Review: Bellwether by Connie Willis

Bellwether by Connie Willis

Published : Bantam Spectra, 1996

Awards Nominated : Nebula Award

The Book :

“What makes something become a fad?  That’s the question Sandra Foster wants to answer through her research for HiTek Corporation.  HiTek’s bureaucratic atmosphere isn’t making her task any easier. Sandra is constantly derailed by overcomplicated paperwork, meetings, HiTek’s obsession with acquiring a prestigious grant and her supremely incompetent fad-following office assistant, Flip.

Thanks to a mis-delivered package, Sandra gets to know her fellow HiTek researcher Bennet O'Reilly, who works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory.  Sandra is initially interested in him due to his strange immunity to fads, but their acquaintanceship quickly moves towards a closer collaboration.  As their research spirals out of control, Bennet and Sandra search for the link between chaos theory, romance, fads, and a flock of sheep…” ~Allie

I’ve read a lot of Willis’ work, though this is the first book I’ve read outside of her time travel novels (Doomsday Book, Blackout/All Clear, To Say Nothing of the Dog).  Bellwether is definitely characteristic of Willis’ style, but it is also a light, silly romantic comedy.  This is also the third novel I've reviewed for the Grand Master Reading Challenge, hosted by WWend.com, a fantastic website I recommend highly for any fans of speculative fiction.  

My Thoughts :

Bellwether does feature scientists, but it doesn't really seem like a science fiction story.  I can’t help but wonder if it was simply labeled that way out of habit, since most of Willis’ work is science fiction.  Bellwether is mostly a light, satirical romantic comedy about fads, scientific discoveries, and office politics.  Willis’ familiar style is present here, as she draws humor out of obnoxious side characters, miscommunication, incompetence, and all the little frustrations that crop up in everyday life. Bellwether is more in the vein of To Say Nothing of the Dog than Doomsday Book or Blackout/All Clear.  It is by far the shortest and fluffiest Connie Willis novel I’ve ever read, but it was a very pleasant, light read.

   

Throughout the story, Willis includes little facts about real fads and circumstances around unexpected scientific breakthroughs.  I really enjoyed these inserts, though I think this attention to historical and recent-to-publication (1990s) fads dates the book.  It happens to be just the time period to invoke nostalgia for me, but I’m not sure how well this would fly with people who aren’t in my generation.  There are a lot of ‘current’ fads introduced in the novel as well. Most of these are believably ridiculous, but some of them seem unlikely to occur in our current times. I think that it is the nature of fads to become obsolete very quickly, and the fad-focused setting causes the book to be very much a product of its time.

Aside from the fads, there was a lot of satire of office culture.  Having dealt with bureaucracy extensively, I found this satire ridiculously stressful to read.  To ‘help’ their employees’ productivity, HiTek had constant meetings and workshops, and a lot of time was spent describing their required paperwork, which was so ridiculously complicated that it actually obstructed employee progress.   Included in this satire is also one of the major ‘obnoxious characters’, the office assistant Flip.  Flip is a trendy young woman who doesn’t really do anything useful, and instead seems to damage productivity everywhere she goes.  Sandra tries to make the best of things by befriending her, but this only makes her behavior worse.  I think many people who’ve worked in an office environment have probably been stuck at some point with someone as lazy and incompetent as Flip.   

Most of the plot featured Dr. Sandra Foster as she went about her daily life, attempting all the while to find the origin of hair bobbing.  This may sound boring, but I think that describing daily life in a light, humorous way is Willis’ forte.  Sandra goes through children’s birthday parties, cafes, libraries, and HiTek, observing everything with an eye towards fads and absurdities. The romance in the story is pretty obvious and predictable, but adorable all the same.  The conclusion was as chaotic and ridiculous as expected, and the whole story left me in a cheerful mood.  Bellwether is certainly a light read, but it was a lot of fun.     

My Rating : 3.5/5

Bellwether is a satire of fads and office culture and a romantic comedy, but it didn’t really seem like a science fiction story.  The story is much lighter, shorter and more carefree than many of Willis’ other novels, but her style was still here in full force.  There’s no time-traveling Oxford (as in Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, etc.), but her characters still come up against irritating minor characters, minor frustrations, and ridiculous bureaucracy.  The focus on fads, and some of the attitudes of the main characters, left the story feeling firmly set in the 90s, and it will likely feel even more dated to readers who haven’t lived through that decade.  The writing was light and humorous, the characters were likeable or likeably obnoxious, and the predictable eventual romance was very cute.  It may lack the depth and gravity of some of her other works, but Bellwether is a funny, cheerful book that made for pleasant light reading. 

Review: All Clear by Connie Willis

All Clear by Connie Willis

Published: Spectra, 2010

Series: 2^nd half of Blackout/All Clear

Awards Won (with Blackout): Nebula Award, Locus SF Award, Hugo Award

Awards Nominated:  John W. Campbell Award

The Book:

“In Blackout, award-winning author Connie Willis returned to the time-traveling future of 2060—the setting for several of her most celebrated works—and sent three Oxford historians to World War II England: Michael Davies, intent on observing heroism during the Miracle of Dunkirk; Merope Ward, studying children evacuated from London; and Polly Churchill, posing as a shopgirl in the middle of the Blitz. But when the three become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler’s bombers attempt to pummel London into submission.

Now the situation has grown even more dire. Small discrepancies in the historical record seem to indicate that one or all of them have somehow affected the past, changing the outcome of the war. The belief that the past can be observed but never altered has always been a core belief of time-travel theory—but suddenly it seems that the theory is horribly, tragically wrong.

Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the historians’ supervisor, Mr. Dunworthy, and seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who nurses a powerful crush on Polly, are engaged in a frantic and seemingly impossible struggle of their own—to find three missing needles in the haystack of history.” ~barnesandnoble.com

All Clear is much more than the sequel to Blackout. It is more like the second half of the complete novel Blackout/All Clear.  So, if you have not read Blackout, beware that I may give away some plot points in Blackout in my review. This is the final novel in my plan to read all of this year’s Hugo nominees.

My Thoughts:

All Clear picks up right where Blackout stopped.  It jumps right back into the story with little explanation or introduction, so it helps if you have Blackout fresh on your mind.  As in Blackout, the setting is a major strength of All Clear.  I loved reading about the daily lives of the British during WWII, and learning about the country’s different services and projects that contributed to the overall success of the war.  I was especially interested in Operation Fortitude South, the misinformation campaign against Nazi Germany, which is something I knew nothing about prior to reading Blackout/All Clear.  

Since I was so interested in the WWII setting, I found that I much preferred the story when it was about the historians interacting with ‘contemporaries’ of the historical period.  Unfortunately, in All Clear the stories of the ‘contemporaries’ take a back seat to the three historian protagonists.  They found each other near the end of Blackout, and they spend a large part of All Clear together, fretting about how to get back to the future and attempting to avoid contact with all the people they met in this period.  I was constantly wishing to see more of Sir Godfrey, the shelter theatre troupe, the evacuee children and others.

Besides my interest in seeing people living in the historical setting, I also think that many of the minor characters were just more compelling than the protagonists.  The three historical protagonists did significantly differ from each other in some ways.  Mike Davies was impulsive, moody, and tended to act as a protective big brother to the two women.  Merope (known in the past as Eileen) was emotional, optimistic, and actually very cool-headed in a crisis.  Polly was a compulsive liar, very practical about daily life, and tended to panic easily in emergencies.  However, the three of them had very similar thought processes and methods of solving problems, which seemed to keep them from having strong individual voices.  This was less apparent in Blackout, since they spent most of that book separate, each dealing with their own situations.  I tended to look forward to scenes with Alf and Binnie, two badly behaved evacuee children that kind of attached themselves to Eileen in Blackout.  Alf and Binnie were the only historical characters that seemed to get a significant amount of page-time in All Clear. 

Another thing that bothered me in All Clear was the constant use of repetition in the story.  This was also a minor issue in Blackout, but I didn’t feel like it was pronounced enough to merit comment.  In All Clear, certain things happen over and over, and they started to sap the suspense of the story.  People (most commonly Polly) often deliberately lied to each other, ostensibly to protect each other.  This deliberate misinformation often ended up being significant to the plot.  Also, the characters constantly just barely missed each other.  This was actually relevant to the overall plot, but it happened so often that it was just frustrating to read.  It also seemed like there were dozens of scenes of the historians fretting about the retrieval team, checking the drop locations, or writing personal ads to attempt to inform the future of their whereabouts.  The actual text of tons of these coded personal ads were included.  Last of all, many characters were mistakenly assumed dead.  I can see that this would happen sometimes in the confusion of the Blitz, but it occurred so often that I think it made actual deaths have less of an emotional impact.  None of these elements would have been particularly irritating on their own, but they started to wear with frequent use.

The story, as with many of Willis’s time travel novels, was not incredibly surprising.  You could clearly see where things were going, so it was just a matter of waiting until the characters got there.  However, I did think the time travel plot was pretty interesting, and I liked how all the different historical storylines ended up coming together in the end.  I thought the ending was very satisfying, and I am glad that I chose to read Blackout/All Clear.

My Rating: 3.5/5

The second half of Blackout/All Clear jumps right back into the story with very little introduction.  The historical aspects are just as interesting as Blackout, but the historians unfortunately spend much more time with each other and much less with the people contemporary to WWII.  The colorful, interesting minor characters therefore get much less attention than the three similar-minded protagonists.  This led to a significant increase of repetition in the story, which was only slightly present in Blackout.  I don’t think I really needed to read quite so many scenes of the protagonists lying to each other, just barely missing people, checking the drop, fretting about the retrieval team, and writing coded personal ads.  Altogether, though, All Clear gave a very satisfying conclusion to the story begun in Blackout.

Review: Blackout by Connie Willis

Blackout by Connie Willis

Published: Spectra, 2010

Series: Blackout/All Clear

Awards: Nebula Award, Locus SF Award, Hugo Award

Nominated: John W. Campbell Memorial Award

The Book:

“Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. And seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can “catch up” to her in age.

But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history—to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.

From the people sheltering in the tube stations of London to the retired sailors who set off across the Channel to rescue the stranded British Army from Dunkirk, from shopgirls to ambulance drivers, from spies to hospital nurses to Shakespearean actors, Blackout reveals a side of World War II seldom seen before: a dangerous, desperate world in which there are no civilians and in which everybody—from the Queen down to the lowliest barmaid—is determined to do their bit to help a beleaguered nation survive. “ ~barnesandnoble.com

I’m reading Blackout (and All Clear, later) as a part of my plan to read all of this year’s Hugo Award nominees.  Rather than feeling like the first book of a series, this is the first half of a story that is split up into Blackout and All Clear.  The lack of resolution at the end of Blackout makes me wonder if the story was split up due to binding considerations (it is over 1000 pages altogether).  I have to admit that I have not yet read All Clear, though, so it’s definitely possible that there is a narrative reason for the split that I won’t understand until the end.

My Thoughts:

Blackout is an incredibly ambitious story and I think Willis has pulled it off amazingly well.  It is very similar in some ways to her previous novels in this Oxford time travel universe, To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book.  As in those stories, she portrays the historical period so vividly that it is like getting a history lesson alongside the entertainment.  Even with all the historical detail, though, the book did not come across as dry or difficult.  Through the time traveling Oxford historians, we are shown how the events of WWII affected ordinary people, and how they rose to meet extraordinary challenges. The novel is very focused on the characters, and the particular ways that they cope with their lives.  Through these small-scale stories of individuals, Willis slips in lots of information about life during WWII, without it ever feeling like a tedious infodump or lecture. 

In addition to balancing a wealth of historical detail and expert storytelling, Willis has included a huge cast of characters and locations.  The focus of the novel is on the stories of time traveling historians Polly, Merope, and Michael, observing the London Blitz, evacuee children, and the rescue of soldiers from Dunkirk. Beyond these three situations, though, a few other stories turn up throughout the novel. In the beginning, there is the usual chaotic bustle of future Oxford. There are also some chapters showing historians observing other events, such as the placement of fake tanks to trick the Germans.  Each of these situations is vividly physically described and has a cast of memorable, engaging characters.  I was worried about being able to keep track of everything at the beginning, but Willis’ prose was thankfully clear and easy to digest.  The only complaint I have about the many characters and plots is that, while some of them did merge, they did not all tie together at the end of the novel.  I suppose that’s to be expected, though, since this is only the first half of the story.

The focus is clearly on the everyday lives of the historians and the ‘contemps’, people who actually live in the historical period, but there is also a science fiction mystery element to the story.  Has one of the historians done some small thing that will, despite all their beliefs that it is impossible, alter history in some drastic way? Are the little things they’re starting to notice just due to bad historical recording, and their growing technical problems just a coincidence? Is there just some kind of technical problem at future Oxford?  This mystery is the undercurrent of Merope’s, Michael’s and Polly’s stories, and I am very excited to see how it will turn out.  

My Rating: 4.5/5

Maybe it’s just because I’m used to this style of storytelling from To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book, but I actually felt like Blackout went very fast, despite its length.  It’s an impressive novel for the way it balances historical detail with engaging storytelling.  The multitude of characters, settings, and storylines is a little overwhelming at first, but Willis does make everything clear and easy to follow fairly quickly.  The confusing tangle of characters and stories seems to even enhance the sense of chaos in future Oxford as the novel opens.  Through all of the separate stories of historians and their chosen events runs the slow realization that all is not right with time travel and the world.  While the book focuses mostly on the minutiae of daily life, this sci-fi type mystery also gives it a grander scope.  This is clearly the first half of a story, so there is almost no resolution to be had at the end, but it did leave me eager to get my hands on All Clear!

Review: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Published: NEL UK, Bantam Spectra (1992)

Awards Won: Nebula, Hugo, Locus  SF

Nominations: Arthur C. Clarke Award, BSFA Award

The Book:

"For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin -- barely of age herself -- finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours." ~from barnesandnoble.com

I'm reading Doomsday Book as a part of the 2011 Women in Science Fiction Book Club.  Doomsday Book is a standalone novel, but it is also one of several that is set in the same time-traveling future Oxford, with some recurring characters.  Though I've read a fair amount of her short fiction, the only other Willis novel I've read was To Say Nothing of the Dog, another story set in her time-traveling future. To Say Nothing of the Dog is considerably more lighthearted, but I think that I prefer Doomsday Book.

My Thoughts:

There are two parallel stories that split near the beginning, with history student Kivrin's departure to the 14th century.  In 21st century Oxford, an epidemic breaks out, apparently starting with the tech who oversaw Kivrin's leap into the past.  As the tech collapses into incoherence and quarantine rules begin to be set in place, Kivrin's mentor Mr. Dunworthy is frustrated by his inability to ensure her safe retrieval, or even determine where and when she ended up.  Back in the 1300s, Kivrin is busy getting to know the 'contemps', who are tragically facing an epidemic of their own-- the Black Plague. 

I loved Kivrin's story, which was told both in third person and through some first person journal entries from the recorder embedded in her wrist.  I enjoyed the inclusion of the Middle English conversation near the beginning, though I had to read the sentences out loud a few times before I could get the sense of them.  Here's a nice example of the Middle English as Kivrin heard it:

"Wick londebay yae comen lawdayke awtreen godelae deynorm andoar sic straunguwlondes.  Spekefaw eek waenoot awfthy taloorbrede." [p.123]

...and I'm just gonna leave that there untranslated, in case I understood it incorrectly.  I particularly loved reading about the family and community that took in Kivrin.  While there was no way Kivrin could have been prepared for leaping into this completely foreign society, she sees that the people in the 14th century are just as human as those in the 21st.  I think the parallel epidemic stories emphasized this beautifully.  Though the ways we deal with illness have changed drastically from the 1300s to the 2000s, the emotional reaction of humans to disaster remains similar.  While people back then might have blamed the epidemic on travelers or God, people in the present blamed immigrants or science.  As Dr. Mary Ahrens of 21st century Oxford stated, "One never gets used to the idea that there is nothing one can do." [p.346].

Another thing that I appreciate about Doomsday Book, is its treatment of Christianity.  The church is a part of life in both storylines, but Willis has a refreshing lack of an agenda regarding religious beliefs.  Christianity, and Christians, are certainly not portrayed altogether favorably, but they're also not portrayed completely unfavorably.  There are those, like the overbearing Mrs. Gaddson, who think the best way to use a bible is to preach damnation to the suffering, but there are also people like the rural parish priest Father Roche, a genuinely good man who is unflinching in his duty to his community.  I really appreciated that, while the story had a lot of Christian presence, it was definitely not about religion.

Based on Doomsday Book and the other work I have read, I feel that Willis has a very distinct style of telling a story.  There’s definitely a lot going on, in the future and the past, but the narration often tends to focus on the minutiae of daily life, and the conflicts that arise from it.  As a result, what one might consider the main story progresses only slowly.  It can be incredibly frustrating when you want to get to a major plot point, only to have the protagonist delayed by failed phone calls, dealing with irritable people, navigating social pitfalls or coping with managerial duties. 

Many of these minor obstructions come in the form of one-note, running-joke side characters, particularly in the future story.  For instance, Dunworthy has to deal with crabby, self-important American bellringers, and an employee who seems incapable of handling the tiniest detail alone. There’s also Mrs. Gaddson, a pushy, overbearing mother, and her son, who spends his time alternately avoiding her and charming numerous young ladies.  There are tons of these side characters, all mostly defined by one concern or personality trait.  I actually enjoyed all of these rather shallow minor characters. I thought all of these acquaintances contributed to the whole, like they were each a single element that, taken together, formed the vast crowd of Dunworthy's community.

My Rating: 5/5

I found Doomsday Book to be a tragically fascinating read.  I was more interested in the 1300s story than the future-Oxford story, but I felt that the two narratives complemented each other well.  It is rather slow-paced, and I can see where some readers would find the one-note minor characters and intense focus on tiny, everyday annoyances aggravating.  While it definitely picks up momentum near the end, this is the kind of story that you just have to allow to unfold at its own pace. Though there is some humor in the novel, this is still the story of two epidemics.  The body count is rather high, and, overall, the story is really depressing. All in all, though, I found it to be a hauntingly tragic story of humanity, across the centuries, facing one of our most deadly enemies.