Connie Willis, Inside Job (Subterranean Press, 2005)
"Don't judge a book by its cover" is a saying that everyone has heard of. I've seen many books whose lovely cover art is betrayed by the glop inside; there are just as many whose lousy cover art is excused by the solid writing within.
This book falls somewhere in the latter middle range. The cover isn't a total loss, but it carries a distinct cheesiness that would have stopped me from buying it. It's overwhelmingly purple, for one thing, and while I like purple, this cover has way too much of it. A crystal ball supported by two mannequin hands sits in the center of the cover, surrounded by glass obelisks, crystals, and arcane symbols. In the crystal ball is a man's face, in grayscale. The two glass obelisks also have faces in them, women's faces, one in sharp focus, the other distorted and color-washed in blue and red. It's a weird cover, with too much clashing for attention, and a circular distortion has been placed around the center of the image, making it even less appealing.
Fortunately, what's inside is much better. Rob, a professional skeptic, and his "too good to be true" (his words) partner, Kildy, are searching for proof that a channeler called Ariaura is a fraud. To tell you any more, unfortunately, would ruin the book, as it runs along a relatively simple and shallow plot arc.
"Before I became successful," Connie Willis says in an interview on scifi.com, "I was unhappy about . . . telling people I was a writer and having them say, 'Have you ever sold anything?" Now I'm unhappy about . . . telling people I'm a writer and having them say, 'Well, I've never heard of you.'"
I would guess that the less-than-complex plot would be one reason why Willis hasn't hit national notice just yet. She writes because she has something to say, not for entertainment, and that doesn't always go over well with the American public. In other novellas, she's taken on "the Civil War and the Middle Ages and women's issues . . . [b]ut I haven't even started yet on near-death experiences and . . . the desperate importance of irrelevance."
The back jacket blurb calls Willis "the master of the science fiction novella." I'm generally leery of handing out the title of "master" to anyone. Heinlein was a master. Herbert and Asimov were masters. Too many jacket blurbs append that title to new authors in hopes of selling the book; it's a watered-down term these days.
It is, however, reassuring to see that Willis loves Heinlein as much as I do: "I loved him . . . because his characters were so smart and because his futures were so lived in and because there was so much humor in his books . . . I hope some of those things show up in my own writing."
Indeed they do. The characters in Inside Job are definitely smart, and occasionally smart-asses, from the beginning to the end. Rob and Kildy run a magazine called the Jaundiced Eye, which does "hard-hitting exposés" on various New Age frauds. It's a refreshing change from most books to find the main characters are unabashedly intelligent, with no obvious "dumb moment" flaws in the cognitive area of their personalities.
As far as her futures being lived in, this book seems to be set in present-day America, so it doesn't quite match that goal. However, the California setting she uses is well-displayed, if a bit thin in spots on supporting detail. She uses brand names that mean nothing to me; I can only assume that they're what rich people in the "Hollywood set" wear, but the subtleties of that fashion, if any, are beyond me. Telling me someone wore a "Vera Wang watch" means nothing to me. What does a Vera Wang watch look like? I haven't the faintest idea.
Her last stated goal is to bring humor to her books, and that succeeds nicely in Inside Job. As I mentioned earlier, the two main characters are more often than not smart-asses as they try to prove that the psychic they're investigating is a fraud. There's plenty of the dry, cynical humor that I like. Anyone who knows Heinlein's style will recognize a distinct similarity in Willis' writing.
Her style has brought her multiple awards: six Hugos, six Nebulas, and one John W. Campbell Award. That's a fairly impressive list for an author I've never heard of, and almost earns her that blurb title of "master" all by itself. Mind you, I've only read one of her books so far, so she may well really have earned that title in truth. I'll have to read more of her work to decide on that.
In the meanwhile, I'm proud to add this one to my shelf, and glad I got the chance to read and review it. I think Inside Job is well worth picking up for anyone who likes skeptics, dry humor, and exposing frauds.
The scifi.com interview quoted from above can be found here.
A great list of other works by Connie Willis can be found over here.
A biography of Connie Willis and list of awards can be found this way.
