Автор - Connie Willis

Spice Pogrom

Nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1987.

Terra Promessa

Tornata sul suo pianeta natale per vendere, nel più breve tempo possibile una tenuta ereditata dalla madre, appena sconparsa, Delanna si trova di fronte a un ostacolo imprevisto: prima di poter cedere le proprie terre, dovrà trascorrere un intero anno su Keramos. E come se non bastasse, scopre anche di essere la moglie del figlio dei vicini. Sonny Tanner, un giovanotto non troppo sveglio e decisamente zotico. Il matrimonio era stato combinato dalle famiglie prima che Delanna lasciasse il pianeta, per evitare che la tenuta finisse nelle mani di speculatori intergalattici. La vita di Delanna è a un bivio: si rassegnerà a perdere la proprietà della splendida tenuta di Milleflores Lanzye oppure seguirà Sonny in un lungo viaggio, effettuato a bordo di veicoli a energia solare, lungo le sterminate e fertili pianure di Keramos per raggiungere le sue terre, conservarne la proprietà e, una volta scaduto l’anno sbarazzarsene? È ovvio che voi abbiate già immaginato la risposta, ma è ancora più ovvio che apprezzerete l’atmosfera spumeggiante e scanzonata di questo romanzo.

The Last of the Winnebagos

Won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novella in 1989.

Time-out

To Say Nothing of the Dog

What a stitch! Willis’ delectable romp through time from 2057 back to Victorian England, with a few side excursions into World War II and medieval Britain, will have readers happily glued to the pages. Rich dowager Lady Schrapnell has invaded Oxford University’s time travel research project in 2057, promising to endow it if they help her rebuild Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by a Nazi air raid in 1940. In effect, she dragoons almost everyone in the program to make trips back in time to locate items — in particular, the bishop’s bird stump, an especially ghastly example of Victorian decorative excess. Time traveler Ned Henry is suffering from advanced time lag and has been sent, he thinks, for rest and relaxation to 1888, where he connects with fellow time traveler Verity Kindle and discovers that he is actually there to correct an incongruity created when Verity inadvertently brought something forward from the past. Take an excursion through time, add chaos theory, romance, plenty of humor, a dollop of mystery, and a spoof of the Victorian novel, and you end up with what seems like a comedy of errors but is actually a grand scheme "involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. Nominated for Nebula Award in 1998. Won Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999.

Tránsito

Ocho premios Hugo, seis premios Nebula, y el John W. Campbell Memorial en unos diez años avalan la excepcional habilidad narrativa de la autora de El libro del día del juicio final, Oveja mansa y Por no mencionar al perro. Se trata de una de las mejores y más inteligentes voces de la narrativa modena, que esta vez nos sorprende e intriga con una emotiva y racional exploración del mundo de las ECM (Experiencias Cercanas a la Muerte) en una novela de implacable suspense. Según diversos testigos, en una ECM parece haber varios elementos nucleares: experiencia extracorporal, sonido, un túnel de altas paredes, una luz al final del túnel, parientes fallecidos y un ángel de luz con resplandecientes túnicas blancas, una sensación de paz y amor, una revisión de la vida, una revelación del conocimiento universal y la orden de regreso final. ¿Es todo esto algo real, o se trata tan sólo de manifestaciones surgidas de la bioquímica de un cerebro moribundo? En Tránsito, Joanna Lander es un psicóloga que investiga las ECM. Su encuentro con el neurólogo Richard Wright ha de permitirle simular clínicamente ese tipo de experiencias con el uso de drogas psicoactivas. Pero los sujetos del experimento del doctor Wright ven cosas completamente distintas de lo esperado, y Joanna decide someterse al experimento para conocer directamente una ECM. Y las sorpresas empiezan… Novela finalista del premio Hugo 2002 Novela finalista del premio Nebula 2001 Novela finalista del John W. Campbell Memorial Award 2002

Una lettera dai Cleary

Ecco un altro premio Nebula, stavolta di Connie Willis, una delle scrittrici più dotate e apprezzate dell’ultima generazione. Con la sua consueta grazia e dolcezza, la Willis tocca qui un tema tra i più abusati come quello del dopobomba per darcene una vista nuova e originale da un’angolazione mai considerata finora.

Uncharted Territory

Wry and witty science fiction. Carson and Findriddy, the famous planetary surveyors mapping out the planetoid Boohte, have their hands full with base member C.J., ambitious scout Ev (C.J.’s latest conquest), and Bult—the indigenous guide whose chief interest is in levying fines for destruction of the planet’s surface.

Blackout

In her first novel since 2002, Nebula and Hugo award-winning author Connie Willis returns with a stunning, enormously entertaining novel of time travel, war, and the deeds—great and small—of ordinary people who shape history. In the hands of this acclaimed storyteller, the past and future collide—and the result is at once intriguing, elusive, and frightening. Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. And seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can “catch up” to her in age.  But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history—to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control.