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Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature

Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature
Doomsday Book

Author: Connie Willis (1945- )
Genre: Science fiction--time travel
Type of Work: Novel
Time of Plot: December, 2054-January, 2055, and 1348
Location: Oxford, England, and Ashencote, a nearby village
First Published: 1992

The Story
Kivrin Engle, a brilliant and determined young woman, is the first historian to journey back to the Middle Ages. She makes the trip despite the misgivings of her teacher and mentor, Mr. Dunworthy. His anxieties seem justified when the technician in charge of the time "net" mumbles that something is wrong and then collapses from a deadly new strain of influenza shortly after sending Kivrin to the past. What gradually becomes clear is that Kivrin has been infected with that same flu and sent not to 1320, as intended, but to 1348, the year the Black Death began to ravage England.

Unbeknown to her, Kivrin's arrival in the past is witnessed by an illiterate but saintly priest, Father Roche, who brings the sick and delirious woman, whom he regards as a messenger from heaven, to the castle of his lord. Kivrin is nursed back to health by Lady Eliwys and her family, who were sent by her husband to hide from the plague in this remote village. While anxiously trying to relocate her rendezvous point--the exact location where the gateway in time will reopen--she quickly grows to love the people, especially Eliwys's two young daughters, Agnes and Rosemunde. Travelers fleeing a nearby city bring the plague, and Kivrin realizes for the first time that she is in the wrong year. With little hope of returning to her own time, she does her best, along with Father Roche, to battle the plague and save the people of the village.

In the twenty-first century, Kivrin's plight becomes an afterthought to all but Mr. Dunworthy as Oxford comes under a quarantine and doctors and scientists race to find a vaccine. Dunworthy does his best to mobilize the resources of the university to fight the epidemic and care for the sick, all the while trying to find some confirmation that Kivrin's time traveling has gone well and she at least is safe.

Connie Willis effectively uses the parallel plots of the novel, cutting back and forth between the time lines, to increase suspense, create ironic juxtapositions, and ultimately affirm the common humanity of people battling disaster. In twenty-first century England, the epidemic is finally halted, but in the fourteenth century, the progress of the Black Death is inexorable. One by one, Agnes, Rosemunde, Lady Eliwys, and all the people of the village die in agony, despite the heroic efforts of Kivrin and Father Roche. Roche eventually dies, but the utter bleakness of the catastrophe and Kivrin's grief are in some small measure relieved by his gratitude and love for Kivrin, who has indeed become the messenger from heaven of his simple faith, bringing comfort to the dying and surviving to bear witness. As Kivrin struggles to sound the death knoll as a memorial for Roche, the sound of the bell brings Dunworthy, who, though still weak from his own near death from influenza, has come back through time to seek Kivrin and bring her home.

Analysis
Although Willis employs the common device of time travel, she is not interested in creating paradoxes or exploring alternative histories. Time travel is for her a means of juxtaposing two societies confronting similar crises, of exploring human nature in the presence of overpowering fear, and of celebrating human courage and generosity.

Following the success of Lincoln's Dreams (1987), the critical and popular acclaim for Doomsday Book, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best science-fiction novel, established Willis as one of the top American science-fiction writers. Doomsday Book exhibits Willis's characteristic strengths: thorough scholarship, graceful prose, and a rare combination of profound compassion and keen intelligence. There is even a touch of the humor present in many of her short stories in Dunworthy's struggles with bureaucratic rigidity and the complaints of self-centered people who do not quite notice that there is an epidemic going on. Also evident is Willis's ability to realize a time and place and create vivid characters whose joys and sorrows will haunt the reader's memory.

Time travel is one of the classic plot devices of science fiction. Doomsday Book has antecedents dating back to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895). Much of twentieth century time-travel fiction has focused on the mutability of time: Characters travel back to the past and change it, either inadvertently or deliberately. Authors such as Poul Anderson have developed story sequences in which rival groups battle over time, seeking to change the past (and hence the future) or to preserve an immutable past. In Doomsday Book, the immutability of the past is a given. It is the combination of Kivrin's powerlessness, despite all of her modern knowledge, to do anything to stop the plague or to save even a single victim, and her heroic persistence in trying nevertheless, that gives the novel a tragic power rare in science fiction.

Willis's depiction of medieval England is compelling. She captures the sounds, sights, and smells with convincing verisimilitude. She neither patronizes the past nor sentimentalizes it. If she does not share Father Roche's simple yet profound faith in the ultimate goodness of God, she treats it and him with the utmost respect. The double plot, which allows her to contrast two periods so vividly, also enables her to portray an essential humanity. Despite the differences in language, culture, and knowledge, the people of both centuries are remarkably alike: Both centuries have their share of fools, bigots, and cowards, but most people in both are a blend of fear and courage, selfishness and nobility. In both periods, despite the prevalence of death and despair, there is a persistence of human love and caring, personified in Roche, Kivrin, and Dunworthy, that cannot be overcome.

--Kevin P. Mulcahy