Connie Willis

This collection of short science fiction includes the novella "Fire Watch," the novelette "A Letter from the Clearys," and twelve other acclaimed stories

Fire Watch

Sarah Escorsa

I must say I was disappointed by this book... Although Connie Willis is one of my favourite authors I really had a hard time enjoyng these short stories. The only one I liked is Fire Watch, which resembles The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog a lot. What I did find interesting however, is the preamble to each story, in which Connie Willis explains her motivations. I actually found these preambles more interesting than the short stories themselves.

Bryan Alexander

An excellent, rich collection. Willis is well known as an sf novelist, but she should be at least as widely appreciated as a short story writer, based on this book.

For me, one of ways I assess a short story collection is by its variety. Fire Watch impresses by its wide range of topic and tone. Willis turns from historical fiction to screwball comedy to religious parable to horror and far-future science fiction.

Willis also excels at economic language. These are not lyrical pieces, preferring to quickly sketch out settings without meditating upon them. Instead the stories of Fire Watch focus on human interactions and dilemmas via elegantly portrayed introspection and dialogue. 

I wrote "dilemmas" because all of the stories are based on human problems that are at least major, f not enormous. Love, self-deception, sadism, coping with loss, wrestling with deeply-laid mysteries: these are usually intense, ambitious topics (but see below for the last two stories). 

Willis emphasizes women throughout. Most characters are female, including our narrators and protagonists. Several stories explore issues of gender inequality, some to powerful, feminist levels. Each story's one-page introduction really brings this approach home, with Willis emphasizing women authors, women's genres, and her concern for overlooked women.

Additional theme: the collection begins with an epigram about time, which led me to expect stories about history. Some are, yes, but others are about recovering personal histories. Time is certainly a major topic throughout.

Quick notes on each story:
"Fire Watch" concerns a grad student from the future, sent to London during the Blitz to help protect St. Paul's. Probably her most famous story, this one accomplishes a great deal: historical fiction, time travel, political intrigue, romance (or two), all building up to an emotional wallop. 
I was underwhelmed by "Fire Watch" when I first read it, already being sympathetic to that view of history. On reread I am more impressed by the story's craft.

"Service for the Burial of the Dead" is a ghost story, where a recently killed person appears to haunt a woman he romanced. Like the best ghost stories "Service" is about memory and history embedded in a place, and ends in an unusual way.

"All my Darling Daughters" blends science fiction and horror to terrific effect. The plot concerns young people sent to a boarding school in deep space. Paternal sexual abuse is introduced, then we learn the school's young men are distracted by new, alien pets. Willis connects these two themes in a bloody-minded way, nicely amplified by the difference between the street-smart narrator and her seemingly naive roommate.

"Letter from the Clearys" is one of my favorites, a powerful, sad look into a wounded family after atomic war. The protagonist is the family's resentful teenage daughter, whose scheme (or two) manages to have an awful impact, while opening up the past to we readers. It's a marvel of world-building without any exposition. I've read it three times now, and would love to teach it.

"The Sidon in the Mirror" is one of the collection's most dense offerings. It takes place in the far future, when humanity is able to colonize planets in other star systems and even mine the surface of dead stars. The point of view character is a kind of human with the desire to copy other people, and therefore a very unreliable narrator. He's sent to play a future musical instrument in a mining colony's whorehouse, but the plot develops very quickly and with quiet depth from there. World-building is phenomenal, managing to use all kinds of tricks in a hurry: transformed language, new dialects, splintered humanity, physical survival in a threatening environment, etc. I reread this one at once to better grasp its sad conclusion.

"Daisy in the Sun" begins with a girl and her immediate family. Daisy is going through a difficult adolescence, and is concerned about her memory. I will not say further without risking the story's power. 
It reminds me very much of a classic Twilight Zone episode, (view spoiler)["The Midnight Sun (hide spoiler)]. 

"Lost and Found" and "Samaritan" are religious stories, taking place in churches and featuring clergy as main characters. Both occur in the future after major changes in world faiths. Each places a cleric in a difficult position, the resolution of which potentially having cosmic impact. "Lost" in particular struck me with its deft world-building and delicate evocation of (view spoiler)[apocalypse (hide spoiler)].

Comic stories: "Father of the Bride" is a fun short-short about the tribulations of being a king in a certain fairy tale. "Mail-Order Clone" it about, well, a mail-order clone, and the havoc is causes. But the real comic gem is "Blued Moon", a manic comedy about goings-on at a chemical plant. Misunderstandings pile upon schemes to a splendid chaos. The current of satire about language is also nicely done.

Overall, I strongly recommend Fire Watch.

Fire Watch

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