A Vist from Royalty: Connie Willis in Batavia

[beamjockey]

A booklet called Neighbors of Batavia just appeared in our mailbox. We're not residents of Batavia, Illinois, but it's a short walk from here, and of course Fermilab has a Batavia address.

Says here that the Batavia Public Library is having a "One Book, One Batavia" campaign, an increasingly common custom, in which everyone in town (who cares to) reads the same book and discusses it. For 2008, it's Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, which bagged her both a Hugo and a Nebula for Best Novel.

So Connie Willis will appear on Thursday, 20 March at noon at the Library, and at 7 PM at Batavia High School. I like the idea of a town honoring science fiction this way, and of course Willis is among the most accomplished of SF writers. Cool.

Comments

[tanac.livejournal.com]

She's also very good friends with one of the librarians at the Batavia Library, which is why they keep getting her to come out for cool stuff. :)

[carolf.livejournal.com]

Very cool. Wish we could be there.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Not only is Connie Willis an accomplished writers, she's at least seventeen kinds of fun. I wish I could be there, too.

[dek9.livejournal.com]

The original paperback cover for this book was so bad that alicebentley printed up wrappers for it that we placed on all of the copies at Stars that said, more or less, "This is not a romance novel, but a really good science fiction book".

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

OMG! I am *so* envious! How very cool of the town to select an SF book to read together. Neat-o. Thanks for the tip, Bill. xoxo

[(Anonymous)]

Well, NJ has honored science fiction this way for "One Book, One New Jersey", but it was FAHRENHEIT 451, which has moved into the realm of "science fiction that people say isn't really science fiction because it's good" (along with BRAVE NEW WORLD and 1984.