9. Connie Willis
While the whole concept of creative arts awards and their attendant banquets and broadcasts is pretty suspect, when someone wins a whole bunch, it’s worth taking notice. Take Connie Willis. She’s won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards, more than any other writer. After a while, you sense that she’s the Meryl Streep of science fiction authors. Anyway, though there are sure to be many fine writers who escape notice each year, there’s something about Willis’ work that is consistently arresting.
Willis is also set to surprise you. Some of her work is funny, gentle and other life-affirming. Some, such as the short story “Blued Moon” and her novel To Say Nothing of the Dog are outright comedies.
Others, like her novel Doomsday Book, are fully tragic. Think about it: time travel is full of the potential for heartbreak. A time traveler might go back in time to save someone or avert disaster, only to fail. They might cause something worse to happen, or return to a world so utterly changed that their victory becomes hollow. Time is constantly moving and changing. As the living beings stuck in its grip, we are nothing more than ephemeral consciousnesses.
The problem with time travel
Certainly, that’s the case in Willis’ fictional world of Oxford, where scientists have invented true back-and-forth time travel. Historians have a field day with the technology, naturally. Of course, like any new development, there are some kinks to iron out and the inevitable chance of mistakes and misfortune.
In Doomsday Book, protagonist and medieval historian Kivrin is accidentally sent back to plague-ridden England, rather than a less diseased time period. A modern-day influenza epidemic in Oxford makes it all the more difficult for scientists to bring her back. In “Fire Watch”, another historian must think on his feet when he finds himself in The Blitz. Instead of studying kings and lords, he must avoid German bombs and evade detection.
Considering all that tragedy, maybe it’s best to test the waters with one of Willis’ more light works. Still, if you do decide to delve into Doomsday Book or the like, you’ll be presented with some truly masterful writing and sci-fi.