All Seated is newer and adds space aliens to the festive mix. The earlier tales in the series were collected in Miracle and Other Christmas Stories (1999). These are by turns sentimental, amusing, and highly improbable. It’s kind of a psychological mystery, and here the Blitz figures as a ghostly memory haunting London’s tube stations.īy contrast, All Seated on the Ground (2007) is one of Willis’ popular Christmas stories. Present day London figures in The Winds of Marble Arch (1999). Readers were surprised and astonished to find themselves swept up in the drama of Londoners struggling to protect a sacred place from Nazi firebombing.įor more on the space/time continuum, the Grand Master awards, and recurring themes in Willis’ fiction, read my review of Blackout and All Clear elsewhere on this site. Here Willis introduces us to her twin passions: time travel and England during World War II. An instant classic, Firewatch is reprinted in The Best of. Willis leapt onto the science fiction stage with Firewatch (1982). The result was as immediate as it was dramatic. These are gathered in a newly published single volume, The Best of Connie Willis.Īfter placing a few stories during the decade of the 1970’s, the school teacher from Greeley, Colorado, quit her job and began writing fulltime. In the wake of this landmark achievement, we take a breather and look back at ten of the shorter works that made Willis’ reputation. With publication of the massive two-volume novel Blackout and All Clear in 2010, Connie Willis was subsequently named Grandmaster of Science Fiction.

Fire Watch by Connie Willis