Edward Willett
Edward Willett was born in Silver
City, New Mexico, and moved to Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada from
Texas as a child. He studied journalism at Harding University in
Searcy, Arkansas; then returned to Weyburn to work as a
reporter/photographer for the Weyburn Review,
eventually becoming news editor. He then worked as communications
officer for the Saskatchewan Science Centre in Regina for several
years, quitting to become a full-time freelance writer in 1993. Ed
is the author of three previous young adult science fiction and
fantasy novels: Soulworm, which was short-listed for a 1997
Saskatchewan Book Award in the category of Best First Book; The
Dark Unicorn, which was short-listed for a 1999 Saskatchewan
Book Award in the category of Children's Literature -- both from
Royal Fireworks Press, and Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock
Star from Roussan Publishers. Spirit Singer won the
Regina Book Award for best book by a Regina writer in the
Saskatchewan Book Awards. He has also published half-a-dozen
non-fiction books for children, which include Meningitis,
Arthritis, Hemophilia and Alzheimer's Disease,
all part of the Diseases and People series from Enslow
Publishers, and Careers in Outer Space from Rosen Publishing. Enslow Publishers have recently issued his children's biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of Imaginary Worlds and he is currently working on a similar biography of Orson Scott Card.
He has also published computer science books including: Teach
Yourself Microsoft Publisher 2000, Your Official America
Online Guide to Creating Web Pages, and Your Official America
Online Guide to Internet Safety. Mr. Willett is webmaster and administrative assistant for SF Canada. Ed's short fiction has been
published in On Spec, Transversions and Artemis
Magazine. He also writes short stories, plays, and a weekly
science column for the Regina Leader Post and CBC radio, and
works professionally as an actor and
singer. Ed lives in Regina, SK with his wife, Margaret Anne, a
telecommunications engineer and their young daughter Alice.
Author's website
Hassenpfeffer, the author's blog site
ISFDB Bibliography
Biography
Interviews with Edward Willett:
1,
2
REVIEWS:
Spirit Singer:
1,
2
Lost in Translation:
1
|
|
|
A review by Georges T. Dodds
Lost in Translation is a space opera where humans and a bat-like race, the S'sinn, are locked in a bitter interplanetary
feud which risks degenerating into an all out war. Jarrikk, a male S'sinn who has seen his friends slaughtered by human
colonists, and Kathryn, a young woman whose entire family were slaughtered by the S'sinn have both become empathic
Translators. They must work together to defuse the situation, but a power- and revenge-hungry S'sinn leader emerges, and
the multi-racial Commonwealth is at risk.
While Lost in Translation has a nice message of cooperation and acceptance between widely differing life forms,
and probably would entertain most juvenile readers, a number of things make it difficult to suspend disbelief and
"buy into" the story as an adult. There are difficulties in terms of
- the S'sinn society: The S'sinn have ships that can make light-speed hops through space, yet they live in a
quasi-feudal society in stone castle-like buildings (something which the book cover reinforces); when they
inadvertently fly into a human ambush they have no communication system to alert their own; they have temples lit
with candles, when at least one amongst them can, with seemingly no equipment, produce sufficient energy to entirely
explode a large farm animal.
- the two main characters: Jarrikk, who initially vows "Death to Humans!" and immediately breaks a S'sinn-human
truce, becomes, after training as a Translator, someone with at best a fairly mild dislike of humans, who quickly
distances himself from Kitillick, the rebel S'sinn, and cooperates with Kathryn, a human, to defeat his own
people. How his training has overcome his hatred and how his devotion to upholding the moral principles of the
Translators and by extension of the Commonwealth, over the long ingrained precepts of his own culture, is never
really explained. Similarly, Kathryn seems to overcome her past trauma when she becomes a Translator, quickly
feeling comfortable working with a member of the race which slaughtered her parents.
- we are told that certain of the advanced, benign and peace loving races within the Commonwealth have easily
quelled previous armed uprisings with their superior minds and technology, but somehow, this time, they let things
proceed until many on both sides are dead and an intervention by Translators of the fighting parties' racial groups
are necessary to quash a war.
Lost in Translation makes a pleasant and young-reader appropriate read, if one doesn't try to think
too deeply about things. While the S'sinn society is fairly original and well portrayed, much of the space opera
is pretty stock footage type stuff, humans moving out from their home planet at war, brandishing ray guns and being
under the watchful eye of a Galactic Federation. The characters are engaging and do evolve somewhat, not just
remaining incorruptibly good or irredeemably evil, though the reasons behind their evolution are not always
clear. Lost in Translation has some good action scenes and an interesting premise, but perhaps the
author's seeming attempt to meld a fantasy-type feudal society with space opera elements wasn't the best
idea. Certainly the author's The Spirit Singer,
which was clearly a fantasy and a fantasy only, made for a better and more internally consistent, if shorter, read.
Copyright © 2005 Georges T. Dodds
Georges Dodds is a research scientist in vegetable crop physiology, who for close to 25 years has read and collected close to
2000 titles of predominantly pre-1950 science-fiction and fantasy, both in English and French. He writes columns on early
imaginative literature for WARP, the newsletter/fanzine of the Montreal Science Fiction and
Fantasy Association and maintains a site reflecting his tastes in imaginative literature.
|
