Uncharted Territory (1994), Remake (1995) and Bellwether (1996) are all short novels. The three of them together barely make up the same thickness as Doomsday Book. Remake and Bellwether won the Locus award as novellas, but they’re not novellas — they’re more than forty thousand words, but they’re certainly not the length of a full length novel. They’re about as short as books can be and be published in the nineties, and I don’t think they could be commercially published at this length now. They are slight in the metaphorical sense too. These are all fun fast reads. Bellwether, which I’ve written about before has the most bite to it. Uncharted Territory and Bellwether are comedies and Remake is another tragedy told like a comedy. Uncharted Territory was on the Tiptree longlist, Remake was nominated for a Hugo and Bellwether was nominated for a Nebula. All three of them are written in first person, like Lincoln’s Dreams but unlike all of Willis’s other novels.
[Read more: three short novels, no spoilers]