Pentapod reviewed Terra Incognita by Connie Willis (duplicate)
Review of 'Terra Incognita' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Connie Willis is an author I will always read and almost always enjoy. This is a collection of three older novellas I hadn't read before; they're not really connected in theme except perhaps that in a general way they are exploring potential futures.
The first and longest is sort of a western SF setting; surveyors on an alien planet trying to do their job, but also having their exploits documented as "pioneering heroes" of sorts back home. When a new person arrives who is a "fan" of their work and has some episodes of the show based on them, they see themselves through the eyes of back-home media for the first time and it leads to some reevaluation of their relationships. This story was also interesting in a couple of other ways; first because it is very ambiguous about the genders of several of the characters and I was most …
Connie Willis is an author I will always read and almost always enjoy. This is a collection of three older novellas I hadn't read before; they're not really connected in theme except perhaps that in a general way they are exploring potential futures.
The first and longest is sort of a western SF setting; surveyors on an alien planet trying to do their job, but also having their exploits documented as "pioneering heroes" of sorts back home. When a new person arrives who is a "fan" of their work and has some episodes of the show based on them, they see themselves through the eyes of back-home media for the first time and it leads to some reevaluation of their relationships. This story was also interesting in a couple of other ways; first because it is very ambiguous about the genders of several of the characters and I was most of the way through the story before I figured out that one of them was in fact female. And second, because it includes that the company funding the survey has to comply with very strict guidelines around the indigenous residents and deals with that in a detailed and often rather tongue-in-cheek way.
The second story is a look at intellectual property and what a world would look like when it's so easy to recreate the digital likeness of famous actors from the past, that nobody wants to see any new ones any more.
And the third story is about a very smart young woman who absolutely does not want to go into the interstellar service yet is inexplicably (to her) accepted into it anyway, despite the fact she never even applied.
I enjoyed them all in different ways, probably the last one best. I do think Willis' full length novels are my preference as it gives her time and space to tell a more detailed story in full length, but I enjoy her writing in any form.
