Once again – as with much of her most deeply felt work – the enabling sf instrument is Time Travel, though in this case via a psychic linkage between a contemporary woman and General Robert E Lee (1807-1870), while at the same time the male protagonist increasingly, and without a breath of frivolity, seems to be taking on the psychic attributes of General Lee's famous horse, Traveller (himself the protagonist of Traveller by Richard Adams). But it seemed clear that both Willis and Felice were treating their collaborations as jeux d'esprit, and Willis's first solo novel, Lincoln's Dreams ( 1987), aimed successfully at a very much higher degree of seriousness, winning the John W Campbell Memorial Award.
Light Raid ( 1989) with Felice also skids helter-skelter through an sf environment, in this case a balkanized Ruined Earth America fighting off Canadian royalists, featuring the adventures en route to spunky maturity of a young female protagonist much like those found in Robert A Heinlein's less attractive books. A later novella, "The Last of the Winnebagos" (July 1988 Asimov's), won Willis both the Hugo and the Nebula "At the Rialto" (October 1989 Omni) won a Nebula "Even the Queen" (April 1992 Asimov's) won a Hugo and a Nebula for Short Story and "Death on the Nile" (March 1993 Asimov's) won a Hugo for Short Story.Īs a novelist, Willis began slowly with the relatively lightweight Water Witch ( 1982) with Cynthia Felice, set on a sand planet where the ability to dowse for water is a precious gift (see ESP). Among other tales of interest in this first collection are Daisy, in the Sun (November 1979 Galileo 1991 chap), "A Letter from the Clearys" (July 1982 Asimov's), which won a Nebula, "The Sidon in the Mirror" (April 1983 Asimov's) and the comic "Blued Moon" (January 1984 Asimov's). Most of her best work of the 1980s was in short-story form her first book, Fire Watch (coll 19 chap) (for this story see below), assembled a remarkable range of tales, mostly from the 1980s, "All My Darling Daughters" – published as an original in Fire Watch because its language and theme were still unacceptable in the US magazine market of 1980 – is a significantly harsh tale of alienation and Sex set in a boarding school in an L5 orbit, where the male students rape small animals (apparently products of Genetic Engineering) which have vagina-like organs, making them scream in pain and the female protagonist tries to make sense of her hyperbolic adolescence in terms strongly reminiscent of J D Salinger (1919-2010).
She began publishing sf with "Santa Titicaca" for Worlds of Fantasy (Winter 1970/1971 #3), but appeared only intermittently in the field until the early 1980s, when she became a full-time author, winning several awards almost immediately. Working name of US teacher and author Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis (1945- ).
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