Blackout

Connie Willis

Feb 2010 · Oxford Time Travel Book 1 · Sold by Spectra

About this ebook

Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, and dive-bombing Stukas—to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.

Ratings and reviews

This was my first Connie Willis novel, and I picked it up because it recently won both the Hugo and Nebula Award for best novel. Not knowing what to expect, I must say that the story was at first very hard to follow. So many characters are introduced to you throughout the entire 1000-page mammoth -- it’s hard to decide at any given moment which ones you should try to remember or not. The novel tells the story of historians from a futuristic Oxford University who travel back to the WWII to do research, but are then stuck in this time because of their return “drops” to the future malfunctioning. Throughout the novel, we are following our main characters in different chronological time zones throughout WWII as they are trying to solve the mystery of why their return drops are failing while carefully trying to avoid altering history. Sounds dull? Well, in principle the story might sound dull, but it is told with such a riveting Da Vinci Code-style fashion that I have already decided half-way through the novel, that this is probably going to be one of my favorite SciFi novels of all time. You see, there are simple time travel stories that you can explain to someone in a few seconds (Christmas Carol) and there are complex time travel stories that require drawing a graph or two (Star Trek’s Yesterday’s Enterprise or Back to the Future Part II). Well, this time travel novel takes it to the extreme. Since the story is told from a multitude of characters from different chronological areas (or shall I say eras?), you sometimes know the effect before reading the cause, while some incident overlap but are just told from different perspectives. The story is told in an nonlinear fashion but miraculously avoids annoying the user. I do recommend keeping a pen and paper handy though to draw your little time charts. ;-) The other thing I love so much about this book is an eye-opener to the atmosphere of Britain during the nine months that Hitler was dropping bombs over London (the Blitz). As our protagonists travel throughout Britain or hide in bomb shelters in London during this period, we learn so much about the daily lives of so many ordinary citizens during wartime, unsung heros, and interesting tidbits of war strategies. I ended up having to look up so many Wikipedia articles to find out whether this was fiction or what really happened. It is quite educating and vivid. So step aside, Ender’s Game, I think I found my new favorite novel.

Fabulous. Along with All Clear, the second in the series, the story is intricate and fascinating. Great time-travel theme with interesting historical background. I was completely pulled in, worrying about what would happen, and amazed at how well-woven the subplots were integrated into the whole. It was kind of like how I imagine reading Les Miserables would be if time travel were added as a cool twist. :)

This is literally the only bad book to be graced with both the Hugo and nebula awards. I don't know what the committees saw in it. The only good characters are the hodbin children. Time travel has never been so boring or unimportant.

About the author

Connie Willis, who was recently inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, has received six Nebula Awards and ten Hugo Awards for her fiction; her previous novel, Passage, was nominated for both. Her other works include Doomsday Book, Lincoln’s Dreams, Bellwether, Impossible Things, Remake, Uncharted Territory, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Fire Watch, and Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. Connie Willis lives in Colorado with her family.