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2505 Bellwether by Connie Willis Review Copyright 1999 Anoop Sarkar I have read a few short stories by Connie Willis -- "At the Rialto" was one excellent example -- but I was unsure of picking up a novel by her since I don't usually have the patience for long time travel or alternative history plots which seem to be the themes behind her most popular novels. So it was with some trepidation that I accepted a friend's recommendation and started on "Bellwether." I'm glad that I did: this was one of those novels that reads so easily that I could finish it in one sitting. The setting is not futuristic but a very commonplace 1996 research lab. Sandra Foster studies fads and trends obsessively, trying to find out why certain activities with `low ability thresholds' or merchandising catch on for a brief period and then die out. Her life, and indeed the whole plot of this book, revolves around acquiring funding for her research. Like most researchers, the funding bureaucracy takes up 90% of her time. She even does research on getting funding to do research. A chance encounter with a fellow researcher in her lab who recently lost his funding for the study of chaos theory leads her closer to a scientific theory of fads. But can she retain her funding or her sanity before she makes her final discovery? Like all caricatures, this book overstates its case about the contribution of pure chance to scientific breakthroughs. While it contains an impressive collection of cases where a new scientific discovery happened simply because of an accident; a vast consipiracy in a chaotic system, this is presented as the only `true' kind of breakthrough. But this is a minor quibble. Connie Willis inserts the most fascinating collection of fads and accidental scientific breakthroughs. Some of these should be familiar to everyone who has read `inspirational' science books for kids. In fact, the `Bellwether' theory as it is developed in the book has more to do with writing a novel than predictions in the real world. But the theory as implemented here does result in a wonderful story about scientific speculation and research. Good hard-sf in my book. A further tour-de-force is that each chapter (there are about 50 of them) starts with a description of a different short-lived fad from time periods ranging from the 14th to the late 20th century. One of my favorite fads from the book: >> mah-jongg (1922-24) -- American game fad inspired by the ancient Chinese tiles game. As played by Americans, it was a sort of cross between rummy and dominoes involving building walls and then breaking them down, and `catching the moon from the bottom of the sea.' There were enthusiastic calls of `Pung!' and `Chow!' and much clattering of ivory tiles. Players dressed up in Oriental robes (sometimes, if the players were unclear on the concept of China, these were Japanese kimonos) and served tea. Although superseded by the crossword puzzle craze and contract bridge, mah-jongg continued to be popular among Jewish matrons until the 1960s. << Chaos theory, the main subject of this book, was also an emerging fad in the scientific community around 1996, when this book was published. I remember taking a course on Recursion Theory in 1996 taught by a brilliant professor of mathematical logic, and a young student raising his hand in the first class asking impetuously whether the course would cover any chaos theory. The professor blinked twice and answered in the negative silently cursing to himself, I'm sure, about fads. Reviewed: 1999/11/24 Anoop Sarkar http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~anoop/ %A Connie Willis %T Bellwether %I Bantam Spectra Book %D 1996 %G ISBN: 0553375628 (pb) %P 247 %K science-fiction