Interview with author Connie Willis
By Patti Thorn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published September 26, 2008 at 2:57 p.m.
Updated September 26, 2008 at 2:57 p.m.
Photo by Javier Manzano © The Rocky
Connie Willis is the author of Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Passage, Bellwether and many other novels. Her most recent publication is The Winds of Marble Arch, a short story collection. She is the recipient of six Nebula Awards, presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and 10 Hugo Awards, given by the World Science Fiction Convention, and is the only author ever to have won the awards in all four writing categories. She is also the winner of the American Library Association's Alex Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and was named Locus magazine's science fiction writer of the decade.
Rocky books editor Patti Thorn talks with award-winning science fiction writer Connie Willis about her contribution to A Dozen on Denver and her writing life.
Tell us why you picked the 1920s for your story.
I grew up here in the 1950s and thought that might be a possibility. Also, during the '80s and '90s, we used to go down to Larimer Square every Christmas and to the Magic Pan for crepes. So I thought that was a possibility, too. But finally my love of the 1920s won out, and I decided it would be exciting to set a story in the 1920s when Larimer Street was starting to change from a main street to something kind of sidelined but still very thriving and interesting. So that's what I picked.
Your heroine thinks Denver looks like Chicago, rather than the Wild West she imagined. Do you think even modern people have a misconception of Denver in the '20s?
I absolutely do. I have experienced this with some of my New York friends who are always asking me bizarre questions about what it's like to live in the West. One of my fellow writers came out, bought herself a pink Stetson — which no one in the history of the world has worn — and then proceeded to say, "Head 'em up, move 'em out!" every time we needed to go someplace. Clearly, she had confused the television show Rawhide with the real West.
The surprise to me while researching the story was how many of the really big buildings were already in place downtown (at that time). I was surprised to know that the Daniels & Fisher Tower was there and the May Co.
If you arrived at Union Station you would definitely have been surprised if you were expecting buckboards and a dusty main street and clapboard buildings. Instead, here were these beautiful stone buildings and all this very modern-looking stuff, and it all had been there since the 1890s.
Let's talk about your career. I'll start with the most obvious question: You've won almost every science fiction award possible, more than any other modern writer, and yet you still aren't a household name. Does this make you crazy?
Well, yes and no. The thing that makes me crazy is that science fiction is such a wonderful field and so many people tend to dismiss it and say, "Oh, I never read science fiction ... " (But) I have the best of all possible worlds. We just had the World Science Fiction Convention here in Denver, and I was really famous for five straight days. I couldn't walk along the Convention Center without being stopped, and I signed books and heard people say nice things and got lots of attention, and that's about enough. It was time to go home, do the laundry, get back to the business of real life. I guess I have sort of a Presbyterian soul which thinks that somehow too much praise is probably not good for you, so it's best if you try to keep that under control.
You were inspired as a kid by Robert Heinlein's Have Space Suit — Will Travel. Why did that story spark your imagination?
I don't think I even knew science fiction existed till I stumbled on Have Space Suit — Will Travel. I read it because I thought the title was funny. It was the best possible introduction to science fiction ... It's funny and it's smart and it's making fun, in many ways, of the space opera adventures that had come before it. It's also in love with science; it's in love with the galaxy. ... Shortly thereafter I started reading science fiction short stories and got totally hooked, and have been hooked ever since, really.
You once said: "All science fiction writers are really reactionary people. We live in the past. We love books, we love paper, we love pens and ink ... " That's so surprising considering you write about the future.
Over half of the science fiction writers I know write their novels longhand, as do I with a Big Chief tablet — which is getting harder and harder to find. I use Bic pens that you can buy 10 for a buck during school supply month.
I think one of the reasons science fiction writers are so in love with the present is because they know how many bad things can happen, how many bad directions (in which) we can go. They're always thinking about consequences. Part of the reason they're such nuts about history is because history is where we figure out how things work: what causes wars, what gets us into trouble, what unintended consequences there are to our actions ...
Along those lines, are there any modern technological advances that frighten you?
I'm not frightened of technology per se. The thing about scientific advances, they're morally neutral. There are always good and bad consequences and then there are always completely unintended consequences.
The thing that makes me the most pessimistic is, I think we're really good at responding to crises. You know, when the flood was coming in Indiana a few months ago, everybody was out with sandbags pitching in. People are really great at that. What they're not so great about is the slow-moving crises. It worries me a lot that global warming is a slow-moving crisis. Are we still going to be squabbling about it as the seas rise and Manhattan's under water?
Have any of your stories predicted things that later happened?
I've had a couple; usually it's the bad things that come true and not the good things, which is so depressing. When you're writing about bad things you're trying to write a cautionary tale so that it won't happen. So then when it does, it's really annoying because no one listened to you.
I wrote a story called Ado, all about the growing trend to censor things in literature. I made up a situation in which a poor English teacher was trying to teach her annual unit on Shakespeare while dealing with every special-interest group in the world who wanted to take pieces out of the plays. I carried it to what I thought was real extremes and made it a funny story, and there were two lines left in Hamlet after everybody got done taking all the things that they objected to out of it.
In the years since, I've seen more and more of that. In fact, that story is taught all the time in schools during Banned Book Week as a cautionary tale of the direction we're heading.
When you were 13 you dreamed of having a story in a Nebula Award collection. Now, at 62, you have nine Nebulas and numerous stories in such collections. What's left to achieve?
I've been so honored by the field. I was on a panel with Joe Haldeman and Mike Resnick and Lois McMaster Bujold, three of the top science fiction writers, and there was this moment where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm on a panel with all these famous writers!" It's like I was 15 again. So I guess my goals now are to write all the stories I want to before I die — that's the big deal.
I never have understood Alexander the Great, who wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. I've always thought that was an absolutely asinine thing to do. What on earth is he talking about? You do this stuff not to keep getting bigger and fancier, you do this because you enjoy it, because it's interesting. It's the writing, not the awards, as much fun as they are — and I'm the first to admit they're really fun.
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