Bellwether

By: Connie Willis

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Audie Award, Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2010

Pop culture, chaos theory, and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula Award - winning author of Doomsday Book.

Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennett O'Reilly works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions - with the unintended help of the errant, forgetful, and careless office assistant Flip.

©1996 Connie Willis (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Connie Willis deploys the apparatus of science fiction to illuminate character and relationships, and her writing is fresh, subtle and deeply moving." ( New York Times Book Review)
"Willis's story builds slowly but is realistic and engrossing." ( Midwest Book Review)

Pattern Recognition" Meets "Office Space

Fans of William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" will see a lot of similarity here, in that our heroine is working to understand the evolution of trends in human society. And fans of "Office Space" will see a lot of similarity between that movie's Initech company and our heroine's Hi-Tek laboratory. The blend is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

Some Hi-Tek employees' names are allegories -- one incompetent assistant is named "Desiderata" and another "Flip" (for the frequent flip of her hair, or, as we learn later, maybe something else). The clueless laboratory director -- who falls for every new management fad that comes along -- is simply named "Management."

Chapters begin with just a little background on the research topic at hand, and these entries make the book's science content accessible to a general audience. I gave it four stars because I thought that these introductory segments were at times a little too long or detailed. But all in all a good book, and I couldn't put it down -- had to listen to it in one sitting.

A Research Scientist Comedy of Manners

Sociologist Sandra Foster is studying fads at a Boulder, Colorado company called Hi-Tek. She's focusing on the early 1920s hair-bobbing boom in her attempt to discover what triggers such trends. While Hi-Tek wants her to find the answer so they can make and exploit their own fad, Sandra wants to find it simply because she wants to understand why people "all suddenly decide to play the same game or wear the same clothes or believe the same thing.” Her quest is difficult because people succumb to herd mentality unconsciously and because behind any fad is an endless set of variables, each complexly interacting with others. In this, she frequently notes, fads resemble scientific breakthroughs. As a result, Willis' short novel Bellwether (1996) is packed with myriad examples of both fads (the hula-hoop, Barbie, virtual pets, coffeehouses, crossword puzzles, Ouija boards, etc.) and scientific epiphanies (penicillin, the periodic table, the benzene ring, the big bang, continental drift, x-rays, relativity, etc.).

Complicating Sandra's research is Hi-Tek management's constant interference with its scientists, forcing on them lengthy and opaque funding forms, absurd interpersonal relationship building activities, new acronyms and dress codes, and so on. Still more chaotic is the unconscious sabotage of the Hi-Tek mail clerk from hell, "Flip." Ignorant, self-centered, rude, lazy, and obnoxious, Flip is an anti-guardian angel who, like a warped avatar of Robert Browning's Pippa, spreads gloom, destruction, and chaos wherever she goes. Flip is a creature of fads, dying her hair blue, branding her forehead with the lower case letter "i," wearing an outfit that looks like but is not a waitress uniform, and so on. Thanks to Flip delivering the wrong package, Sandra meets Bennett O'Reilly, who, despite being a chaos theorist studying the transmission of information among monkeys because chaos theory is no longer trendy, is immune to fads. And chaos theory soon becomes part of Sandra's research: “Fads are a facet of the chaotic system of society.”

Willis' novel is fun, full of talk of fads, scientific breakthroughs, chaos patterns, human foibles, and contemporary American culture. She has an amused and accurate ear and eye for how adults and kids talk and live and for how scientists work and think. Sandra's frustration with Flip is comical: "This is just what I needed, to discuss the sex life of a person with a pierced nose and duct tape underwear."

Three flaws mar the novel for me. First, it pushes an anti-anti-smoking agenda, as Sandra says that people who try to ban smoking from public places are bigots following an "aversion trend" which is going to die out sooner than McCarthyism did. To equate smoking with eating chocolate cheesecake and reading books, to make light of the dangers of secondhand smoke, and to imply that anti-smokers are cruel, morally righteous fad-followers all feels off. Second, Willis makes it too easy for us to guess too soon the true roles of Flip (and the assistant she hires) and the true feelings of Bennett, so that it is not believable that Sandra (who is quite intelligent) would not have caught on by the time we do. Third, as a result I began feeling impatient waiting for the climax of what is a short novel, and, indeed, I bet the novel could have been a novella but Willis probably wanted to elongate it to work in all her cool fad and scientific breakthrough nuggets.

The reader, Kate Reading, does a fine job with all the voices; she's especially good at talking like rude, bored, impatient, and ignorant waitpersons and store workers. And her efficient, weathered Shirl is savory.

Of what genre is Bellwether? Although Willis has won numerous Hugos and Nebulas, this book is more fiction about science than science fiction. Perhaps it is a romantic comedy of research scientist manners. If you like Willis' humor in To Say Nothing of the Dog and or if you are curious about fads and scientific breakthroughs treated in a light comic light, you would like this book, but I prefer her more substantial and moving Domesday Book.

Fun facts with a charming romance

Can't remember why I picked this title but very glad I did. I enjoyed the facts in between the 'action' and having spent a little time in Boulder Co. on a teaching exchange it was fun to visit again through the story.

Great fun & makes you think

As always, Ms Willis makes you think while telling a great story. If you've never tried her stories this is a good place to start.

What a fun, smart book!

This was suggested by Audible and I'm so glad I found it. :) A fun story with a bit of scientific education and romance thrown in.

yawn

I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. I would put this book in the safe category, no cursing, action, romance or suspense. The fads held my interest and growing up in the 60's & 70's some of the fads did bring back memories and made me chuckle, but this book was just a little to slow and uneventful for me.

Hillarious

If you could sum up Bellwether in three words, what would they be?

Laugh out loud

What was one of the most memorable moments of Bellwether?

when sheep escaped

What does Kate Reading bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Kate was wonderful. Her voice actually does an eye roll so well!!

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Made me laugh out loud several times.Warning, be careful where you listen or you might find people looking at you strangely

It's ok

A science fiction novel? Great, sign me up!

Wait. IS this science fiction?

I started listening to it, and was confused about whether I was listening to a novel or to a work of nonfiction. I came within a hair's breadth of stopping the book and requesting a refund from Audible. It definitely starts out fairly slow, and a great deal of my dissatisfaction was not knowing what it was.

This is a novel of office antics, with a bit of romance thrown in, overlaid by a moral lesson and interspersed liberally with random facts.

This is a story of a woman at a dysfunctional office environment, but the office workers are scientists, researchers. The main character is a sociologist studying trends and fads. The overall lesson is, I believe, that people are like sheep (a rather overused metaphor) and blindly follow each other into doing stupid things. We should think for ourselves. Since the main character studies fads, the novel is frequently interrupted by a description of some historical fad or other, from mahjong to rubik's cubes. It reminds me of Les Miserables and how Victor Hugo would squeeze in full essays on various topics.

The plot was rather predictable, for the most part. I also feel some disquiet, wondering if the author has conservative leanings. The villain tends to wear miniskirts or other revealing clothing. Frustrations are expressed about how animal rights activisits would interfere with using dogs from the pound for (non-harmful) experiments. Dislike of smoking is referred to as a "fad". Perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

Anyway, once I understood that the book was an office drama with the protagonist verbalizing random fad facts, it was easier to listen to. It was an ok story, but certainly not a great one.

Love all Connie’s books!

Just heard this again and it wasn’t a bit boring the 2nd time around! Maybe there will be a 3rd time!

Really Enjoyed it!

This book was both smart and also fun! I learned some things and also laughed a lot.