Impossible Things

Locus Award 1994.

Winner of six Nebula and two Hugo awards for her fiction, Connie Willis is acclaimed for her gifted imagination and bold invention. Here are eleven of her finest stories, surprising tales in which the impossible becomes real, the real becomes impossible, and strangeness lurks at every turn.

The end of the world comes not with a bang but a series of whimpers over many years in "The Last of the Winnebagos."

The terror of pain and dying gives birth to a startling truth about the nature of the stars, a principle known as the "Schwarzschild Radius."

In "Spice Pogrom," an outrageous colony in outer space becomes the setting for a screwball comedy of bizarre complications, mistaken identities, far-too-friendly aliens – and even true love.

A distraught woman obsessed with the past learns that the simplest choices can lead to madness and death in "Chance."

In "Jack," the streets of London at the height of the Blitz bring out the courage and cowardice in humans... and in creatures of the night.