Connie Willis

The io9 Book Club is in session! Let’s talk about Connie Willis’ Blackout and All Clear

Welcome to the monthly meeting of the io9 Book Club. This month we read Connie Willis’ linked novels, Blackout and All Clear. Jump into comments to get started talking about them! For those unfamiliar with the io9 book club, here’s how it works: You read the book. We create a special book club post on…

Book Club Reminder: Read Connie Willis’ “Blackout” and “All Clear” for 1/25

We took a hiatus for the holidays, so we’re doing a mega-read for late January: We’ll be tackling Connie Willis’ Blackout and All Clear (her two-book time travel novel). What is this io9 book club, you ask? For those unfamiliar with the io9 book club, here’s how it works: You read the book. We create…

The troubles with time travel in Connie Willis’ All Clear

The second half of Connie Willis’ World War II epic, All Clear, concludes the adventures of four time-traveling historians trapped in Blitz-era London. The historical detail is fabulous, but the time travel not so much. All Clear concludes Willis’ epic war adventure that began with Blackout. It is not a standalone novel by any means,…

What are the best SF novels published by women in the past 10 years?

Can you name the 10 greatest science fiction novels by women authors published in the past decade? That’s a meme that’s been making the rounds, in response to a perceived increase in the marginalization of women in SF. The discussion started a week and a half ago or so, when Clarke Award winner Tricia Sullivan…

Time-Traveling Historians and Resurrected Concubines in October’s books!

October brings several long-awaited treats to your bookshelf, including a new Culture novel, the sequel to Connie Willis’ Blackout, and Scott Westerfeld’s Behemoth. Plus spying Victorian streetwalkers and Miles Vorkosigan! Here are the October releases you can’t skip. Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse) The sequel to Leviathan follows Deryn (a girl pretending to be a…

The ultimate guide to October’s science fiction awesomeness!

October is a science fiction thrill ride, and here’s your survival manual. The io9 calendar for October includes the returns of Caprica and Sanctuary, the launch of The Walking Dead, and Iain M. Banks’ new Culture novel. Plus conventions galore! As always, you can download the io9 calendar as a printable PDF here. And if…

Connie Willis’ Next Story: A Robot Who Wants To Be A Rockette

You might think you generate a lot of scrap-paper, but you’re nowhere near as scribble-prolific as Blackout author Connie Willis. She just donated 36 containers, with 128,000 pieces of paper, to a university. And they may soon be online. Willis has donated all of her papers to the University of Northern Colorado, in her hometown…

Time Travel Back To The London Blitz In Connie Willis’ New Novel “Blackout”

Famed SF author Connie Willis‘ first novel in five years, Blackout, returns to a scenario she’s explored before: Time-traveling scholars find themselves changing historical events they’re only supposed to observe. This sprawling novel veers between historical travelogue and futuristic thriller. One of Willis’ strengths as an author is her attention to detail, both in terms…

Connie Willis Explains How Science Fiction Came Back From Its Near-Death Experience

Connie Willis talks to Publishers Weekly about her forthcoming time-travel duology, Blackout/All-Clear. And she explains that when she started writing SF, 30 years ago, she was warned she’d come too late to a dying genre. Says Willis: At my very first writer’s conference, George R.R. Martin said to me, “It’s a pity you’re getting into…

Don’t Ask The Wall Street Journal How To Wean Your Kids Off Reading Science Fiction

Somebody wrote to the Wall Street Journal’s book advice column to ask how you go about convincing your 13-year-old nephew to stop reading science fiction. Thank goodness the WSJ’s in-house book nerd was smart enough to say: You don’t. Be glad that when you were a teenager, you didn’t have an aunt like the person…

What’s The Difference Between Story And Plot?

People always say the story is the most important thing in good science fiction. But excessively “plot-driven” science fiction is dismissed as mindless or worse. What’s the difference between story and plot anyway? Are “plot” and “story” just two different ways of saying the same thing? They’re both about a sequence of events that starts…

Author Connie Willis has a fantastic interview in the Rocky Mountain News today, where she talks about her influences (including Robert Heinlein) and what it’s like to be famous yet not a household name. She also has some thoughts about why science fiction authors are reactionary and obsessed with the past, and why she’s pessimistic…

All Locus Awards Voters Are Not Created Equal

Remember how we called the Locus Awards “possibly the most democratic” of the science fiction awards? Well, uh, never mind. The Locus Awards changed their rules after everyone had already voted, making Locus Magazine subscriber votes count twice as much as other votes, to deny Cory Doctorow the win for best short-story collection after his…

William Gibson And Rod Serling, Together At Last

Spook Country author William Gibson and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling will be turned into life-size animatronic statues, which at some point will gain sentience and battle to the death. At least, that’ll be the case if the Science Fiction Hall Of Fame is as animatronic-happy as the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame, which it really…