Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Huh, do I work with the author?

Bellwether by Connie Willis

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Bellwether was written in 1997 by Connie Willis, but seems very current.  It’s considered science fiction, but frankly, I don’t think it really is since everything in it could actually happen.  Set in a big corporation called HiTek, it is told from the point of view of Sandra, a researcher trying to discover what causes fads.  She is navigating life while interacting with friends and coworkers who are all investigating different things while the company pushes for one of them to win the Niebnitz Grant […]

It’s science, it’s fiction, but it’s not science fiction

Bellwether by Connie Willis

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Why is Connie Willis considered a science fiction writer? Is it just because she wrote about time travel that one time? I haven’t read a ton of her stuff (I did read the time travel one), but I don’t quite get it. This book is fine and fun, but not science fiction at all, even though the cover says “One of science fiction’s best writers.” Sandra is a scientist at a corporate-America type research institute that reminded me a little of Veridian Dynamics. She’s looking […]

All Clear – Connie Willis (2010)

All Clear by Connie Willis

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The sequel to Black Out, which I contend should have been trimmed by 40% of each book and turned into a single volume. Was works for different reasons in Firewatch feels bloated here, and what worked well in Doomsday Book and was boring in To Say Nothing of the Dog, fails here too. I kept waiting for this book to end, and my god the book seemed like it was dying to end. But it didn’t end. Until it finally did. The issue with this […]

Like a time traveling Bertie Wooster

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

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Series: Oxford Time Travel. I read Book One (Doomsday Book) in 2010. What I remembered about this series prior to reading this book: A friend recommended Doomsday Book to me because of the Middle Ages setting and the references to bubonic plague (infectious diseases are my jam). What I chiefly remember about it now was that I couldn’t get into the story because I kept waiting for the buboes to show up (plague doesn’t come into the story until well over halfway through, as I […]

We were three kloms from King’s X when Carson spotted the dust.

Uncharted Territory by Connie Willis

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This is a reread of a Connie Willis novella from the 90s. I reread it because this is a new audiobook version. We find ourselves on a kind of archeological/anthropological/paleontology survey of a foreign planet. The survey crew is abuzz because of a new member showing up that day. Evelyn is not a woman to the chagrin the male members of the crew and to the delight of at least one of the women. The novel then goes into the rules, regulations, and guidance that […]

Victims of our emotions and wishful thinking.

Crosstalk by Connie Willis

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This is another comedy of errors/romantic comedy in the vein of To Say Nothing of the Dog, but not one tied to a historical/time travel narrative. In that way, it’s also quite similar to Bellwether. Briddy works for a global communications technology company and the word is out that she and her fiance, one of the junior vice president types in the company are about to be engaged. Before they get engaged though, her boyfriend has asked to her have a EED, an empathetic implant […]



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