Connie Willis |
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| Born | Constance Elaine Trimmer
(1945-12-31) December 31, 1945 (age 78)
Denver, Colorado, USA |
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| Occupation | Writer |
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| Nationality | American |
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| Education | B.A., 1967 |
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| Alma mater | Colorado State College |
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| Period | c. 1978–present |
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| Genre | Science fiction, social satire, Comic science fiction |
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| Subject | Time travel; War, especially World War II; Heroism; Courtship; Mores |
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| Literary movement | Savage Humanism |
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| Notable works | Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout/All Clear, "The Last of the Winnebagos |
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| Notable awards | Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and others |
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| Spouse | Courtney Willis |
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| Children | Cordelia Willis |
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| http://conniewillis.net |
Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis (born December 31, 1945) is an American science fiction writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and eight Nebula Awards for particular works —more "major awards" than any other writer[1]— most recently the year's "Best Novel" Hugo and Nebula Awards for Blackout/All Clear (2010).[2] She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009[3][4] and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 28th SFWA Grand Master in 2011.[5]
Several of her works feature time travel by history students at a faculty of the future University of Oxford—sometimes called the Time Travel series.[6] They are the short story "Fire Watch" (1982, also in several anthologies and the 1985 collection of the same name), the novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog (1992 and 1998), as well as the two-part novel Blackout/All Clear (2010).[6] All four won the annual Hugo Award and all but To Say Nothing of the Dog won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.[2]
Biography
Willis is a 1967 graduate of Colorado State College, now the University of Northern Colorado.[7] She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a former professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado. They have one daughter, Cordelia.
Willis's first published story was "The Secret of Santa Titicaca" in Worlds of Fantasy, Winter 1970 (December).[8] At least seven stories followed (1978–81) before her debut novel, Water Witch by Willis and Cynthia Felice, published by Ace Books in 1982.[8] After receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant that year, she left her teaching job and became a full-time writer.[9]
Scholar Gary K. Wolfe has written, "Willis, the erstwhile stand-up superstar of SF conventions – having her as your MC is like getting Billy Crystal back as host of the Oscars – and the author of some of the field's funniest stories, is a woman of considerably greater complexity and gravity than her personal popularity reflects, and for all her facility at screwball comedy knock-offs and snappy parody, she wants us to know that she's a writer of some gravity as well."[10]
Writing style
Willis tends to the comedy of manners style of writing. Her protagonists are typically beset by single-minded people pursuing illogical agendas, such as attempting to organize a bell-ringing session in the middle of a deadly epidemic (Doomsday Book), or frustrating efforts to analyze near-death experiences by putting words in the mouths of interviewees (Passage).
Other themes and stylistic devices include:
- a scientist as protagonist (the main theme of Bellwether, but also present in Uncharted Territory, Passage, and—to a lesser degree—the Fire Watch universe stories).
- an aversion to rampant political correctness (notably the over-appreciation of indigenous cultures in Uncharted Territory, anti-smoking stances in Bellwether, censorship of "addictive substances" in Remake and censorship of an English class in the short story "Ado").
- the inclusion of meticulously researched, detailed trivia related tangentially or symbolically to the narrative (fads in Bellwether, mating customs in Uncharted Territory, old movies in Remake, the Titanic disaster in Passage, famous pairs of ill-fated lovers in To Say Nothing of the Dog).
- the constant presence of trying to come to terms with grief, loss, and death; this is often attributed to her mother having died while Willis herself was still a child.[citation needed]
- "Romantic 'screwball' comedy in the manner of 1940s Hollywood movies, updated"[11]
Willis is acclaimed as a science-fiction writer, with much of her writing exploring the social sciences. She often weaves technology into her stories in order to prompt readers to question what impact it has on the world. For instance, Lincoln's Dreams plumbs not just the psychology of dreams, but also their role as indicators of disease. The story portrays a young man's unrequited love for a young woman who might or might not be experiencing reincarnation or precognition, and whose outlook verges on suicidal. Similarly Bellwether is almost exclusively concerned with human psychology.
Among other themes, Uncharted Territory contemplates the extent to which technology shapes expectations of gender; "technology" here ranges from a land rover and binoculars to Built's online "tchopping" and the pop-up holograms—even socioexozoology. Remake embraces old movies and the computer graphics revolution, as well as intellectual property, digital copyright issues, and the question of public domain.
Other Willis stories explore the so-called "hard" sciences, following in the classic science fiction tradition. "The Sidon in the Mirror" harks back to the interplanetary and interstellar romanticism of the 1930s and 1940s. "Samaritan" is another take on the theme of Heinlein's "Jerry Was a Man", while "Blued Moon" is similarly reminiscent of Heinlein's "The Year of the Jackpot".
