Connie Willis : Short Fiction

This short story centers Daisy, a girl of fifteen experiencing puberty. She has difficulties remembering details of her past, unless she is in the presence of Ron, though she isn’t entirely sure on his name. When she is around Ron, she will often become angry with him, as she feels uncomfortable in his presence; he is constantly trying to woo her. When she shouts at him, she often finds herself saying things that she hadn’t remembered before. This starts a series of dreams and recollections.

Through these recollections, the reader learns that Daisy and her brother David were sent to Canada by their parents to live with their Grandmother. This is because Canada gets less sunlight during winter months, and the sun is soon to go supernova, killing all life on earth. David reads much into these phenomena, and is terrified of the end of everything, but Daisy, who has nightmares about golden rings and golden bears, has no fear. She is complacent to the sun because she thins nobody will remember dying after it happens.

Daisy’s grandmother lets Ron take Daisy for a drive in his top-down convertible, and she has another recollection about her brother and her, looking at one of his books. In the book, photos of the sun’s umbra and flares show her that her dreams have always been of the sun. her brother then suggests that they would remember dying, since memories may be attached to the atoms in the brain, not just the cells. At the end, Daisy thinks that they have all already died, and allows Ron to woo her, as she realizes that Ron may not be Ron at all, but Ra, the Sun God, who will take all of them, no matter what.

Written by Austin Huber

2014

This novella features Jack, a journalist on an assignment at an archaeological site. It is never expressly stated, but contextually it appears that the setting is far in the distant future, on a different planet called Colchis.

Jack explains how he was assigned to this position, and how he would “burn off” stories about a curse that he made up. Anytime there was any instance of danger, he would exaggerate it and connect it to this curse. This continues until some of the archaeologists, including a woman named Evelyn, become violently sick. Jack tries to get their story, but is interrupted by a man he works more closely with, Lacau. He quarantines Jack because he believes he has been exposed to a virus. Jack is quarantined, but only after sneaking in and speaking with Evelyn, whose face is covered with waxy honeycomb-like growths. She can barely speak, but a servant—the servants are called “beys”—speaks of a curse.

Eventually, Jack and Lacau determine that the illness is not a virus, but a poison. For a short while, Jack believes that the poison was administered to the team when they entered the dig site and found a treasure. This gives the illusion of a curse over the site. However, after several harrowing interviews with Evelyn, they begin to understand that the poison was given to them by the Sandalman, a member of a group of people called the Suhundulim. He was trying to protect their treasure, which is the embalmed body of a Bey princess. It is so beautiful that Lacau admits to being willing to kill for it. The Sandalman gives the team poisoned bottles of Coca-Cola to get rid of them.

Jack agrees that the treasure must be saved, and assists Lacau in carrying it to a ship so it could leave the planet. While they are doing this, the Sandalman attacks with a flammable substance, burying Lacau and all the other archaeologists in flame. Jack escapes with a bey, presumably the one who gave Evelyn the poison. He writes the story while continuing to write articles for his job.

Written by Austin Huber

Set in early 2010’s Phoenix, photojournalist David comes across a jackal killed on the side of a “multiway,” and reports its death to “the Society.” It is revealed slowly that the Society is the new name for the Humane Society, who has risen to a totalitarian entity because of a virus that has killed all the dogs in the world. It is now extremely illegal to injure any animal, and to enforce this, many states have outlawed large vehicles, Recreational Vehicles like Winnebagos in particular.

David had always been trying to get a good picture of a dog before they went extinct, but he has found that a dog’s face never comes out well on camera. He takes photos of their owners instead, where he claims he sees the dog’s emotions revealed. David’s own dog had been killed by a sixteen-year-old new driver named Katie; the dog had been one of the last 100 dogs in the country at the time. After the incident with the Jackal, David goes to see Katie for ambiguous reasons.

As the Society works to find who had hit the jackal, David works to sidestep the blame from himself and Katie, and from an old couple who own the last Winnebago legally on the road. Then, David finds evidence in his photos that it was indeed the old couple that hit the jackal. To help them, he works with Katie, and finds a picture of a truck hitting the jackal after it had already been killed. He saves that photo and destroys the others, hopefully sealing that the truck would be to blame, which is less of a problem because the driver was carrying vital water to Phoenix.

At the end of the story, David admits to Katie that he came to her house to take a secret picture of her, to capture the face of his dog that he was never able to get. He tells her that when she hit the dog, it was running across the street to him, because it always ran right at a camera when it saw one. It follows then that the accident was really David’s fault. The two reconcile.

Written by Austin Huber

This short story centers on Dr. Ruth Baringer, a quantum physicist, who is attending the 1988 International Congress of Quantum Physicists (ICQP) annual meeting at the Rialto Hotel in Hollywood, California. After struggling with the desk assistant who does not have any record of her reservation, Ruth continues to have difficulties finding any of the panels she has come to watch. Most of the conference rooms are either empty, locked, or have another group in them, even though they are scheduled for those places and times.

Ruth is there to watch a Dr. Gedanken make a keynote address about quantum mechanics, entropy, and passion, but she keeps running into David, another physicist who tries over and over to woo her. Over the days of the ICQP meeting, he takes her on a walk of Hollywood Boulevard, takes her to a very expensive breakfast, and invites her to see some classic films. All the while, he seems very unconcerned about the panels, which offends Ruth because she wants to take her vocation seriously.

Toward the conclusion, Ruth gets on a call with another physicist, her friend Darlene. She tells her all of her concerns, and Darlene tries to get her to relax about it. This leads Ruth to realize that she is in some sort of quantum state, in which the ICQP meeting is actually being held at the Hollywood movie theater, and that she should take up David’s offer if she wants to see Dr. Gedanken speak. She goes to the theater, purchases a ticket for a movie with three separate endings, chooses one randomly, and enters to see David, Darlene, Dr. Gedanken and many others from the ICQP waiting to see the film. She sits with them to watch.

Written by Austin Huber

Set in London during World War Two, Jack Harker works as a night warden on a lookout for bombing incidents. He and his fellow compatriots are dispatched to assist in the event of a nearby building being hit, with the intent to save as many lives as possible. The story opens when a new warden is hired, Jack Settle.

Jack Settle is very young, extremely thin, with sunken, deathly cheeks and a very uncanny ability to find people buried in rubble, both alive and dead. Throughout the story, he becomes one of the most prolific “bodysniffers” in the job. Jack Harker slowly becomes more suspicious of Jack Settle, for many reasons. He refuses to eat or drink anything, and lies about having a day job, instead only working throughout the night and leaving his post anytime it is light out. All these quirks, along with the fact that the people he finds buried often die later of blood loss, makes Jack Harker fear that there is much more to Jack Settle than he lets on.

Jack Settle helps dig out a young woman named Mina from an incident; she is perfectly conscious and uninjured at the time of her disinterment, but just before she is taken to a hospital, Jack Harker sees Jack Settle stooping over her sleeping figure. Later, in the hospital, Jack Harker learns that Mina has died from blood loss. This leads Jack Harker to finally understand, without ever saying the word, that Jack Settle is a vampire, using the destruction of the war to easily access victims to drink blood from.

Jack Harker enters the British Army and is sent to North Africa. He is injured by shrapnel in the neck, and while in the hospital, he learns that a bomb had killed Jack Settle, by sending a large bit of wood through his chest. As the story closes, Jack Harker refuses some food, while looking suspiciously at the blood IV he is receiving from an unnamed donor.

Written by Austin Huber

This short story centers Dr. Sarah Wright, a professor of Paleontology at an unnamed university. In the beginning, it is made clear that she is having a struggle maintaining motivation for her job, as she ponders an advertisement for pilot lessons. Her colleagues, Dr. Othniel and Chuck, her teaching assistant, are wary of a departmental reception with a new Dr. Jerry King that’s soon to happen, as the department is obviously underfunded. Dr. Robert Walker experiences this firsthand, as he is constantly given parking tickets. Dr. Albertson, another professor, is heavily influenced by an unnamed film, and orders all his students to tear out the introduction of their textbooks, because of the outdated information.

The meeting with the comical Dr. King happens; he is there to improve the “relevantness” of the paleontology department. Throughout the story, Dr. King makes many similar errors, using words like “impactization” and “encompassate.” The bad grammar influences Dr. Albertson, who begins to use similar terms in his class, but Dr. Wright slowly becomes more and more upset with Dr. King.

The end comes when Dr. Wright approaches Dr. Walker, and tries to get him to assist in removing Dr. King for his damaging practices. As Dr. Walker is more concerned with his inability to stave off parking tickets, Dr. Wright leaves, content to take matters into her own hands. After she leaves, Dr. Walker comes across Chuck, who explains that she has left for good, and that the department should “watch out for falling rocks.” It follows that she has decided to become a pilot, at an institution where there is free parking.

Written by Austin Huber

This staged academic essay is written by an unnamed fictional author, who has a goal to describe the life and implications of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. The essay reads exactly like an academic paper in Chicago style, complete with footnotes throughout which both cite sources and provide further context, or in some places, the opinions of the author. As there is no plot recounted in a linear fashion, it can be difficult to parse out a story. While reading though, the reader may become aware that in the story world of this essay, all of the events in H.G. Welles’s The War of the Worlds actually happened; aliens did invade with tripod machines, and were defeated by natural causes of Earth.

The author appears to be describing these events and their effects on the literature world, but is at the same time focusing on Emily Dickinson’s poetry and how it was used to great effect against the aliens. This is because the aliens were discovered to have targeted Earth because they themselves were poets, and they wanted to explore another world of poetry. Dickinson, who was either already dead or dying during these events, had poetry that was disagreeable to the aliens, with all her unique inflections.

Written by Austin Huber

This novella centers Tom and his wife Cath, two Americans who have recently came into a lot of money and have traveled back to London for the first time in twenty years. They have come back to meet up with many of their old friends for a conference, and especially to meet Elliot and his wife Sara, two Londoners, and a character only known as “The Old Man,” an eccentric old man who acted as their guide years before.

Tom loves the London Tube but Cath refuses to ride it, preferring the taxis. As Tom rides the tube to find tickets to a play, he is suddenly blasted with high winds that smell strange, and this repeats in many of the tube’s stations. He then spends several hours throughout the day attempting to find the source of these frightening winds, as he also recognizes that he’s the only one he can see who feels them.

At the same time, Cath, who Tom understands is slightly clairvoyant in that her gut reactions to things are always correct, surmises that Sara is having an affair against Elliot. Tom has a hard time believing her.

Eventually, Tom learns that the winds are latent feelings of the bombs that hit these train stations during World War 2, trapped in the air that is stagnant when kept underground. At a play, Sara confirms that she has been having an affair, and they all storm out. On the street, Tom learns that Cath has always felt these winds, which is why she prefers the taxi. She explains that the winds aren’t the result of bombings, but the winds of the future, affecting the old and the sensitive, reminding them that nothing is permanent. Tom has a revelation about the number of despairing people he’s seen throughout the day, and realizes that all of them felt the winds too, including the Old Man. Tom and Cath promise to stay with each other, as they take the escalator out and up from underground.

Written by Austin Huber