4.5-Star title, really hard to find fault

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	• Doomsday Book Connie Willis Spectra, 1993 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 437 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Solid, but flawed

Christmas, 2054. The 'net' is a technological breakthrough, a device which allows people to travel back in time to observe the events of the past. Historians use the net to go back and observe history in progress, but anachronisms and those intending to change the past are not permitted through. Whilst the net has mostly been used to travel to relatively recent periods of history, the Mediaeval department of Oxford University is preparing to send a young student named Kivrin through to the year 1320. No sooner has she gone through, than chaos erupts: a virulent disease sweeps through Oxford, striking down most of the populace and a quarantine is enforced that prevents the faculty from retrieving Kivrin. Back in the 14th Century Kivrin becomes used to living in the Middle Ages, which none of her training has really prepared her for, but it soon becomes clear that something has gone horribly wrong, and she is not when she is supposed to be...

Doomsday Book was originally published in 1992 and won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novel. It mixes elements of traditional time travel stories with elements from a disaster movie: Kivrin is trapped in the past and her friends in the present are unable to help her as they themselves are dealing with a pandemic. This is a nice spin on the cliche, with the present-day storyline given just as much attention (if not more) than Kivrin's misadventures in the past. The notion of disease and illness lies at the heart of the book, and seeing how futuristic medicine can barely stop the pandemic from killing people makes the sections set during the Black Death even more horrific in comparison. The novel also acts as a curious comedy of manners, or even a farce, with characters' own blinkered viewpoints and opinions mean that they are unable to effectively deal with the unfolding crises. At times this makes the book a frustrating experience, as some characters are obtuse to the point of total ludicrousness and gives an oddly tonally inappropriate dose of humour to the novel.

What keeps you reading is the depth of research that has been done here: 14th Century England is brought to life vividly, with the characters painted richly and convincingly. Unlike a lot of writers (such as say Ken Follett, whose Pillars of the Earth is an utterly unconvincing depiction of medieval life), Willis makes the point successfully that the medieval period was one where people's beliefs and thoughts were totally alien to our own, and understanding how they thought and acted on a day-to-day level is extremely difficult. She succeeds at this admirably.

The 21st Century sections are less successful, mainly due to the stupidity of certain characters meaning that you lose any belief that these people would actually attain the roles or positions they have. There are also a number of plot strands in this sequence which are completely left unresolved: it's never made clear if it was user error or a deliberate act by Gilchrist that resulted in Kivrin being sent to the wrong year, and the mystery of what happened to Mr. Basingame, who vanishes before the book even starts and whose fate is much debated by the other characters, is never answered. The lack of communication between major characters is also completely unbelievable and adds to the frustration levels of the novel.

Doomsday Book (***½) features some stunning and deeply affecting sequences set in the 14th Century. Those set in the future are less compelling, and there are some moments of reader frustration to be had, but overall the book remains a vivid and memorable reading experience. The novel is published by Bantam in the USA. It doesn't currently have a UK publisher, but the US version is readily available from Forbidden Planet or via Amazon.co.uk.

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Very competent time travel tale

Time travel is one of my favorite science fiction categories and Doomsday Book does not disappoint in this area. It's very much character based though and anyone seeking a high tech novel should look elsewhere. About all we learn of the time travel method is that there is a device called "the net" which makes it possible to travel back in time for fixed durations and you have to return to the physical location where you arrived in order to come back to the present.

The novel is initially set in mid 21st century England where Kivrin is a history student seeking to go back to the period about 20 years before the onset of the Black Death. One of the things that is made clear from the start is that mid 21st century England isn't exactly a paradise. It seems to rain all the time and there has been a recent devastating pandemic. No one has ever been back as far as the fourteenth century and Kivrin's teacher, Dunworthy, is understandably concerned about traveling there. The trip is made, however, and everything seems to go well until we discover that she has actually been sent to the year 1348, just before the Black death reaches her location. Efforts to locate and rescue Kivrin are complicated by the sudden outbreak of a virulent flu epidemic which disables virtually all the people connected with the time travel project.

While fairly slow moving, this book gives an excellent picture of what life in the mid fourteenth century must have been like and in many respects it's not too different from the present day. While there are obviously many technological aids available in the 21st century we see that both time periods are almost equally disabled by a disease outbreak.

In general I liked this book a lot but it could possibly have been a bit shorter and still delivered the same impact. A good read though.

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4.5-Star title, really hard to find fault

This is the first book by this author I have read. She writes a time-travel story while maintaining a present-time plot and thread, which is no easy challenge. Eifelheim, which I read recently, had notable problems with this Then and Now 2-thread structure.

Some spoilers will appear in this review. You are warned.

The NOW thread depends on 2 awkward devices to keep Dunworthy et al in the dark about Kivrin's complication - Gilchrist's incompetence and personality, and (name of the tech who did the drop)'s coming down with the Virus almost immediately after the drop, preventing him from reporting the issues and likely causing the miscalculation in the first place. Basingame has become almost a joke, does the person even exist? Beyond that, discussion of life in near-future England, with quarantines, communication issues, etc., was not very illuminating. The story was apolitical. By the above devices, the author did bind the story to the Then story, with the need to retrieve Kivrin while surviving the virus.

The Then story was a good bit more interesting, with the device of Kivrin not knowing the correct year leading to a number of important misconceptions. The description of the near-absolute lack of understanding of basic hygiene and medical care is accurate (reality may have been worse?), and in any event the black death was really quite bad by all accounts. A major relationship in the story is Kivrin with Roche, but oddly very little comes of it, little dialogue is reported, etc.

Once the Now and Then thread re-merge, the author chooses to use the tactic of simply dropping the curtain without any epilogue. It seemed abrupt, but once I thought about what the author could do for an epilogue, none of the options seemed more effective that simply ending the story with the rescue.

I have noted some quibbles above, but let me state clearly that this was a very enjoyable novel, and that I will read more by this author.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin -- barely of age herself -- finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

Five years in the writing by one of science fiction's most honored authors, Doomsday Book is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

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