The Best of Connie Willis

Compared to 2012 SFWA Grand Master Willis's full body of work (Blackout/All Clear; Passage; The Doomsday Book), these award-winning short stories tend toward the humorous or sweet, rather than the dark. Willis is at her best skewering scholarship to laugh-out-loud effect in "At the Rialto" and "The Soul Selects Her Own Society: Invasion and Repulsion; A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Wellsian Perspective." Two other stories, "The Last of the Winnebagos" and "A Letter from the Clearys," reveal dystopian futures through the perceptive study of a single character. "Even the Queen," "All Seated on the Ground," and "Inside Job" sacrifice plausibility for amusement value, while "Death on the Nile" and "The Winds of Marble Arch" are reminiscent of Passage, where metaphysics, sentiment, and the supernatural meet. "Fire Watch" is a perfect introduction to her time-travel novels but adds little for those who've read them.