Yesterday, I wrote about Connie Willis’s latest book, The Road to Roswell. But you cannot write about Connie Willis without writing about her most famous book, the one you could – for many years, although it may be different now – find on the bookshelf of most bookstores: The Doomsday Book.
Although written in 1992, this book takes place in the near future, the year 2054, in Oxford, England. Scientists have invented a time machine and – in the least plausible thing about this invention – placed it in the care of historians, who use it to go back and study history, first-hand.* This time travel is usually reserved for older students; however a young medieval studies student, Kirvin, persuades the Acting Head of the college, a particularly arrogant man who is throwing his power around while the actual Head is on vacation and mysteriously off the grid, to let her do it, despite the objections of her academic advisor, Dunworthy, that the period is too dangerous for historical travel and she is too young and inexperienced. Which, of course, she dismisses.
Old people, always worrying unnecessarily.
So the school gives her the usual set of medieval inoculations against black plague and whatnot – although she will definitely not be going back to the era of the black plague and, in fact, they make a point of sending her back 30 years earlier, to avoid any overlap. They dress her in period clothing, invent a plausible backstory for her, and implant a language translator so she will understand medieval English.
But, almost immediately after they push the button and she disappears, things start to go very wrong.
In 2054, the technician who sent her back in time collapses with a rogue strain of the flu, and Oxford is locked down by the public health service, strict cordon, no one in or out**, although a boy, Colin, running away from home to spend time with his great-grandmother manages to slip through. People begin collapsing and the hospitals fill up. Dunworthy immediately insists that Krivin be retrieved and is overruled by the Acting Head who says that perhaps sending her back allowed a virus to come forward in time, which is scientifically impossible. Dunworthy begins a frantic effort to find a way to go behind the Acting Head’s back to bring Kirvin back, while also helping to find lodging for people unexpectedly stuck in Oxford, dealing with shortages of supplies, and trying to figure out where this disease came from.
Meanwhile, back in the 14th Century, Kirvin has also become immediately ill; so ill that her translation device does not work and that she cannot remember the physical location of where she was “dropped off” by the time machine – the location where she needs to return to be retrieved. As she recovers and her translator kicks in, she is appalled by how different the middle ages is from what she expected – her clothes are much nicer than those of the aristocratic family who has taken her in, and they have little or no sense of germs: the children regularly climb all over her sick bed and, when the little daughter of the house scrapes her knee, they bind it up with a dirty cloth.
Days and months go by as Kirvin tries to find the handsome young priest who seems to hold the key to finding her way back to her drop-off point; and she becomes attached to the woman of the house and her children. But there is a mystery that she cannot unravel and that no one wants to discuss – for some reason, the family’s husband and sons have stayed in the nearby big city. And the wife is reluctant to invite visitors to their rural home. Kirvin wonders if there is something political going on; are they, perhaps, in trouble with the king?
Despite her concerns about returning back to the present, given the chaos that is happening in Oxford, the 14th century almost seems peaceful and safe in comparison.
The perspectives continue to switch between past and present, unraveling where the epidemic came from (not through the time machine) and its impact on the present time.*** Dunworthy and the boy, Colin, figure out – almost at the same time as Kirvin realizes – that the technician who sent her back in time was so sick that he mis-programmed the time machine, and sent her 30 years later than planned. Suddenly, all the mysterious things going on around Kirvin make sense, to her horror.
There is a reason this book won both a Hugo and a Nebula. The middle ages are meticulously presented and the author doesn’t pull any punches about medieval times or about the future plague. You care about each of the characters- with the exception of the Acting Head, who you root against – and the impact of events on Kirvin and Dunworthy seems completely plausible. The plot propels you forward – do not think you are putting this book down once you’ve started it. I’ve read it several times – most recently in 2021 – and it is just as powerful each time. This is one of those books that I often give nieces – along with Dragonsong and The Jack of Kinrowan – as they grow older.
One of the things I did during 2020 to keep sane was study Futures Thinking, which seeks to understand possible futures based on current trends. It focuses on the period about 10 years in the future – just far enough out that you can be somewhat objective about what may happen, but not so far in the future that science fiction comes into play. One way that the futures thinking community makes this real for people is by designing possible futures – sometimes this takes the form of a science fiction book or movie where people are living in this possible future; sometimes an art exhibit. One of the futures thinking courses that I took was specifically focused on Life After Covid; and the person leading the course described an interactive “game” that she created in (I think) 2008 where people volunteered to “live” in a future epidemic set 10 years later. Thousands of people around the world got up every morning for weeks and read a “newspaper” created by the futures thinking facilitators, which told them to mask up or work from home, or whatever – and then reported back on how it felt and the challenges they ran into. Apparently it was so realistic that, when Covid hit, game participants automatically stocked up on toilet paper and emailed the game facilitator to let her know how helpful the game had been and how prepared they were. Which she found reassuring, once she got out of the hospital from – what else? – Covid. I thought about the reaction of the people in The Doomsday Book while reading about this “game” – and then thought about the “game” while re-reading The Doomsday Book. If you want to take the course, check out Coursera or go to the IFTF website.
Have you read The Doomsday Book? Have you read it recently? How does it hold up for you? Share in the comments.
New topic:
This is my 100th post this year – 100 books from my collection that I’ve reviewed. What have I learned through this experience?
Well, first, posting every day is a challenge. It’s playing havoc with my exercise schedule because I write first thing when I get up in the morning to ensure that I can finish before going to work, and then I don’t have time to exercise, which I had been doing first thing in the morning. On weekends, I try to get several posts done, so that I have a cushion in case I oversleep or get sick or have to take an early plane or something. That helps but I’ve found myself catching up over and over and staying barely a day ahead.
Writing each post is not a problem – writing comes easy to me – although I have been surprised by how hard it is sometimes to figure out which book to write about. When I started, I had some vague thought about picking a different theme each week and writing about books on that theme that week: diseases, one week; followed by true crime, the next; then mysteries. I make stacks of books on a topic but then I can’t get started and veer off and write about a children’s book and then, the next day, a serial killer book. That’s probably a little jarring to the reader. And now my shelves are a mess as I am randomly jamming in stacks of books I meant to write about and didn’t, and I can’t find the books I want to write about. Or re-read.
Probably the hardest thing for me has been selecting the photos from my personal collection to serve as the header for each post. Perhaps I will switch to the cover image of that day’s book, which will make it much easier and probably attract more readers. But that will probably require some technical design work on my part, to make the covers fit into the size of the header photo. Urk, work?
One of the mysteries, for me, is how many people are actually reading these posts. A few of my friends are “liking” them on LinkedIn but I sometimes wonder if they’re actually reading them or just being polite. Every now and then someone comments, and recommends something else for me to read, which is nice. I’m a people-person at heart.
One of the surprises is how many new books I’m reading and how many favorites I’m re-reading. And how many books I’ve read that, when I go to write about, I realize that I don’t remember. I remember liking them but many of the books on diseases or serial killers sort of blur together until or unless I’ve read them multiple times. Moments stick out – how Mephis was impacted by Yellow Fever; or how people attributed Cholera to class instead of poor living conditions, which seems silly, until you think about how poor people are often blamed for being poor.
Anyway, if you’ve been reading my posts, thank you! Leave a comment some time with what you’re reading and whether there’s anything you’d like me to write about. Who knows, maybe it’s on my shelves here, somewhere, or I’ll pick up a copy, and you’ll see it show up.
*This universe, in which there is a time machine that has been placed in the care of historians, who use it to go back and study history, is one that Willis returns to in her books repeatedly, with different challenges and results each time.
**Something that, when I read it in the early 2000s, seemed plausible – but with the wisdom of hindsight now, seems less so.
***If you were working in hospitals or nursing homes during 2020, this may be too much for you, as it seems pretty accurate.
Change+Management 