Fire Watch

I love Willis' work, and this collection of short stories is perhaps the best intro. She writes with a laser sharp clarity that can devastate you. The language is flowing and easy and basic in some of her stories, and so complicated and playfully perverse in others that I couldn't help but think that this is a writer that loves language and its manipulation."All My Darling Daughters" and "Sidon in the Mirror" are searing. There is no other words for these stories. The first time I read "Daughters" I was in a mild daze for hours afterwards. It's about the nature of sex and sadism and abuse. And the way that people like to give pain, to hurt others. The words Willis uses in the story are slangy and musical in a terrible way. "Sidon" is about genetic future, love and revenge and horrific uncertainty and identity confusion. The main character's pain made me want to cry -- reading it was like watching a child feel pain, all unknowing and ignorant of what was causing it. Showing her lighter side are "Mail-Order Clone" and "Blued Moon." The first is about a man who orders a clone in a catalog and doesn't realize what he's gotten. "Blued Moon" is a romantic comedy about language, coincidences and the connection between understanding and love. It's a little like a Hollywood screwball comedy."A Letter from the Clearys" and "Fire Watch" are calm stories about the world ending and how unrelieved despair makes people a little shell-shocked. "Fire Watch" disappointed me somewhat because I guessed the ending almost first thing into the story. "Clearys" feels a little conventional. "Daisy, in the Sun" is a dreamy little story about growing up in a strange time and environment, and a little bit confusing. Dreamy and surreal. "Lost and Found" is about the end of the world coming, and really, what is there to do but wait for Heaven.All in all, one of the best single-author short story collections out there.

I really liked this book. The first story inspired me to investigate further into the Battle of Britain and World War II. The story "All my Darling Daughters" creeped me out big time, and told me a truth I didn't want to know. I recommend this book to any one who needs a jump start to their thought processes.

I was so pleased to see Bantam re-release Fire Watch. I feel it is the definitive Connie Willis. It features the first of her Oxford Time Travel universe stories (Fire Watch), which ranks up there with the best time travel stories ever. But what really impresses me about this collection is the wide variety of the stories. They range from the poignant (A Letter from the Clearys) to the comic (the brilliant Blued Moon) to the profoundly disturbing (All My Darling Daughters). I worry that most readers will limit themselves to Willis's novels, and miss out on the short stories, which I believe are Willis's forte.

This wide-ranging story collection is THE gift I give to friends when they wonder aloud whether imaginative literature can BE literature; it's both "sf" and "terrific writing." If you have read Willis' other work, this is her FIRST collection; the story "Fire Watch" was written before _Doomsday Book_ and has the first appearance of Kivrin. In addition to the Hugo-winning stories ("FW," "Clearys") _FW_ has many other treasures. Not everyone likes them all; "Sidon" is the one I can't figure out, while "Lost & Found" is my favorite, a haunting, standout story.

Connie Willis is an amazingly diversified writer whose collection of short stories ranges from the near future/near past (Fire Watch; A Letter from the Clearys), somewhat more traditional science fiction (The Sidon in the Mirror), tales of human weakness and morality (I forget the title, but the story involves teenagers in a cross between an orphanage and a boarding school) that kept me thinking about it to for days. And just when you think all she can do is serious stuff, she comes up with one of the funniest stories I've ever read in an anthology (Blue Moon?). Well worth reading.