Josh Mcdonald's Reviews > Terra Incognita: Three Novellas

I picked this up recently because I needed something to read on a plane trip, and because Connie Willis is one of my favorite authors and I could count on it being a good read. This book is a collection of three novellas, one of which I had read once before but kind of wanted to revisit anyway.

The first novella, Uncharted Territory, is in some way the most classically Connie Willis story of the bunch. It is the somewhat meandering story of a survey team exploring a distant planet and having to deal with political and bureaucratic absurdities; a potential romantic triangle which might actually be a quadrangle or even penta-tangle; and the general unpredictabilities that life tends to throw at them. It's entertaining and often ridiculous in the way Willis's works so often are, highlighting the fact that the Universe always has new complexities to throw at us and ultimately even the smartest and most capable people are just making it all up as they go along.

The third story is the shortest and, for me, the most forgettable. It's an enjoyable enough tale of a high-school student who finds herself selected for an interstellar space-cadet program that she never applied for and is desperate to get out of. It's a good little story and enjoyable, but ultimately was not as satisfying as the other two.

The second story in the collection is Remake. It's the longest, the one I've read once before, and it remains my favorite of the bunch. It should be required reading for anyone who loves classic cinema.

This story imagines a future version of Hollywood in which "new" films are digitally created remakes of preexisting favorites. The story was originally published in 1994 and is more relevant today than ever before. In the end it is a wonderful tribute to why movies continue to inspire us and capture our imagination, and it leaves us with the hope that as bad as the industry might be there will always be those who "get it" and will keep the magic alive.