Connie Willis (1945– ) is an influential US science fiction writer who has won more combined Hugo and Nebula Awards (eighteen) than any other writer. Willis holds degrees in English and elementary education from the University of Northern Colorado. After receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1982, she left a teaching job to become a full-time writer, though she has been published since 1970. Associated with the Humanist SF movement of the 1980s and 1990s, Willis often uses so-called soft science to illuminate the human condition. She is also known for her humor, especially in a comedy-of-manners or satirical style. She has been inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame (2009), and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her a grand master in 2011.
Time travel features prominently in three of her Hugo Award–winning novels: the stand-alone Doomsday Book (1992) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), and the long novel published in two volumes, Blackout/All Clear (2010). Blackout/All Clear is set in London during the Blitz and describes in great detail the travails of three visitors from 2060. They are afraid that their temporary inability to return home is linked to their frequent involuntary transgressions against the proper flow of reality at a time of fragility in the world. As with Doomsday Book, Willis writes with a sense of reverence about the world; in this case, her clear, attentive love for 1940s England comes through as some very well-known aspects of life then are presented as newly discovered. Both novels reaffirm Willis’s commitment to the basic humanity and Humanism of her storytelling.
“Schwarzschild Radius” (1987) is classic Willis; the science is foregrounded more than usual for her, but as in her time-travel stories there is a sharp emphasis on the human impact of that science. It’s an impactful story, written with a precision and clarity that show the author at the top of her form.