Conference noted::sf

1203.0. "Connie Willis' Doomsday Book" by VERGA::KLAES (Quo vadimus?) Mon Dec 20 1993 20:10

Article: 464
From: danny@orthanc.cs.su.oz.au (Danny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,alt.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,soc.history
Subject: Book Review - Doomsday Book
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Date: 20 Dec 93 03:00:49 GMT
 
     title: Doomsday Book
        by: Connie Willis
 publisher: Hodder and Stoughton 1993
  subjects: science fiction
     other: 650 pages, A$14.95
   summary: parallel plagues in 1348 and 2054
 
In general I strongly dislike time-travel stories with their attendant
implausiblities, but sometimes they have other qualities which redeem
them.  _Doomsday Book_ is set in 2054, when time travel is run of the
mill but everything else is, rather implausibly, pretty much like the
present.  (The only real exception is a random collection of tech
gadgets such as video phones and laser candles.)  Kivrin, a female
undergraduate history student at Oxford, is to be the first person
sent back to the Middle Ages (to 1320), because - wait for it - no
qualified historian is available!.  Everything goes wrong with the
mission (the bungling incompetence of the academics organising it is,
unfortunately, quite plausible), and she is delivered instead to 1348,
the year the Black Plague reached England.  Meanwhile a flu epidemic
has hit 2054, and Oxford is quarantined.  The bulk of the book
consists of parallel accounts of the effects of the two epidemics, and
this is worked out much better than the time-travel setup. 
 
Despite the weaknesses in the science and the implausible 2054 Oxford,
I enjoyed _Doomsday Book_ a lot.  (I much prefer well-written books
with lousy science to engineering manuals dressed up as novels!)  I'm
not sure it deserved its Hugo award (shared with _A Fire Upon the
Deep_), but _Doomsday Book_ is definitely worth a read, especially if
you are interested in epidemiology (used to produce a rather clever
"detective problem") or medieval English history. 
--
 
%T 	Doomsday Book
%A 	Connie Willis
%I 	Hodder and Stoughton
%D 	1993
%O 	paperback, A$14.95
%G 	ISBN 0-450-57987-5
%P 	650pp
%K 	science fiction
 
Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au) 19/12/93
 
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