F/SF

Short stories by SciFi giant are entertaining, easy reading. The title story, Firewatch, is later made into a novel about time travel to the London Blitz. I have read most of these stories several times before, but Connie Willis is one of my favorite SciFi writers, and I can read her over and over again. ( )

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.

A collection of short stories.To be honest, I only ever read Fire Watch... The story that started her Blackout/All Clear series. Rushed, but just as good as every other book in that universe. ( )

Connie Willis’ Fire Watch collects twelve of her short stories, including the titular “Fire Watch,” “Service for the Burial of the Dead,” “Lost and Found,” “All My Darling Daughters,” and more. Each story includes a brief introduction from Willis in which she describes her inspiration in writing it.

The first story, “Fire Watch,” begins Willis’ Oxford Time Travel series by focusing on a time traveling historian who visits St. Paul’s Cathedral during the Blitz after a computer error changes his assignment from visiting St. Paul to visiting the cathedral named after him. The story includes characters that appear in other stories, such as Mr. Dunworthy and Kivrin Engle, with Kivrin preparing for the assignment she undertook in the subsequent novel, Doomsday Book. As Willis originally published this story in 1982, the events are somewhat dated, but that doesn’t affect the emotional weight of them based on the quality of her character-building. Those who enjoy the other books in the Oxford Time Travel series will enjoy seeing how it all began—and enjoy the connections to later novels Blackout and All Clear—while fans of historical fiction or sci-fi will like Willis’ world-building.

“Service for the Burial of the Dead” takes as its inspiration the melodrama of soap operas and Tom Sawyer’s act of attending his own funeral. It’s a deliciously haunting story about guilt and the rumors that pervade small towns. “Lost and Found” relies on biblical verse, specifically the Revelation of John of Patmos, and examines the rise of religious cults preaching the end of days and how they strip the elements from established religion that are of greatest use to their message. Willis wrote “All My Darling Daughters” with Elizabeth Barrett Browning in mind, using an anachronistically traditional boarding school in a futuristic space station to explore the role of abuse on a family.

The stories showcase all the creativity of Willis that her fans have come to love and make Fire Watch a must-read for them. ( )