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Connie Willis's stories are delightful to read, whether she's doing film noir or Victorian costume plays.

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Connie Willis

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Connie Willis has a towering reputation among writers for her indefatigable energy. As a reader I can see that energy put to work when she adds touches to her stories that betray painstaking research. Though I've only read a few of her stories, I'm always looking for her on the shelves.

Update: I did get to listen to Connie Willis at the 63rd WorldCon in Glasgow, where she was funny and entertaining as a panelist on any number of subjects.

Learn more about Connie Willis here. (Yes, it's an awfully designed page, vintage The Worst of GeoCities, with horrid backgrounds and everything. It's also one of the better sources of online information on Connie Willis that I've been able to find.)

• The Doomsday Book (1992) - This story is named after the medieval census The Domesday Book which was commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085 to find out just how much taxes he could raise. Willis's story sends a historian back in time to a point a few centuries after Big Billy's book to find out what conditions were just before the plague hit England. This is one of those books I just couldn't put down before I reached the last pages to find out what would happen.
• To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998) - Time travel romance and mystery novel. This charming story is a kind of sequel to The Doomsday Book. Winner of the 1999 Hugo for best novel.

• Remake (1995) - Drunken film hack finds that happy endings may not be just for movies. I picked up this little story - trade paperback, 176 pages long - at a library used book sale, and was immediately enchanted by the story's main character, Tom, and his hunt for his elusive love, Alis.

More Information

William the Conqueror's survey was so thorough that people compared it to the sort of reckoning they imagined would happen at the Last Judgement, or Doomsday, so by about 100 years later it was known as The Domesday Book. It wasn't actually completed in one go, and consists of the Great Domesday Book (400+ pages summarizing most of the counties by shire) and the later Little Domesday Book (almost 500 pages of unabridged information on three remaining counties, completed after Big Billy's death). The books survive to this day, kept at the Public Records Office in London. They've got them in a special chest, though I wonder just what else they must be doing to preserve these precious documents. They've got their own website.

The Last Judgement is alluded to in various places in Judeo Christian and Islamic traditions, and probably originates in Zoroastrianism. Doom didn't always mean a bad thing. Originally it meant judgement, which could of course go either way.