I decided to listen to Connie Willis’s Bellwether while my seventeen-year-old and I were doing a renovation in my library. He loves science and is starting to love Connie Willis’s writing. This novella was especially fun for us to listen to together. Chaos theory, trends, group behavior patterns, and human nature are all part of the dynamic human experience. And it is fun to poke at the synchronicity and see what falls out.
Sandra Foster is a scientist at HiTek corporation and studies fads. Specifically, she is working on the science of how and why trends or fads get started, what disrupts them, and possibly, how they can be manufactured by those who wish to nudge culture for good or for profit. Sandra is smart, likable, and very funny. Her snarky comments about ridiculous people and things give me a vent to my own frustrations about the ridiculousness of so many things in our modern culture.
Bennett O’Reilly is a chaos theorist who studies group behavior at the same research facility. When Flip, the disinterested, lazy, and entitled office “helper,” delivers a package to Sandra which is meant for a different department, Sandra decides to circumvent the chaos of dealing with Flip and delivers it herself. This delivery sets a chain of events into motion that leads to romance, intrigue, and a fun story about interdepartmental collaboration and problem solving.
Standard Connie Willis, no character is wasted and no storyline is inconsequential. And, remember, this is about scientific research into human psychology and chaos theory.