Science Fiction

(the s-f book club in Kansas City, which I belong to, and does their thing on zoom) did it for their book club several months ago. I was also able to get Connie to show up and participate. Hooray!

What I liked best about it was how she explained stuff about how she wrote the book. You know the kid, the one who sneaks inside the quarantine line and hangs out, sort of interfering with things? Connie said she realized she needed some way to explain stuff to the reader, and of course didn't want the "As you know, Bob" nonsense, and decided that if she had a 12 year old kid asking questions, that would allow the adults to explain what needed to be explained.

That was utterly fascinating to me. I've read that book at least four times. The very first reading, I wanted to know if her descriptions of the Plague and surrounding events was accurate, so I pulled out a book about the Plague and fact-checked her. No surprise, she had everything absolutely correct.

Have you read Blackout and All Clear? If not, you need to get them and read them, then come back and reread what I'm going to report here. She was in London, doing research in some library for the book, when her husband Courtney came in and said, "Connie, you need to come with me." She resisted, he insisted, and he brought her to a reunion of a group of women who had been in the Blitz, who'd been nurses and such, the very women that are well-described in those two books. Connie talked with them at some length, and at the end, asked them, "What was it like? Was it worth it?" And to a woman they said, "Yes! It was the best time of my life."