BOOK REVIEW: Blackout & All-Clear by Connie Willis

Connie Willis is one of my favorite science fiction authors, having written the incredible Doomsday Book (see my A+ review). Last year she returned to the time-travelling universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing Of The Dog with the duology Blackout/All-Clear.

The diptych Blackout/All-Clear was immediately critically acclaimed and became Willis' second book to win both of the top awards in science fiction, the 2011 Nebula award and the 2011 Hugo award.

The books use the assumption that by 2060 time-travel is possible, although due to the chance of changing the future by changing the past, it is mainly only used by academics. The books are set in Oxford University and generally involved graduate students who need to go back in time as part of their "field research" for their studies on particular historical events.

The first thing to realize about Blackout/All-Clear is that it is really not two books, it is one book split into two parts, so you should not expect a conclusion at the end of Blackout. In fact, I would strongly recommend that however you procure Blackout to read it, you should save yourself the anxiety and just get the second half of the book as well, All-Clear.

The main characters are Michael Davies, Polly Churchill and Merope Ward who are sent back into World War II Britain as Mike Davis, Polly Sebastian and Eileen O'Reilly, respectively.

One of the most interesting things Connie Willis does is depict what life really was like to live through the Blitz, one of the most important and harrowing time periods in history, for any civilization. She does this through the seemingly insignificant details of how The War affected everyday, unknown people every day. Of course, what is also amusing and entertaining for the reader is that she also includes people who are famous now but who were not necessarily so famous then (Agatha Christie comes to mind).

Another important feature of the book to me was its depiction of gender. The fact that two of the main characters are women (really barely more than teenagers) in the mid-1940s decades before the equal rights movement allows Willis to really reveal the contours of sexism behind the veneer of polite British society.

One thing all time-travel stories have in common is that they have rules, generally the rule is that the time travelers can not produce a paradox (like going back in time and killing your own father or grandfather before you were born because then how could you be alive to go back in time in the first place?). Willis plays on this fact, and the idea tat no author would ever kill of one of her three central major characters to raise the level of suspense to heart-pounding levels.

In the end, the books end on something of an emotionally manipulative note, but that decision really ensures that readers of Blackout/All-Clear will not forget the experience any time soon.

Title: Blackout
Author: Connie Willis
Length: 512 pages.
Publisher: Spectra.
Published: February 2, 2010.

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.



OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.83/4.0).

Title: All Clear

Author: Connie Willis

Length: 656 pages.

Publisher: Spectra.

Published: October 19, 2010

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.0/4.0).


PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

2011 Hugo Winners Announced!

The 2011 Hugo Awards were announced last weekend at the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, Nevada. Two of my favorites, Christopher Nolan's Inception and Commie Willis' Blackout/All-Clear won the major prizes of Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form and Best Novel, respectively. Willis becomes the second female author to win the prestigious Nebula/Hugo double for the same book twice. She won the Nebula award for Blackout/All-Clear earlier this year and had previously won the double for an earlier book in the series, Doomsday Book, one of my favorite books of all time. The only other authors to win the Hugo/Nebula double for the same book twice are Joe Haldeman (The Forever War, Forever Peace), Ursula K. LeGuin (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed), and the now-odious Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead).

Here's the full list and here's the list of the winners in the most important categories::

BEST NOVEL

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)

BEST NOVELLA

The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)

BEST NOVELETTE

“The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010)

BEST SHORT STORY

“For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010)

BEST RELATED WORK

Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (Mad Norwegian)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY

Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse,
written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by
Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM

Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Warner)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM

Doctor Who: “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,” written by Steven
Moffat; directed by Toby Haynes (BBC Wales)

What's nice about the Hugos is that they also release the detailed breakdown of the preference voting results every year as well. It would be incredibly awesome if other awards (Oscars, Emmys, are you listening?) did that as well.

Also, notice that the titles of the winners of Best Novella, Novelette and Best Short Story are hyperlinks. By clicking on the links you can see these award-winning pieces of speculative fiction for free. Enjoy!

Voting For 2011 Hugo Awards Now Closed

The nominations for the 2011 Hugo Awards were announced in April 2011 but I just noticed at John Scalzi's blog that voting on the nominations have now closed. The nominations and winners of the 20111 Nebula awards have already been announced. The Hugo and Nbula awards are tyhe most prestigious awards for speculative works of fiction. Generally, authors select the Nebula award winners and fans pick the Hugo winners.

This year, only two books managed to make the Best Novel category of both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, both of which I have read. They are The One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin and Blackout/All-Clear by Connie Willis. Willis has won the Nebula-Hugo double before, for the brilliant Doomsday Book. She has already won the 2011 Nebula Award for her diptych Blackout/All-Clear. Jemisin is a first-time author whose book people either love or hate (I hated it).

Last year there was a tie for the Hugo Award for Best Novel between Paola Baacigalupi's The Wind-up Girl  and China Mieville's The City and the City, neither of which I thought was amazing.

This year's winner will be decided at the World Science Fiction convention on August 20 in Reno, Nevada.
Here's the full list of nominees for Best Novel.

Best Novel

• Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)
• Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
• The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)
• Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit)
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

    

I hope Connie wins!

Celebrity Friday: Connie Willis Wins '11 Nebula Award For Blackout/All-Clear

Connie Willis

Connie Willis is the author of one of my all-time favorite books, the suspenseful, award-winning Doomsday Book. Her most recent book is the diptych Blackout/All Clear, a sequel of sorts to Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, which are all time-travel based, suspenseful novels set in Great Britain and usually filled with biting comic wit.

I previously blogged about this year's nominees for the 2011 Nebula Awards, which included Blackout/All Clear. Now comes word that Connie Willis has won her seventh(!) Nebula award, her second for Best Novel, for Blackout/All Clear.

The Guardian reports:

Willis, already the recipient of 10 Hugos and six Nebulas and recently inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, took the Nebula best novel prize this weekend in Washington for her titles All Clear and Blackout. The prestigious science fiction and fantasy award is voted for by the 1,500 author members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and has been won in the past by Ursula K Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Larry Niven's Ringworld and Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves.

Blackout and All Clear, two volumes making up one novel, see three Oxford historians from 2060 time-travelling back to an England in the middle of the second world war. When the three become trapped in 1940, they start to uncover small historical discrepancies and begin to realise that, contrary to a core part of time travel theory, it might just be possible to "horribly, tragically" alter the past.

The Left Hand of Darkness and The Gods Themselves and Ringworld are widely regarded as some of the best science-fiction books of all time. The Hugo awards are the other prestigious awards in science fiction, voted on by the fans of the genre, while the Nebulas are voted on by the writers.

I have read both Blackout and All Clear but I'm still working on my official review. In short, they weren't as impressive as Doomsday Book but they are noteworthy achievements and well worth reading. They give you a new appreciation for Britons during World War and are an intelligent handling of the mind-bending implications of time travel.