Subject: Review: "Bellwether" by Connie Willis

From: Anoop Sarkar <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 19:40:43 EST

Bellwether by Connie Willis
	Review Copyright 1999 Anoop Sarkar

I have read a few short stories by Connie Willis -- "At the Rialto" was
one excellent example -- but I was unsure of picking up a novel by her
since I don't usually have the patience for long time travel or
alternative history plots which seem to be the themes behind her most
popular novels. So it was with some trepidation that I accepted a friend's
recommendation and started on "Bellwether."  I'm glad that I did: this was
one of those novels that reads so easily that I could finish it in one
sitting.

The setting is not futuristic but a very commonplace 1996 research lab.
Sandra Foster studies fads and trends obsessively, trying to find out why
certain activities with `low ability thresholds' or merchandising catch on
for a brief period and then die out. Her life, and indeed the whole plot
of this book, revolves around acquiring funding for her research. Like
most researchers, the funding bureaucracy takes up 90% of her time. She
even does research on getting funding to do research.  A chance encounter
with a fellow researcher in her lab who recently lost his funding for the
study of chaos theory leads her closer to a scientific theory of fads. But
can she retain her funding or her sanity before she makes her final
discovery?

Like all caricatures, this book overstates its case about the contribution
of pure chance to scientific breakthroughs. While it contains an
impressive collection of cases where a new scientific discovery happened
simply because of an accident; a vast consipiracy in a chaotic system,
this is presented as the only `true' kind of breakthrough. But this is a
minor quibble. Connie Willis inserts the most fascinating collection of
fads and accidental scientific breakthroughs.  Some of these should be
familiar to everyone who has read `inspirational' science books for kids.

In fact, the `Bellwether' theory as it is developed in the book has more
to do with writing a novel than predictions in the real world. But the
theory as implemented here does result in a wonderful story about
scientific speculation and research. Good hard-sf in my book. A further
tour-de-force is that each chapter (there are about 50 of them) starts
with a description of a different short-lived fad from time periods
ranging from the 14th to the late 20th century.

One of my favorite fads from the book:

>> mah-jongg (1922-24) -- American game fad inspired by the ancient
Chinese tiles game. As played by Americans, it was a sort of cross between
rummy and dominoes involving building walls and then breaking them down,
and `catching the moon from the bottom of the sea.' There were
enthusiastic calls of `Pung!' and `Chow!' and much clattering of ivory
tiles. Players dressed up in Oriental robes (sometimes, if the players
were unclear on the concept of China, these were Japanese kimonos) and
served tea. Although superseded by the crossword puzzle craze and contract
bridge, mah-jongg continued to be popular among Jewish matrons until the
1960s. <<

Chaos theory, the main subject of this book, was also an emerging fad in
the scientific community around 1996, when this book was published.  I
remember taking a course on Recursion Theory in 1996 taught by a brilliant
professor of mathematical logic, and a young student raising his hand in
the first class asking impetuously whether the course would cover any
chaos theory. The professor blinked twice and answered in the negative
silently cursing to himself, I'm sure, about fads.

Reviewed: 1999/11/24
Anoop Sarkar 
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~anoop/

%A Connie Willis
%T Bellwether
%I Bantam Spectra Book
%D 1996
%G ISBN: 0553375628 (pb)
%P 247
%K science-fiction