Connie Willis

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Connie Willis at WonderCon 2017

Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis (* 31 December 1945 in Denver ) is an American science fiction - writer . It has won numerous prizes including eleven Hugo Awards and eight Nebula Awards . She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband, a physics professor , and has one daughter.

Themes and style

Willis is known for her easily accessible language and lovable characters. Time travel and a group of historians in the Oxford of the future play a role in several of her works . These include the Hugo Award-winning novels The Years of the Black Death , The Colors of Time and the two-volume novel Blackout / All Clear , as well as the story Brandwache , which is contained in the collection of stories of the same name. Similar to Neal Stephenson , Willis' works often cannot be clearly assigned to a genre . The stories of their time travel universe are clearly science fiction; in other works such as the novella Bellwether or the novel Passage , science fiction elements can only be identified in rudiments.

She names Robert A. Heinlein as her greatest influence , whom she appreciates for his humor, his down-to-earth approach to the future and his clever actions. The writing style of Connie Willis is based on the comedy of manners (moral comedy). There are clear influences from PG Wodehouse , so it might surprise some readers that Connie Willis is not English. The main characters of their stories are typically harassed by annoying opponents who purposefully pursue illogical plans, such as trying to ring a bell in the middle of a deadly epidemic ( The Years of the Black Death ), or making research into near-death experiences more difficult by making the respondents more difficult Put words in your mouth ( passage ). Administrative employees without a backbone and crank are an integral part of the staff. In contrast, the main characters and their allies are strong-willed and carefully drawn characters, who can take on their tormentors all the better.

Other motifs and stylistic tools include:

  • Scientists who do real science as main characters (the leitmotif of Bellwether , but also present in Uncharted Territory and Passage , less pronounced in the stories of the time travel universe);
  • an aversion to rampant political correctness (especially the overrating of indigenous cultures in Uncharted Territory or attitudes towards smoking in Bellwether );
  • the inclusion of meticulously researched, detailed insignificance that touch the narrative or have a symbolic relationship to it (fashions in Bellwether , mating customs in Uncharted Territory , old films in Remake , the Titanic and other disasters in Passage ).

Though hailed as a science fiction writer, Connie Willis' stories may disappoint readers who expect typical science fiction themes and resolutions. This is especially true of Lincoln's Dreams , a story of unrequited love for a woman who may experience reincarnation or precognition , and whose perspective borders on suicidal. Similarly, Bellwether is almost entirely concerned with psychology, and Passage only suggests a real basis for the phenomenon of near-death experiences. The narrative style, however, can be perceived as very attractive.

bibliography

Berserk

(with Poul Anderson , Edward Bryant , Stephen R. Donaldson , Larry Niven , Fred Saberhagen and Roger Zelazny )

  • Berserker Base: A Collaberative Novel (Volume 6), 1984.

Oxford Time Travel

In this novel, the author looks at the outbreak of a deadly epidemic in the future and the outbreak of the plague in the Middle Ages. It consistently shows the consequences caused by the different possibilities of medicine, which makes the description of the events at the time of the plague a shocking document.
For the reconstruction of Coventry Cathedral, which Lady Shrapnel is running in honor of her ancestor, the network is used, a device for time travel. Among other things, one tries to get "the bishop's bird bath" again and a crowd of historians is driven into the Victorian era by numerous time leaps. Overwork and time sickness create entanglements and paradoxes. The original title of the novel is a reference to Jerome K. Jerome's book Three Men in a Boat .
Historians travel to different areas of the Second World War in London around 1940-1945 and to Pearl Harbor in 1941. Some of the historians cannot initially return to the future of Oxford in 2060. Gradually changes in history made by them appear. The two novels were awarded the Nebula Award for Best Novel 2010 and the Hugo Award 2011 as the duology Blackout / All Clear .

Single novels

  • The water witch. 1984, ISBN 3-426-05786-7 , Water Witch. 1982. (with Cynthia Felice )
  • Lincoln's dreams. 1992, ISBN 3-453-05401-6 , Lincoln's Dreams. 1987.
  • Light raid. 1989. (with Cynthia Felice)
  • Distress call. 1991.
  • Uncharted Territory. 1994.
  • Remake. 1994.
  • Bellwether. 1996.
  • Promised Land. 1997. (with Cynthia Felice)
  • Passage. 2001.
  • THERE. 2007.
  • All seated on the ground. 2007.
  • All About Emily. 2011.

Short story collections

  • Fire watch. 1987, ISBN 3-472-61660-1 , Fire Watch. 1985.
  • Impossible Things. 1993.
  • Even the Queen & Other Short Stories. (Audio cassette) 1998.
  • Miracle: And Other Christmas Stories. 1999.
  • The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories. 2007.

Youth books

  • Daisy in the Sun. 1991.
  • Cibola. (Audio cassette) 1998.
  • Roswell, Vegas, and Area 51: Travels with Courtney. 2001.
  • Inside job. 2005.

As editor

  • The New Hugo Winners Volume III. 1994. (with Martin H. Greenberg )
  • Nebula Awards 33: The Year's Best SF and Fantasy Chosen by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. 1999.
  • A woman's liberation. 2001. (with Sheila Williams )

Awards

  • 1983: Hugo Award for fire watch
  • 1983: Nebula Award for fire watch
  • 1983: Nebula Award for A Letter from the Clearys
  • 1987: Asimov's Reader Poll for Spice Pogrom
  • 1988: John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Lincoln's Dreams
  • 1989: Hugo Award for The Last of the Winnebagos
  • 1989: Nebula Award for The Last of the Winnebagos
  • 1989: Asimov's Reader Poll for The Last of the Winnebagos
  • 1990: Nebula Award for At the Rialto
  • 1992: HOMer Award In the Late Cretaceous
  • 1993: Hugo Award for The Years of the Black Death
  • 1993: Hugo Award for Even the Queen
  • 1993: Nebula Award for Even the Queen
  • 1993: Nebula Award for The Years of the Black Death
  • 1993: Locus Award for The Years of the Black Death
  • 1993: Locus Award for Even the Queen
  • 1993: Asimov's Reader Poll for Even the Queen
  • 1994: Hugo Award for Death on the Nile
  • 1994: Locus Award for Close Encounter
  • 1994: Locus Award for Impossible Things
  • 1994: Asimov's Reader Poll for Inn
  • 1994: Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis as best foreign work for The Years of the Black Death
  • 1996: Locus Award for remake
  • 1997: Locus Award for Bellwether
  • 1999: Forry Award for Lifetime Achievement
  • 1999: Hugo Award for The Colors of Time
  • 1999: Locus Award for The Colors of Time
  • 2000: Hugo Award for The Winds of Marble Arch
  • 2002: Locus Award for Passage
  • 2002: Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Best Foreign Work for The Colors of Time
  • 2006: Hugo Award for Inside Job
  • 2008: Locus Award for The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories
  • 2009: Induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame
  • 2011: Robert A. Heinlein Award
  • 2011: Hugo Award for Blackout / All Clear
  • 2011: Nebula Award for Blackout / All Clear
  • 2011: Locus Award for Blackout / All Clear
  • 2012: Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award for contributions to science fiction and fantasy literature.
  • 2012: Asimov's Reader Poll All About Emily
  • 2014: Locus Award for The Best of Connie Willis
  • 2018: Asimov's Reader Poll for I Met a Traveler in an Antique Land

criticism

“The plot tumbles happily towards total chaos and the destruction of the space-time continuum, while in the last third of the book the reader asks worriedly whether the author will somehow emerge from the self-inflicted - mind you extremely amusing - hubbub ... Connie Willis interweaves the Victorian age so artfully with today, yesterday and their special and no less strange tomorrow by means of all the time leaps, that history suddenly becomes a fragile work of art. "

- Karsten Kruschel on The Colors of Time

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Blackout / All Clear by Connie Willis. Winner, Best Novel in 2010. from nebulas.sfwa.org, accessed January 8, 2017.
  2. ^ Willis Wins 2011 Robert A. Heinlein Award. In: locusmag.com. Locus Publications, September 21, 2011, accessed November 21, 2016 .
  3. ^ SFWA Names Connie Willis Recipient of the 2011 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. on: sfwa.org , January 16, 2012.
  4. ↑ See Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year 2002. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-453-19674-0 , p. 796 f.

Web links

Commons : Connie Willis  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Willis, Connie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Willis, Constance Elaine Trimmer (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American science fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Denver