From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis
Date: 25 Aug 92 20:42:16 GMT


                       DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis
                     A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		      Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper

     The gist of DOOMSDAY BOOK can be summed up in two sentences: "It's no
fun to come down with an unknown disease in 14th Century England.  It's not
much better in the 20th Century."  The first part may seem obvious, the
second less so (though the parallels to AIDS are definitely there).  One of
the main things Willis does is show us that our comfortable notions about
how we're protected by technology and medical advances are based as much, if
not more, on wishful thinking as on hard facts.

     Willis does this be telling two stories in parallel: one of Kirvin, who
has traveled back to 14th Century England to study it first-hand, and one of
the rest of her research team left behind (ahead?) in the early 21st
Century.  Kirvin was sent back to 1320, well before the Black Plague burst
into Europe (and hence England) in 1348.  So why does she fall ill almost
immediately upon arriving?  And why, in spite of all her language training
and her embedded translator, is she unable to understand or make herself
understood to anyone around her?

     Back (forward?) in the future, things are not much better.  Immediately
after sending Kirvin back in time, the technician collapses with an unknown
flu-like illness, and cannot report the exact coordinates Kirvin landed at.
(There is almost always drift from the target coordinates, and Kirvin can't
be retrieved unless her landing coordinates are known.)  He lies delirious
for days, while Kirvin is lost and more and more people in the present fall
ill.

     Obviously there are a lot of elements of mystery, and far be it for me
to ruin any of them for you.  Suffice it to say this is a book about
sickness and plagues and dying, and how people react to it.  Many reviewers
have lauded Willis for giving an accurate portrayal of a plague in a pre-
Industrial, pre-germ-theory society.  But to students of history, this won't
be particularly new, although Willis does her usual excellent job of giving
us realistic people we can believe in and care about.  No, it is the
parallelism that is unique here.  For all our progress, Willis says, a new
disease can easily bring us back to the problems of 600 years ago.  Consider
the Influenza Epidemic of 1917 to 1919 which killed 25,000,000--the same
number as the Black Plague of 1348-1666.  Yes, the world population was
higher in 1918, but the Black Plague lasted over three hundred years, the
Influenza Epidemic only three.  (During the Influenza Epidemic, 4600 people
died in one week in Philadelphia.)  And millions died of the bubonic plague
in India between 1921 and 1923.  Even with the more advanced technology of
Willis's 21st Century, all is not easy.  Technology can break.  People can
make mistakes.  Things can go wrong.  And people can die.

     Willis even keeps the reader in the dark about the ending, not an easy
task given the book's structure, but she manages to set up the situation so
that more than one outcome is possible.  (I hope this is sufficiently
vague.)  I am not entirely happy with the ending, but it's a minor quibble.

     I strongly recommend DOOMSDAY BOOK, for what it teaches about the
reality of history (if you don't have a strong background in history), and
for what it teaches about the reality of the present (even if you do).  (And
for all those people who think Willis writes only humorous fiction--this
will change your mind.)

%A      Connie Willis
%T      Doomsday Book
%I      Bantam Spectra
%C      New York
%D      July 1992
%O      trade paperback, US$10.00
%G      ISBN 0-553-35167-2
%P      445pp

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908 957 2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com