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| Connie Willis |
I previously blogged about this year's nominees for the 2011 Nebula Awards, which included Blackout/All Clear. Now comes word that Connie Willis has won her seventh(!) Nebula award, her second for Best Novel, for Blackout/All Clear.
The Guardian reports:
Willis, already the recipient of 10 Hugos and six Nebulas and recently inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, took the Nebula best novel prize this weekend in Washington for her titles All Clear and Blackout. The prestigious science fiction and fantasy award is voted for by the 1,500 author members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and has been won in the past by Ursula K Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Larry Niven's Ringworld and Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves.Blackout and All Clear, two volumes making up one novel, see three Oxford historians from 2060 time-travelling back to an England in the middle of the second world war. When the three become trapped in 1940, they start to uncover small historical discrepancies and begin to realise that, contrary to a core part of time travel theory, it might just be possible to "horribly, tragically" alter the past.
The Left Hand of Darkness and The Gods Themselves and Ringworld are widely regarded as some of the best science-fiction books of all time. The Hugo awards are the other prestigious awards in science fiction, voted on by the fans of the genre, while the Nebulas are voted on by the writers.
I have read both Blackout and All Clear but I'm still working on my official review. In short, they weren't as impressive as Doomsday Book but they are noteworthy achievements and well worth reading. They give you a new appreciation for Britons during World War and are an intelligent handling of the mind-bending implications of time travel.
I've never read Connie Willis before and was intrigued by the synopsis of Blackout. The writing is well done - meaning that she has a nice turn of phrase and is clearly experienced with the nuances of language. The problem lies in plotting. This book is slow to the point of being boring. I managed to continue to the half way point, waiting for something interesting to happen. The characters go back in time to WW II England. Great, that sounds like a good format for something interesting and exciting to develop. Maybe it does later in the book - or in part 2 of this story (next book) - but after 160 pages this reader just lost interest. Mostly the characters observe the people of the time - a couple of nights spent in a bomb shelter, yawn. Pages and pages spent on one character trying to find transportation to Dunkirk, yawn. The premise seemed so promising, but the delivery just doesn't reward the reader.
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