Fire Watch

connie willis

Winner of six Nebula and five Hugo awards, Connie Willis is one of the most acclaimed and imaginative authors of our time. Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction. Here in one volume are twelve of her greatest stories, including double award-winner "Fire Watch," set in the universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which a time-traveling student learns one of history's hardest lessons. In "A Letter from the Clearys," a routine message from distant friends shatters the fragile world of a beleaguered family. In "The Sidon in the Mirror," a mutant with the unconscious urge to become other people finds himself becoming both killer and victim. Disturbing, revealing, and provocative, this remarkable collection of short fiction brings together some of the best work of an incomparable writer whose ability to amaze, confound, and enlighten never fails.

Contents:
Fire Watch (1982)
Service for the Burial of the Dead (1982)
Lost and Found (1982)
All My Darling Daughters (1985)
The Father of the Bride (1982)
A Letter from the Clearys (1982)
And Come from Miles Around (1979)
The Sidon in the Mirror (1983)
Daisy, in the Sun (1979)
Mail-Order Clone (1982)
Samaritan (1978)
Blued Moon (1984)

Genres science fictionshort storiesfictiontime travelfantasyhistorical fictionscience fiction fantasyspeculative fictionanthologieshistorical

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1,1982

Series

Oxford Time Travel

Literary awards

hugo award, nebula award, locus award, balrog award, sf chronicle award,

This edition

Format: 288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published: April 1, 1998 by Bantam Spectra
ISBN: 9780553260458
ASIN: 0553260456
Language: English

About the author

connie willis

Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s.

She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA).

She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado. She also has one daughter, Cordelia.

Willis is known for her accessible prose and likable characters. She has written several pieces involving time travel by history students and faculty of the future University of Oxford. These pieces include her Hugo Award-winning novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog and the short story "Fire Watch," found in the short story collection of the same name.

Willis tends to the comedy of manners style of writing. Her protagonists are typically beset by single-minded people pursuing illogical agendas, such as attempting to organize a bell-ringing session in the middle of a deadly epidemic (Doomsday Book), or frustrating efforts to analyze near-death experiences by putting words in the mouths of interviewees (Passage).