Bellwether

By: Connie Willis / Narrated By: Kate Reading

Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins

Cutesy becomes utterly DELIGHTFUL when paired with Chaos Theory…!

Disclosure: I LOVE CONNIE WILLIS. Best book EVER? Doomsday Book bar none zippo absolutely nada. With that one, Willis, mistress most extraordinaire of humane science fiction, managed to make me ponder, make me weep, make me clutch my gut cuz the entirety delivered blow after blow to an unprepared gut. I cried, and I am sooo not kidding, ugly sobs when she crafted the words for the final most beautiful line imaginable.

That said? This was not the first Listen I gave Bellwether, and tho’ I SWEAR I did NOT fall asleep during that Listen, I do believe I missed, like, pretty much all the humor and the sheer genius I found with this Go-Round.

At points? Why, this is cute. Like, way cute. Like, tooooo cute. Because you see from the get-go our hero (Small “h”) and heroine work at HiTek, a corporation to beat all corporations, where one guy is Management (Always a capital “M”), where acronyms rule and shape the day and are brought forth during team meetings where they’re introduced and are soon followed by Trust Your Team exercises, where lowly mail clerks are given lofty titles to inspire a serious (And respected! Everyone is honored and valued at HiTek!!!) status despite how desperately inept and sullen they are.

Still, cutesy or not, I retired from a state agency that was fond of acronyms, was fond of Team-Building exercises, was fond of changing its terminology to suit political correctness. So, tho’ I rolled my eyes some, I did find it chuckle-worthy and nodded my head a bit. That said, I DID think: Ah, Connie, going for the low-hanging fruit for this, I see?

But Sandra Foster works at HiTek in their R&D department, researching fads to find triggers. Flip, the mail clerk (I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW Interdepartmental Something Or Other), is beYONd inept, and our story opens with her sullenly and most mistakenly delivering a package to Sandra. The HEAVY box is marked Perishable, so Sandra lugs the unwieldy box over to Bio where she meets Dr. Bennett O’Reilly, a Chaos Theorist who’s patiently waiting for the monkeys he’ll need to further his research.

Bennett? Definitely the most UN-faddish man she’s ever met. When new funding paperwork… and Flip’s incompetence… conspire to throw his research and his job near out the window, Sandra steps in with a mind-blowing idea: Let’s use sheep! She’s dating a trendy rancher who’s stopped doing the cattle thing, is now tepid about the sheep thing (Ostriches are In!), and he’s game to hand over several for a joint project. With creatures of SUCH herd mentality, Sandra can study how actions are instigated and behavior follows. And Bennett can study how information is diffused throughout a herd. What could possibly go wrong?

Bellwether is sooo deceptively simple that you don’t even realize that Willis has crafted the entirety of her story based on Herd Mentality and Chaos Theory. Amongst the co-workers, there are exercise fads, dating/relationship fads, parenting fads. The little restaurant where Sandra goes to look over Classified Relationship Want Ads to find fads (Aversion Fads: As in NO SMOKERS need apply!) is constantly changing from a vegetarian place with the best iced tea out there, to a coffee bar where skills are a MUST (Skim or whole milk? Raw sugar or plain? Chocolate powder or cinnamon? Sooo many things, thought is a must), to a Russian bistro, to a bistro that serves Prairie Fare. And Flip?

She’s right out there in the thick of things. Whether it’s wearing colored duct tape as an accessory or as underwear, or it’s moving from a definite belief in angels to one in Fairy Godmothers; whether it’s dating an equally-as-sullen skinhead or it’s moving onto a Dentist who’s conservative, thus prompting her to dye her hair blue because blue is the most conservative color out there: There’s Flip, tattoo of an “I” on her forehead, causing many a ruckus, dismay, anger, or just mucking things up royally.

I read a review of Kate Reading’s performance that irritatedly boo-ed her most soundly for making every single character in their 20s a moody recalcitrant eye-roller. But I think Reading is blameless in this choice as upon reflection Willis DID write them that way. Each came at Sandra and Bennett All Misunderstood and On The Cutting Edge with their newly blue hair, their new “I” tattoos, their utter contempt for Smokers. Willis crafted the lot, be they 20-somethings or exercising HiTek employees, to show us for the sheep we are. And into all this, the upshot when we herd animals navigate our lives and our choices?

Baaaaaaaaa!!! Mere sheep.

So no, no Boo from me for Reading’s performance. Other than an odd lisp I never noticed before in her other SciFi works, she did so very well. Cuz Willis is cagey, Willis is crafty, and with Bellwether, Willis seemed like she just sat at her keyboard and shouted: Let’s Have Some Fun! The humor shines through, and Reading captured every last sheep amongst us to a T.

I loved the way things started picking up speed; I loved how much fun the research for this must’ve been (Think: How are eeeeeons of long hair overthrown in the span of a few years in favor of a craze to bob all a woman’s hair off? Expect some History—WWI—expect social commentary, expect every single factor that can become part of an equation that gets vaaaaast. Maybe the summers were particularly hot?).

And then there’s Flip.

And then there are sheep and more sheep and more sheep to go with that fancy latte.

This is verrrrry short as far as usual Connie Willis fare goes, Queen of Epic; but then again, Willis crafts a mean short story as well. Soooo?

Not too long (Tho’ Willis NEVER is), and not too short (And Brevity is a Willis strength!).

Juuuuust right…!

Add wool to my chaos theory, and make it To Go, please!