Connie Willis

A mediados del siglo xxi, la joven estudiante Kirvin Engle se prepara para hacer un viaje en el tiempo. Junto con otros científicos, pretende recabar información de primera mano sobre una de las épocas mas oscuras de la historia de la Humanidad: la Edad Media. Aparentemente, todo ha salido bien. Kirvin se encuentra en una nevada campiña inglesa en pleno siglo xvi. Lo que no sabe es que, en 2045, el tecnico que marco las coordenadas de su viaje ha caido fulminado, presa de una extraña plaga que parece asolar la poblacion de ambos tiempos. La historiadora esta atrapada en plena epoca de la Peste Negra, y su venida es interpretada como un acto de Dios; creen que es un angel protector llegado del Cielo para evitar el Juicio Final.Connie Willis, ganadora de varios premios Hugo y Nebula, ha enganchado a un sinfin de lectores con sus novelas que cumplen con creces el topico de instruir deleitando, como en El espiritu de la Navidad (publicado por La Factoria de Ideas) o en El Libro del dia del Juicio Final.

En esta impresionante y excepcional antología se recogen historias entrañables que muestran una sensibilidad extraordinaria y una conmovedora ternura pero también la capacidad satírica y crítica de la autora de El libro del dia del Juicio Final, con el que obtuvo los premios Hugo, Nebula y Locus, galardones que tambien han conseguido varias de las apasionantes historias aqui seleccionadas.

Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist specializing in near-death experiences. She is about to get help from a new doctor with the power to give her the chance to get as close to death as anyone can.A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Joannas first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined - so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why that place is so hauntingly familiar.But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid.Yet just when Joanna thinks she understands, shes in for the biggest surprise of all - a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page.

Its the Hollywood of the future, where movie-making has been computerized and live-action films are a thing of the past. Its a Hollywood where Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe are starring together in A Star is Born, and if you dont like the ending, you can change it with the stroke of a key. A Hollywood of warmbodies and sim-sex, of drugs and special effects, where anything is possible. Except for what one starry-eyed young woman wants to do: dance in the movies. Its an impossible dream, but Alis is not willing to give up. With a little magic and a lot of luck, she just might get her happy ending after all.

Winner of seven Nebula and eleven Hugo awards, Connie Willis is one of the most acclaimed and imaginative authors of our time. Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction. Here in one volume are twelve of her greatest stories, including double award-winner "Fire Watch", set in the universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which a time-travelling student learns one of historys hardest lessons. In "A Letter from the Clearys", a routine message from distant friends shatters the fragile world of a beleaguered family. In "The Sidon in the Mirror", a mutant with the unconscious urge to become other people finds himself becoming both killer and victim.Disturbing, revealing and provocative, this remarkable collection of short fiction brings together some of the best work of an incomparable writer whose ability to amaze, confound and enlighten never fails.

Winner of six Nebula and two Hugo awards for her fiction, Connie Willis is acclaimed for her gifted imagination and bold invention. Here are eleven of her finest stories, surprising tales in which the impossible becomes real, the real becomes impossible, and strangeness lurks at every turn.The end of the world comes not with a bang but a series of whimpers over many years in "The Last of the Winnebagos."The terror of pain and dying gives birth to a startling truth about the nature of the stars, a principle known as the "Schwarzschild Radius."In "Spice Pogrom," an outrageous colony in outer space becomes the setting for a screwball comedy of bizarre complications, mistaken identities, far-too-friendly aliens - and even true love.

Sandra Foster studies fads - from Barbie dolls o the grunge look - how they start and what they mean. Bennett OReilly is a chaos theorist studying monkey group behaviour. They both work for the HiTek corporation, strangers until a misdelivered package brings them together. Its a moment of synchronicity - if not serendipity - which leads them into a chaotic system of their own, complete with a million-dollar research grant, caffe latte, tattoos, and a series of unlucky coincidences that leaves Bennett monkeyless, fundless, and nearly jobless. Sandra intercedes with a flock of sheep and an idea for a joint project. (After all, what better animal to study both chaos theory and the herd mentality that so often characterizes human behaviour?) But scientific discovery is rarely straightforward and never simple, and Sandra and Bennett have to endure a series of setbacks, heartbreaks, dead ends, and disasters before they find their ultimate answer...

Ned Henry elige para su merecido descanso un verano en la Inglaterra victoriana de 1888, un paraíso para alguien que ha viajado incansablemente a través del tiempo en busca del «tocón del pájaro del obispo». Sin embargo, nada sucede según lo previsto y Henry se ve envuelto en un complejo enredo, en el seno de un mundo caótico donde la distancia más corta entre dos puntos no es necesariamente la línea recta.

For Jeff Johnston, a young historical researcher for a Civil War novelist, reality is redefined on a bitter cold night near the close of a lingering winter. He meets Annie, an intense and lovely young woman suffering from vivid, intense nightmares. Haunted by the dreamer and her unrelenting dreams, Jeff leads Annie on an emotional odyssey through the heartland of the Civil War in search of a cure. On long-silenced battlefields their relationship blossoms - two obsessed lovers linked by unbreakable chains of history, torn by a duty that could destroy them both. Suspenseful, moving and highly compelling, Lincolns Dreams is a novel of rare imaginative power that strikes a chord deep within the hearts of us all.

Planetary surveyors Fin and Carson battle hostile terrain, bureaucratic red tape, and renegade "planet crashers" in this latest novella by the talented author of Doomsday Book. Connie Willis continues to demonstrate her endless versatility in this archly written satire, which is both a love story and a shameless expose of the dark side of political correctness.

En Tránsito Joanna Lander es una psicóloga que investiga las ECM. Su encuentro con el neurólogo Richard Wright ha de permitirle simular clínicamente ese tipo de experiencias con el uso de drogas psicoactivas. Pero los sujetos del experimento del doctor Wright ven cosas completamente distintas de lo esperado, y Joanna decide someterse al experimento para conocer directamente una ECM.

From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel... Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier. But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right--not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself.

Sandra Foster estudia el significado y la dinámica de las modas: Bennett profundiza en la teoría del caos a través de la conducta de un grupo de monos. Aunque trabajan juntos, no se conocen hasta el dia en que Bennett se queda sin monos y casi sin trabajo. Sandra le ayuda con una propuesta conjunta: analizar un rebaño de ovejas, un animal que ejemplifica la teoria del caos y la conducta humana ante las modas.

Agrupa seis cuentos de Connie Willis, ganadora de varios premios Hugo y Nebula. La autora ha enganchado a un sinfín de lectores con sus novelas, que cumplen el tópico de «instruir deleitando». En est

Traducción de Rafael Marín