Connie Willis

Last week I ran across a new (2013) compilation of Connie Willis's sci-fi short stories. She's probably my favorite short story author -- next to John Varley, Grace Paley and Ian Watson -- I enjoyed the fuck out of "Impossible Things," her 1994 compilation of shorts. I rank her story "The Last of the Winnebagos" as the best short I've ever read.

This one shares only a few stories with "Impossible Things."

Connie's a master of misdirection.

Her stories APPEAR to be about one thing, but only after you've finished and are still thinking about it do you realize the story was really about something else entirely.

She has several novels out, which I have TRIED to read, but the density and weight of her writing works better for me in small doses.

Getting back to Connie, after reading a bio of Grace Hopper and starting a book on Mary Pinchot Meyer.  The first seven stories in the collection were stunning:

• "A Letter from the Clearys" - about finding order after the apocalypse
  
• "At The Rialto" - about the madness that is Hollywood
  
• "Death on the Nile" - a spoof of Agatha Christie
  
• "The Soul Selects Her Own Society" - a fantasy about Emily Dickinson saving the world from an alien invasion(?)
  
• "Fire Watch" - about a history student being sent back to London during the Blitz to fully understand history
  
• "Inside Job" - what would happen if a channeler started channeling the ultimate debunker of the supernatural, H.L. Mencken?
  
• "Even The Queen" - if menstrual periods could be stopped by taking a drug, would it be seen as "feminist" or "anti-feminist" to do so?
  

Connie's still one of my favorite writers.