Fire Watch {novelette}

This was a mixed batch of short stories, most of which left me rather disappointed. Admittedly, I loved a couple of them, and also enjoyed a few, but would rate most of them either forgettable or outright boring.

The Masterpieces

Samaritan
In a post-apocalyptic world, where most of the Christian churches have been reunified, a priestess gets it into her head to baptize an orangutan. One specific orangutan, who learned sign language and has been working as a handyman for the church. The congregation at large is of course against it, much to the priestess' annoyance.

Blued Moon
A bug in a new weather-controlling device releases an insane amount of unlikely coincidences on the universe (the city-wide area, at least). Like once in a blue moon show more kind of coincidences. While some of it is harmless, or mostly hilarious, the president of the weather controlling company is starting to outright fear for his life.

The Thoughtful and the Satisfying

All My Darling Daughters
In a far off future, parents who're unwilling (or unable) to properly raise their children, can send them to off-planet boarding schools. Forced to deal with the subpar terraforming and a cult-like atmosphere, most of the children resort to unsanctioned sex... until the guys suddenly get more interested in their new creepy pet slugs.

And Come From Miles Around
A harried young mother, her daughter and her husband go on a cross-country drive to witness a long awaited solar eclipse. As the husband is busy attending seminars and preparing for the event, the mother is relegated to her child minding duties. Nevertheless, she still manages to pay enough attention to save the day. Unbeknownst to anyone but her.

The Disappointing

Fire Watch
This is essentially the same story as Doomsday Book, just much shorter and set in WWII London, instead of early 13th century Oxford. Despite having been written in the first person, I found it rather impersonal and dull. Possibly not a fair comparison to make, as the latter has been written several years later, is much more fleshed out, and (probably) fixes a lot of issues the author encountered while writing this story.

The Sidon in The Mirror
I loved the intriguing concept of "inherited" revenge, but the exposition took up way too much time, and the world building was not fleshed out enough, so I kept having to reread sections to try and understand the sequence of events.

Final score: 3.57/5 stars

For all that I am a firm believer in good writing style, over ground-breaking content and larger page-count, I'm still wary whenever it comes to getting into short stories. Oh, I may resort to them when my yearly reading goal is threatening to break down my door. I wish I could say that I'm often wrong, but that's rarely the case when it comes to anthologies. So I'll at least try to be less nitpicky. show less

Connie Willis’ Fire Watch collects twelve of her short stories, including the titular “Fire Watch,” “Service for the Burial of the Dead,” “Lost and Found,” “All My Darling Daughters,” and more. Each story includes a brief introduction from Willis in which she describes her inspiration in writing it.

The first story, “Fire Watch,” begins Willis’ Oxford Time Travel series by focusing on a time traveling historian who visits St. Paul’s Cathedral during the Blitz after a computer error changes his assignment from visiting St. Paul to visiting the cathedral named after him. The story includes characters that appear in other stories, such as Mr. Dunworthy and Kivrin Engle, with Kivrin preparing for the assignment she show more undertook in the subsequent novel, Doomsday Book. As Willis originally published this story in 1982, the events are somewhat dated, but that doesn’t affect the emotional weight of them based on the quality of her character-building. Those who enjoy the other books in the Oxford Time Travel series will enjoy seeing how it all began—and enjoy the connections to later novels Blackout and All Clear—while fans of historical fiction or sci-fi will like Willis’ world-building.

“Service for the Burial of the Dead” takes as its inspiration the melodrama of soap operas and Tom Sawyer’s act of attending his own funeral. It’s a deliciously haunting story about guilt and the rumors that pervade small towns. “Lost and Found” relies on biblical verse, specifically the Revelation of John of Patmos, and examines the rise of religious cults preaching the end of days and how they strip the elements from established religion that are of greatest use to their message. Willis wrote “All My Darling Daughters” with Elizabeth Barrett Browning in mind, using an anachronistically traditional boarding school in a futuristic space station to explore the role of abuse on a family.

The stories showcase all the creativity of Willis that her fans have come to love and make Fire Watch a must-read for them. show less

Connie Willis’ Fire Watch begins her Oxford Time Travel series by focusing on a time traveling historian who visits St. Paul’s Cathedral during the Blitz after a computer error changes his assignment from visiting St. Paul to visiting the cathedral named after him. The story includes characters that appear in other stories, such as Mr. Dunworthy and Kivrin Engle, with Kivrin preparing for the assignment she undertook in the subsequent novel, Doomsday Book (pg. 74). As much as the historian muses on the nature of time travel, he also admits “there are no guidelines for historians, and no restrictions either” (pg. 28). Willis explains how the Oxford History Department of the future encodes information using endorphins (pg. 18) show more while describing the destruction of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2007 (pg. 74) as the result of disgruntled communists after the fall of the Soviet Union (pg. 50). As Willis originally published this story in 1982, the events are somewhat dated, but that doesn’t affect the emotional weight of them based on the quality of her character-building. Those who enjoy the other books in the Oxford Time Travel series will enjoy seeing how it all began—and enjoy the connections to later novels Blackout and All Clear—while fans of historical fiction or sci-fi will like Willis’ world-building. show less

[b:Fire Watch|24986|Fire Watch|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1339503624s/24986.jpg|2324159] did an excellent job of establishing the Oxford Time Travel series. It did an even better job of bringing home just how terrifying WWII England was, and how largely damaged and broken London was by the experience. [a:Connie Willis|14032|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1199238234p2/14032.jpg] does a beautiful job of bringing morality and feeling back into history, and breathing life into the experiences and statistics so commonly touted about.

It's chilling and heartbreaking, and makes the rest of the series that much more moving to read.

A collection of short stories.To be honest, I only ever read Fire Watch... The story that started her Blackout/All Clear series. Rushed, but just as good as every other book in that universe.

This was my first Willis read, and I quite enjoyed it. It's a story about time travel, and the main character goes back in time to the Blitz and is put on the fire watch for St. Paul's cathedral (for some kind of Time Travel U degree - it's basically his final exam).

It was good, Willis handles time travel well. Apparently characters from her novels are in this story, so I will look forward to reading it again after I've read those.

I would have probably enjoyed this story more if I hadn't just read a series of stories/novels that seemed to have sucker punched me emotionally. This story doesn't give me a strong emotional reaction, and so I can't say I really enjoyed it more (though I did enjoy the break).

This was my first Willis read, and I quite enjoyed it. It's a story about time travel, and the main character goes back in time to the Blitz and is put on the fire watch for St. Paul's cathedral (for some kind of Time Travel U degree - it's basically his final exam).

It was good, Willis handles time travel well. Apparently characters from her novels are in this story, so I will look forward to reading it again after I've read those.

I would have probably enjoyed this story more if I hadn't just read a series of stories/novels that seemed to have sucker punched me emotionally. This story doesn't give me a strong emotional reaction, and so I can't say I really enjoyed it more (though I did enjoy the break).