Call number
Genres
Publication
New York : Spectra Ballantine Books, 2010.
Pages
491
Description
When a time-travel lab suddenly cancels assignments for no apparent reason and switches around everyone's schedules, time-traveling historians Michael, Merope, and Polly find themselves in World War II, facing air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history--to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control.
Media reviews
Science fiction and the historical novel only seem to be utter opposites. I mean, future vs. past, right? In fact, the two genres are closely related. Both transport the reader to strange, disorienting worlds, where the people, beliefs and social norms are often distinctly alien to a present-day
Show More
sensibility.
In certain kinds of time-travel stories, it's often difficult to tell the two genres apart. Is "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" historical fiction or proto science fiction? Certainly, Connie Willis's new novel, her first since "Passage" (2001), about near-death experiences, is as vivid an evocation of England during World War II as anyone has ever written. It's also indisputably science fiction. . . .
If you're a science-fiction fan, you'll want to read this book by one of the most honored writers in the field (10 Hugos, six Nebulas); if you're interested in World War II, you should pick up "Blackout" for its you-are-there authenticity; and if you just like to read, you'll find here a novelist who can plot like Agatha Christie and whose books possess a bounce and stylishness that Preston Sturges might envy.
That said, "Blackout" does end with a cliffhanger, which may leave some readers dissatisfied: The whole story won't be completely resolved till October when Ballantine/Spectra publishes a second and concluding volume titled "All-Clear." Still, this is Connie Willis, my friends, which means she's worth reading now, and she's worth reading in the future.
Show Less
What she's also able to do is to play her reader like a newly tuned piano. Scenes that could be milked for every last mawkish drop somehow get around your defenses and wring out your heart.
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novel — 2011)
Nebula Award (Nominee — Novel — 2010)
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2011)
SF Site Reader's Choice (7 — 2010)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (Finalist — 2011)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2010-02-02
Physical description
491 p.; 9.5 inches
ISBN
9780553803198
Similar in this library
User reviews
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
Right now in the sci-fi SORRY THAT'S "SF" NOT THE HATE EPITHET "S**-*I" THANK YOU FOR SETTING ME STRAIGHT ENRIQUE FREEQUE world (I read books of this genre sometimes but I don't define as a "fan" or see any need to follow the weird orthopraxies of this "fandom" and so I will continue calling it "sci-fi" I think" NOPE, SF, UNLESS YOU ARE A FUCKING BIGOT AGAINST THIS HISTORICALLY OPPRESSED COMMUNITY, without meaning any offence to sci-fi THAT'S SF, SIR fans who are offended by the term, needlessly I think--though if they wish to be offended by my having an opinion about what should or should not make them offended, they may) there is this controversy with groups with names like "sad puppies" and "rabid puppies" and the gist of it is that some right-wingers who think sci-fi SF BUT I THINK IT WOULD BE RICH IF THESE REACTIONARIES HAD A PROBLEM WITH BEING CALLED WHATEVER BECAUSE AREN'T THEY SUPPOSED TO BE AGAINST POLITICAL CORRECTNESS? should just be Captain Kirk space opera or fucked-up Heinleinesque libertarian shit have formed a voting bloc and hijacked the Hugo Awards so that only ballsy gider-dun shit wins the prize, to roll back the advent of "soft" sci-fi SF THE WHOLE TERMINOLOGY THING IS STUPID ANYWAY BECAUSE LIKE "SCIENCE FICTION"? THERE IS NO SCIENCE IN THIS BOOK AT ALL EXCEPT TIME MACHINES WHICH I'M PRETTY SURE ARE ASCIENTIFIC AND THEN FORTIES SHIT LIKE MESSERSCHMITTS SO LET'S START THERE IF WE WANT TO RAISE A FUSS that might explore human societies under drastically altered circumstances, or the actual tribulations of inter-species romance (not the Captain Kirk kind), or what it feels like to be a sentient plant, or an immortal, or an artificial intelligence, or an empath, (let alone a future woman or black person), and ensure primacy of place to "hard" sci-fi SF SFSFSFSFBLAARGH (the terms speak volumes), where planets are saved from intergalactic fascists by clever engineers named Chip. It's fucked, and there is plenty more to say about it but what I want to observe here is that although Connie Willis (a many-time Hugo winner) has made public comments showing that she's squarely on the side of the angels (and technomystics, and intelligent nebulae), you'd never really know it from her book Blackout, which presents a deeply conservative vision of, well, everything.
It's the 2040s in Oxford and someone has invented a time machine (there are occasional references to historians having gone back in time for "decades," which doesn't seem to work at all with the publication date of the book), and the future present doesn't get fleshed out enough but it seems that there are only one or two time machines handy or the whole of history would be inundated with travellers, but anyway the only time travel that seems to go on is that Oxford undergraduates get sent back to dangerous times in history in order to report on them firsthand and do a little touring (not the canny commentary on undergrad internships and voluntourism in the present that it could have been, however). The future people are just like 2010 people and the 1940s people are largely like 2010 people, and there's very very little in the way of exploring interesting cultural clashes or misunderstandings or even real human connections between anyone. There is a little bit of window dressing like where one of the time travellers uses the word "virus" and everyone is confused, but it is negligible. The '40s people are all stock characters and the future people are all Mary Sues.
With only a couple of exceptions, the only time anyone gets sent back to is World War II, which is the first clue that we're gonna be dealing with some seriously history-channel stuff here. Willis seems to have the gushy hero worship thing for Londoners in the Blitz and Churchill and the Royal Family (oh God, shut up about the Royal Family) that is common to a certain kind of American, and her understanding of the history seems to really be limited to thinking Hitler was beaten at Dunkirk, in the Battle of Britain, and via some ill-defined British "indomitability" (can you bottle it?), and not by, you know, the Russians. (And I know it is old news that the commies won the war and not our boys and the guys who bring that up like they're really learning you something are quite obnoxious in general but some people apparently still never heard so maybe those guys are doing a service after all.)
The book is split into two (this one ends very abruptly in the middle), and it's around 1300 pages in all, and I'm gonna read the second one since it's where the time-travel-going-wonky shit-hitting-fan plot really gets off the ground and I don't feel like I can evaluate it properly until then, but this one is basically plodding prose rendering cliché scenarios that overexplain and repeat and where the height of literary panache is this wrongfooting you again and again: end of the last chapter--oh no! Padgett's didn't get bombed and it was supposed to and that means we altered history! start of next chapter: phew! it did get bombed the facade is just still standing but oh no! many people were killed and it was supposed to be just three and that means we altered history! but no, those aren't people, they're mannequins ha ha ha! And like that compulsively for 500 pages, and even about little things like oh oops is my accent implant working or oh oops did I call her by her real name and not her cover name (no one ever does. No one gets exposed), and given that the last 300 pages are just the three stranded historians running around England trying to find each other and just missing each other again and again and again, you can imagine how annoying it gets.
Show More
what people in the general world call it, which is largely "It's the 2040s in Oxford and someone has invented a time machine (there are occasional references to historians having gone back in time for "decades," which doesn't seem to work at all with the publication date of the book), and the future present doesn't get fleshed out enough but it seems that there are only one or two time machines handy or the whole of history would be inundated with travellers, but anyway the only time travel that seems to go on is that Oxford undergraduates get sent back to dangerous times in history in order to report on them firsthand and do a little touring (not the canny commentary on undergrad internships and voluntourism in the present that it could have been, however). The future people are just like 2010 people and the 1940s people are largely like 2010 people, and there's very very little in the way of exploring interesting cultural clashes or misunderstandings or even real human connections between anyone. There is a little bit of window dressing like where one of the time travellers uses the word "virus" and everyone is confused, but it is negligible. The '40s people are all stock characters and the future people are all Mary Sues.
With only a couple of exceptions, the only time anyone gets sent back to is World War II, which is the first clue that we're gonna be dealing with some seriously history-channel stuff here. Willis seems to have the gushy hero worship thing for Londoners in the Blitz and Churchill and the Royal Family (oh God, shut up about the Royal Family) that is common to a certain kind of American, and her understanding of the history seems to really be limited to thinking Hitler was beaten at Dunkirk, in the Battle of Britain, and via some ill-defined British "indomitability" (can you bottle it?), and not by, you know, the Russians. (And I know it is old news that the commies won the war and not our boys and the guys who bring that up like they're really learning you something are quite obnoxious in general but some people apparently still never heard so maybe those guys are doing a service after all.)
The book is split into two (this one ends very abruptly in the middle), and it's around 1300 pages in all, and I'm gonna read the second one since it's where the time-travel-going-wonky shit-hitting-fan plot really gets off the ground and I don't feel like I can evaluate it properly until then, but this one is basically plodding prose rendering cliché scenarios that overexplain and repeat and where the height of literary panache is this wrongfooting you again and again: end of the last chapter--oh no! Padgett's didn't get bombed and it was supposed to and that means we altered history! start of next chapter: phew! it did get bombed the facade is just still standing but oh no! many people were killed and it was supposed to be just three and that means we altered history! but no, those aren't people, they're mannequins ha ha ha! And like that compulsively for 500 pages, and even about little things like oh oops is my accent implant working or oh oops did I call her by her real name and not her cover name (no one ever does. No one gets exposed), and given that the last 300 pages are just the three stranded historians running around England trying to find each other and just missing each other again and again and again, you can imagine how annoying it gets.
Show Less
LibraryThing member TomVeal
After publishing Passage in 2002, Connie Willis said that the time had come to write her "big Blitz novel", the one foreshadowed by stories like "Fire Watch" and "The Winds of Marble Arch". Eight years later, just as her fans began to wonder whether the magnum opus had fallen prey to writer's
The protagonists of Blackout are three graduate students pursuing research projects that take them to the early days of World War II. Slowly but steadily, things go wrong. At the volume's end, they find themselves marooned in London during the Blitz, fearful that history has been altered (perhaps by their own actions), and facing the possibility that their future has been wiped out.
Connie Willis can never be accused of making things too easy for her characters. Blackout abounds in misunderstood events, missed connections and frustrated plans. Much of the action borders on comedy, though only borders, and elicits an occasional chuckle: Mike's adventures with the half-mad "Commander Harold", Eileen's futile efforts to tame two East End urchins, Polly's involvement in ad hoc amateur theatricals (rehearsing J. M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, also about castaways seemingly without hope of rescue).
In some respects, Blackout is as much an historical as an SF novel. The time travelers are a handy device for looking at World War II England from a variety of angles - the evacuation of children from London, the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk, the Blitz - and from perspectives all along the social scale, from slum dwellers and store clerks to a girl whose mother is sixteenth in line for the throne, without having to construct the kind of artificial plot that bogs down many works with panoramic ambitions.
Since we are only halfway through at this point, a rating would be premature. Still, the whole will be terrific even if All Clear, the concluding volume, falls well short of this beginning.
Show More
block, the first half appears. It borrows the time travel framework of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog: In the late 21st Century, it is possible to visit the past, though where visitors can go and what they can do is strictly governed by natural laws that preserve causality. Thus, for instance, certain crucial moments when any action might have massive historical consequences ("divergence points") are unreachable. Governments that might want to undermine their rivals (by, say, engineering the election of a self-centered incompetent as national leader in a time of turmoil) have no use for "the Net", but history departments love it. Oxford University in 2060 is the world leader in the field.The protagonists of Blackout are three graduate students pursuing research projects that take them to the early days of World War II. Slowly but steadily, things go wrong. At the volume's end, they find themselves marooned in London during the Blitz, fearful that history has been altered (perhaps by their own actions), and facing the possibility that their future has been wiped out.
Connie Willis can never be accused of making things too easy for her characters. Blackout abounds in misunderstood events, missed connections and frustrated plans. Much of the action borders on comedy, though only borders, and elicits an occasional chuckle: Mike's adventures with the half-mad "Commander Harold", Eileen's futile efforts to tame two East End urchins, Polly's involvement in ad hoc amateur theatricals (rehearsing J. M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, also about castaways seemingly without hope of rescue).
In some respects, Blackout is as much an historical as an SF novel. The time travelers are a handy device for looking at World War II England from a variety of angles - the evacuation of children from London, the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk, the Blitz - and from perspectives all along the social scale, from slum dwellers and store clerks to a girl whose mother is sixteenth in line for the throne, without having to construct the kind of artificial plot that bogs down many works with panoramic ambitions.
Since we are only halfway through at this point, a rating would be premature. Still, the whole will be terrific even if All Clear, the concluding volume, falls well short of this beginning.
Show Less
LibraryThing member bke
I had enjoyed _Doomsday Book_ but _Blackout_ sucked. Not really a time travel story. (evidently all the interesting implications of time travel, hinted at throughout the 500 pages of this book, take place in the sequel.) Read the first 30 pages and last 30 pages and you have the story. The 440
Show More
pages in between are just a tedious series of just missed encounters of the form "person A in city 1, travels to city 2 to search for person B just as person B in city 2 travels to city 1 to search for person A." PAINFULLY tedious. Show Less
LibraryThing member Lisa2013
recommended for: anyone who enjoys historical fiction or speculative fiction & time travel books
A warning: This book has no proper ending. It was meant to be the first half of a book but the publisher divided it into two books and Blackout is the first half. All Clear is the second book/second half
I was completely enthralled! This book is so much fun to read.
I can’t believe that this is my first Connie Willis time travel book, and it’s very rare that I don’t read series, even loose series, in order. This is book four in the Oxford time travel books, although it is the first of two of the All Clear books. I could tell that at least two characters had made prior appearances in other books, and normally that would bother me, but I was so engaged with this book that I truly didn’t care. I felt perfectly content to go back and, after I read All Clear, I’ll in the near future read Doomsday Book and the other two books. I don’t mind going backward to read them, quite appropriate for time travel books, which I do love. I am a bit embarrassed that I haven’t read this author’s books given that her books are exactly my cup of tea.
I was in heaven: historical fiction where I really learned so much about what it was like to be a civilian in London and evacuation areas and other parts of England during WWII, speculative fiction which is one of my favorite genres, and time travel for which I have a particular penchant, and even a favorite-time-travel-books shelf here at Goodreads.
I like that it’s a character named Ira Feldman, a Jewish man, who invented time travel, and that his parents seem to have lived during WWII. That fact is mentioned just in passing, but I definitely noted it.
I enjoyed all the main characters: Polly, Merope/Eileen, Mike, and also many others in 2060 and 1940. They’re characters that I cared about and they all seemed completely authentic. I was starting to list a few memorable characters but there were too many so I’ll just say that and leave readers to meet and get to know them when they read this book. There was a bunch of repetition during the book, particularly the long last part, but it worked for me because it’s the kind of obsessive and repetitive thinking and worrying I would do in those circumstances, and having the characters in the book do it gave the events such a feeling of immediacy. Most of the action takes place in 1940 and thereabouts but the world of Oxford in 2060 was also fascinating. I love the way the time traveler historians from 2060 have to learn the ways of 1940, such as how to drive a gasoline powered car of the time.
Willis was already a well known and published author so I was somewhat surprised by the many spelling, grammatical, etc. errors, especially in the beginning of the book, but I also caught a couple of mistakes at the end of the book as well.
However, the story and characters are so riveting, and the premise is so creative, that while not perfect, this was a wonderful 5 star book for me. It was a rollicking ride and a perfect comfort read. I will shelve it at the Comfort Reads group, if another member hasn’t already done that. It was just a blast for me to read. I’m about to happily dive into All Clear.
A warning: This book has no proper ending. It was meant to be the first half of a book but the publisher divided it into two books and Blackout is the first half. All Clear is the second book/second half
Show More
of the book. Definitely have All Clear on hand to read immediately after this book. I finished this book and started the next the same day and that’s the way to do it. I deliberately read this slowly so there wouldn’t be a gap before I could read the next book.I was completely enthralled! This book is so much fun to read.
I can’t believe that this is my first Connie Willis time travel book, and it’s very rare that I don’t read series, even loose series, in order. This is book four in the Oxford time travel books, although it is the first of two of the All Clear books. I could tell that at least two characters had made prior appearances in other books, and normally that would bother me, but I was so engaged with this book that I truly didn’t care. I felt perfectly content to go back and, after I read All Clear, I’ll in the near future read Doomsday Book and the other two books. I don’t mind going backward to read them, quite appropriate for time travel books, which I do love. I am a bit embarrassed that I haven’t read this author’s books given that her books are exactly my cup of tea.
I was in heaven: historical fiction where I really learned so much about what it was like to be a civilian in London and evacuation areas and other parts of England during WWII, speculative fiction which is one of my favorite genres, and time travel for which I have a particular penchant, and even a favorite-time-travel-books shelf here at Goodreads.
I like that it’s a character named Ira Feldman, a Jewish man, who invented time travel, and that his parents seem to have lived during WWII. That fact is mentioned just in passing, but I definitely noted it.
I enjoyed all the main characters: Polly, Merope/Eileen, Mike, and also many others in 2060 and 1940. They’re characters that I cared about and they all seemed completely authentic. I was starting to list a few memorable characters but there were too many so I’ll just say that and leave readers to meet and get to know them when they read this book. There was a bunch of repetition during the book, particularly the long last part, but it worked for me because it’s the kind of obsessive and repetitive thinking and worrying I would do in those circumstances, and having the characters in the book do it gave the events such a feeling of immediacy. Most of the action takes place in 1940 and thereabouts but the world of Oxford in 2060 was also fascinating. I love the way the time traveler historians from 2060 have to learn the ways of 1940, such as how to drive a gasoline powered car of the time.
Willis was already a well known and published author so I was somewhat surprised by the many spelling, grammatical, etc. errors, especially in the beginning of the book, but I also caught a couple of mistakes at the end of the book as well.
However, the story and characters are so riveting, and the premise is so creative, that while not perfect, this was a wonderful 5 star book for me. It was a rollicking ride and a perfect comfort read. I will shelve it at the Comfort Reads group, if another member hasn’t already done that. It was just a blast for me to read. I’m about to happily dive into All Clear.
Show Less
LibraryThing member profilerSR
Connie Willis's latest novel was a long time in coming, but fans can rest assured that the wait was well-placed. This new novel takes us back into the world of the Oxford time-traveling historians of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. Although rare in the genre, time-travel done well is
Blackout takes place during WWII, with multiple historians traveling to various times during the war. Polly is to be a shopgirl in London during the Blitz. Michael is planning to interview boat captains in Dover after the rescues at Dunkirk. Eileen is attempting to contain evacuated children in the north of England. Several other historians are participating in events during the later years of the war. The frequent switches across mutliple plotlines are the novel's greatest weakness. There are so many plotlines to follow that 8 - 10 chapters can go by before we revisit a character. Still, this book is amazing for it's depth of characters and riveting stories. Several plot techniques we saw beginning in Doomsday Book and perfected in Passage are used profusely in Blackout. It is vintage Willis. However, a word of warning to those who do not like waiting for sequels: Blackout is only the first half of a two-part book which will culminate in All Clear to be published in October.
Show More
my favorite type of adventure story and Connie Willis does it well. Her empathy for the "contemps" never fails to affect me, even more than actual historical fiction. We learn what they went through with the historical hindsight of knowing that their actions were greater than the sum of their parts. I always "miss" Willis's characters when the book is finished. Blackout takes place during WWII, with multiple historians traveling to various times during the war. Polly is to be a shopgirl in London during the Blitz. Michael is planning to interview boat captains in Dover after the rescues at Dunkirk. Eileen is attempting to contain evacuated children in the north of England. Several other historians are participating in events during the later years of the war. The frequent switches across mutliple plotlines are the novel's greatest weakness. There are so many plotlines to follow that 8 - 10 chapters can go by before we revisit a character. Still, this book is amazing for it's depth of characters and riveting stories. Several plot techniques we saw beginning in Doomsday Book and perfected in Passage are used profusely in Blackout. It is vintage Willis. However, a word of warning to those who do not like waiting for sequels: Blackout is only the first half of a two-part book which will culminate in All Clear to be published in October.
Show Less
LibraryThing member bragan
This story follows a number of researchers who have traveled back in time from 2060 to observe various places in England during the Blitz. Only due to scheduling problems, they arrive less prepared than they should be, and due to the unpredictable nature of time travel, they don't necessary show up
This is only the first part of the story, which is actually one novel in two volumes, to be continued in All Clear. Fortunately, I knew that in advance, and made sure to have a copy of part two on hand before starting part one. I was still a little uncertain about this two-volume thing, though, as I think Connie Willis' writing is often better at shorter lengths -- in my opinion, the last novel of hers that I read, Passage, suffered badly from being at least twice as long as it ought to have been -- and in total this story clocks in at something like 1,100 pages. But while it might have been a little slow to get going, this first installment, at least, held my attention quite nicely all the way through. The characters' individual situations are reasonably suspenseful, but it's the ground-level look at the lives of ordinary people in this extraordinary time and place that really captured my interest. It's made me wish I knew a lot more about the Blitz than I do.
Show More
quite when and where they expected. And then there's the question of whether they can get back, and whether it's really true that you can't alter the future...This is only the first part of the story, which is actually one novel in two volumes, to be continued in All Clear. Fortunately, I knew that in advance, and made sure to have a copy of part two on hand before starting part one. I was still a little uncertain about this two-volume thing, though, as I think Connie Willis' writing is often better at shorter lengths -- in my opinion, the last novel of hers that I read, Passage, suffered badly from being at least twice as long as it ought to have been -- and in total this story clocks in at something like 1,100 pages. But while it might have been a little slow to get going, this first installment, at least, held my attention quite nicely all the way through. The characters' individual situations are reasonably suspenseful, but it's the ground-level look at the lives of ordinary people in this extraordinary time and place that really captured my interest. It's made me wish I knew a lot more about the Blitz than I do.
Show Less
LibraryThing member sloopjonb
Blackout and All Clear are two halves of a story from Willis' Oxford Time Travel universe, and set, as you might guess, during the second world war. Well-written, well-plotted, with clearly defined and believable characters, these books convey better than any fiction I have read the weariness, fear
But not without a cavil, either. There is just a bit of critical research failure here. Willis researched the Blitz and life in wartime London very well, and conveys the period excellently, but then forgot to do a bit of basic fact checking ... if a character is said to use the Jubilee Line in 1940, it might have been wise to check that the Jubilee Line actually existed in 1940 (it opened in 1979). And the geography of London is that of someone who travels everywhere by Tube - there were several times when a character made a Tube journey when it would have been quicker to walk.
The most jarring false note was the candy butcher. I gather a candy butcher is someone who walks, or walked, through North American trains selling candy from a tray. Firstly, no such thing ever happened on our railways (the day of the trolley service was long in the future), certainly not in sweet rationed 1940, and even if it had we would never have called them a candy butcher.
OK, rant over, these are very good books and come highly recommended :-)
Show More
and drudgery of life in wartime. The story is engaging, exciting and moving, and not without humour.But not without a cavil, either. There is just a bit of critical research failure here. Willis researched the Blitz and life in wartime London very well, and conveys the period excellently, but then forgot to do a bit of basic fact checking ... if a character is said to use the Jubilee Line in 1940, it might have been wise to check that the Jubilee Line actually existed in 1940 (it opened in 1979). And the geography of London is that of someone who travels everywhere by Tube - there were several times when a character made a Tube journey when it would have been quicker to walk.
The most jarring false note was the candy butcher. I gather a candy butcher is someone who walks, or walked, through North American trains selling candy from a tray. Firstly, no such thing ever happened on our railways (the day of the trolley service was long in the future), certainly not in sweet rationed 1940, and even if it had we would never have called them a candy butcher.
OK, rant over, these are very good books and come highly recommended :-)
Show Less
LibraryThing member RobertDay
So Connie Willis has now got the time-travel bug really badly, and has returned to sending her Oxford history students back to World War II. In the time since 'To say nothing of the dog', it seems there's been some re-thinking of the risk rating of different eras, as the university is now quite
Except things have a habit of going wrong, and our three historians back in 1940 (plus one in 1944 to observe the V-1 attacks of that year) suddenly find that they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, either because their cover stories land them in sticky situations, or because, well, just stuff happening. And suddenly they are stuck because the time-travel device seems to have stopped working...
Well, that sounds like an ideal scenario for a novel. But Ms.Willis has done a vast amount of research into World War II and London and the Londoners, and it all has to go in. And to get it in, her characters start to live lives of intense mundanity whilst trying to survive, avoid being taken for spies, earn a living and mix in with the contemps. And the author gives us all that as well - page after page of "if I go there, the retrieval team will have to come here to find me, so I'd better go back and leave a message with X and possibly one with Y as well so that they know where to come and find me......" and so on and so forth in ever-increasing levels of detail. It was quite a relief when, towards the end of the book, the three historians in 1940 manage to meet up and begin to figure out that something's gone wrong; but even then, one of them is obsessing almost maniacally over whether he has changed the past by ending up on a small boat to Dunkirk and causing the rescue of one man who then goes back to rescue five hundred more...
I stuck with this because I want to know what happens. But the tiny detail that it happens in defintely began to get wearing towards the end of the book (which is only the middle of the story, to be continued in the second half, 'All Clear'). And that's not all.
The contemps are rather stock characters - doughty Londoners with cheerful demeanors in the face of adversity, apart from the kids. The kids are chirpy Cockney caricatures straight out of Richmal Crompton's 'Just William' books, and for me removed any sense of verisimilitude the story might have. But there's another verisimilitude problem. Willis makes a lot out of all the research she did in the Imperial War Museum and by talking to Londoners who came through the Blitz. But there are wild inaccuracies about Britain and British life that keep cropping up which show that her research is actually very sadly lacking - basic stuff, like having people in 'hospital gowns' in 1940, or British trains having end platforms on the coaches (no, that's only in Western films or, oddly, in Germany), the idea that you'd drive from Surrey over to Bethnal Green in half an hour, or that it's necessary to invent places in rural Warwickshire instead of using actual villages and manor houses (there's enough of those to go around), or that there were hire car companies in 1940, or that someone researching WW2 wouldn't know about air raid sirens or the British putting return addresses on envelopes (THIS NEVER HAPPENS! Just because we put return addresses on letters that get to the USA, it doesn't mean that we do it for everything. We put it on letters to America because we know that Americans do it differently. But I am beginning to get very tired indeed about Americans who assume that everybody else does what they do.)
(I gather that in early versions, Willis included the London Underground's Jubilee Line, despite that having only been created in 1977! There was such a howl of derision from UK readers that this got corrected in later printings, though if she'd kept it in, that would have indicated an alternate history; King George V's Silver Jubilee of 1935 was the signal for two British railway companies separately to create named trains and/or classes of locomotives marking the Jubilee, so a similar commemorative re-naming of an Underground line would have been quite possible! But I digress.)
Even where the author did do her research, she doesn't interpret it correctly. The worst example of that is the V-1 campaign itself. Willis writes about "ten thousand V-1s" falling on London; but she is confusing (and rounding up) the number launched with the number that actually hit their targets, which was more like 25% of the total - the rest falling prey to anti-aircraft fire, fighter attacks, deception measures (digging fire pits along the course of the V-1 tracks to the south of London, suggesting to Luftwaffe reconnaissance that they had undershot, so that they increased the fuel load in subsequent firings, making them accordingly overshoot), and just plain mechanical failures. Any historian would have known that, yet the student in 1944 London is cowering in expectation of an onslaught of V-1s when it failed to materialise.
You'll gather that I have problems with this book. I'm so disappointed that, after the triumph that was 'Doomsday Book', the whole premise of time-travelling historians has gone very rapidly downhill for Connie Willis, in part because of this obsession with World War 2 and an appalling belief that writing about any society you are not a part of doesn't need any broader research.
Show More
happy to send individuals back to the Blitz, or to the south coast of England at the time of Dunkirk, because if they stay away from places that the historical records shows gets bombed or attacked, they should be OK.Except things have a habit of going wrong, and our three historians back in 1940 (plus one in 1944 to observe the V-1 attacks of that year) suddenly find that they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, either because their cover stories land them in sticky situations, or because, well, just stuff happening. And suddenly they are stuck because the time-travel device seems to have stopped working...
Well, that sounds like an ideal scenario for a novel. But Ms.Willis has done a vast amount of research into World War II and London and the Londoners, and it all has to go in. And to get it in, her characters start to live lives of intense mundanity whilst trying to survive, avoid being taken for spies, earn a living and mix in with the contemps. And the author gives us all that as well - page after page of "if I go there, the retrieval team will have to come here to find me, so I'd better go back and leave a message with X and possibly one with Y as well so that they know where to come and find me......" and so on and so forth in ever-increasing levels of detail. It was quite a relief when, towards the end of the book, the three historians in 1940 manage to meet up and begin to figure out that something's gone wrong; but even then, one of them is obsessing almost maniacally over whether he has changed the past by ending up on a small boat to Dunkirk and causing the rescue of one man who then goes back to rescue five hundred more...
I stuck with this because I want to know what happens. But the tiny detail that it happens in defintely began to get wearing towards the end of the book (which is only the middle of the story, to be continued in the second half, 'All Clear'). And that's not all.
The contemps are rather stock characters - doughty Londoners with cheerful demeanors in the face of adversity, apart from the kids. The kids are chirpy Cockney caricatures straight out of Richmal Crompton's 'Just William' books, and for me removed any sense of verisimilitude the story might have. But there's another verisimilitude problem. Willis makes a lot out of all the research she did in the Imperial War Museum and by talking to Londoners who came through the Blitz. But there are wild inaccuracies about Britain and British life that keep cropping up which show that her research is actually very sadly lacking - basic stuff, like having people in 'hospital gowns' in 1940, or British trains having end platforms on the coaches (no, that's only in Western films or, oddly, in Germany), the idea that you'd drive from Surrey over to Bethnal Green in half an hour, or that it's necessary to invent places in rural Warwickshire instead of using actual villages and manor houses (there's enough of those to go around), or that there were hire car companies in 1940, or that someone researching WW2 wouldn't know about air raid sirens or the British putting return addresses on envelopes (THIS NEVER HAPPENS! Just because we put return addresses on letters that get to the USA, it doesn't mean that we do it for everything. We put it on letters to America because we know that Americans do it differently. But I am beginning to get very tired indeed about Americans who assume that everybody else does what they do.)
(I gather that in early versions, Willis included the London Underground's Jubilee Line, despite that having only been created in 1977! There was such a howl of derision from UK readers that this got corrected in later printings, though if she'd kept it in, that would have indicated an alternate history; King George V's Silver Jubilee of 1935 was the signal for two British railway companies separately to create named trains and/or classes of locomotives marking the Jubilee, so a similar commemorative re-naming of an Underground line would have been quite possible! But I digress.)
Even where the author did do her research, she doesn't interpret it correctly. The worst example of that is the V-1 campaign itself. Willis writes about "ten thousand V-1s" falling on London; but she is confusing (and rounding up) the number launched with the number that actually hit their targets, which was more like 25% of the total - the rest falling prey to anti-aircraft fire, fighter attacks, deception measures (digging fire pits along the course of the V-1 tracks to the south of London, suggesting to Luftwaffe reconnaissance that they had undershot, so that they increased the fuel load in subsequent firings, making them accordingly overshoot), and just plain mechanical failures. Any historian would have known that, yet the student in 1944 London is cowering in expectation of an onslaught of V-1s when it failed to materialise.
You'll gather that I have problems with this book. I'm so disappointed that, after the triumph that was 'Doomsday Book', the whole premise of time-travelling historians has gone very rapidly downhill for Connie Willis, in part because of this obsession with World War 2 and an appalling belief that writing about any society you are not a part of doesn't need any broader research.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Aspenhugger
"In her first novel since 2002, ... Connie Willis returns with a stunning, enormously entertaining novel of time travel, war, and the deeds -- great and small -- of ordinary people who shape history. In the hands of this acclaimed storyteller, the past and future collide -- and the result is at
"Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. 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, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill's next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London's Blitz. And seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can 'catch up' to her in age.
"But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason 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, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history -- 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.
"From the people sheltering in the tube stations of London to the retired sailors who set off across the Channel to rescue the stranded British Army from Dunkirk, from shop0girls to ambulance drivers, from spies to hospital nurses to Shakespearean actors, Blackout reveals a side of World War II seldom seen before: a dangerous, desperate world in which there are no civilians and in which everybody -- from the Queen down to the lowliest barmaid -- is determined to do their bit to help a beleaguered nation survive."
~~front & back flaps
I was a bit disappointed with this book, because the author used the technique of every chapter jumping to another character, another place, another time:
Chapter Saltram-on-Sea -- 29 May 1940
Chapter Dulwich, Surrey -- 13 June 1944
Chapter Warwickshire -- May1940
Chapter Kent -- April 1944
Chapter London -- 15 September 1940
Well, you get the idea. And I confuse easily. So although I could follow the plot & storyline, it made for disjointed reading. Consequently, it took a while before I really got into the book -- to the point where I wanted to stop the world so I could read to the end and find out what happened. You know, when a book is really, really good and you just don't want to stop reading to sleep, or eat, or do anything else in real life.
That's my only criticism. Connie Willis is one of my favorite authors, because she is indeed a master storyteller, an excellent writer, and she always deals with some intriguing question -- in this case "can the past be changed?" (The same question Diana Gabaldon took up in the Outlander series.) This book is also a window on what it was like to live through the Blitz, and it's terrifying: the loss of life, the destruction of most of London, the not knowing what the future holds either for your personal life (or death) or whether or not Germany will win the war, with all the dread consequences that would impose.
One of the time-travelers begins to panic when she realizes that things are not going as planned and there's a possibility she's stuck in England for the duration of the war (and maybe beyond.) She's feeling very vulnerable and sorry for herself, until she begins to understand that that's what life is like for the "contemps" (short for contemporarys). Interesting to think that if time-travel were possible, time travelers would know what was going to happen, and so could make decisions based on that knowledge -- not weight probabilities like we have to do now.
I rate this book as 4.5 stars -- all that bouncing around (which I suppose is to mirror and reinforce the fact that if you can time-travel, you can be here today, be in yesterday tomorrow, and were in tomorrow yesterday) was enough to knock it down from 5 stars.
Show More
once intriguing, elusive, and frightening."Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. 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, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill's next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London's Blitz. And seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can 'catch up' to her in age.
"But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason 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, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history -- 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.
"From the people sheltering in the tube stations of London to the retired sailors who set off across the Channel to rescue the stranded British Army from Dunkirk, from shop0girls to ambulance drivers, from spies to hospital nurses to Shakespearean actors, Blackout reveals a side of World War II seldom seen before: a dangerous, desperate world in which there are no civilians and in which everybody -- from the Queen down to the lowliest barmaid -- is determined to do their bit to help a beleaguered nation survive."
~~front & back flaps
I was a bit disappointed with this book, because the author used the technique of every chapter jumping to another character, another place, another time:
Chapter Saltram-on-Sea -- 29 May 1940
Chapter Dulwich, Surrey -- 13 June 1944
Chapter Warwickshire -- May1940
Chapter Kent -- April 1944
Chapter London -- 15 September 1940
Well, you get the idea. And I confuse easily. So although I could follow the plot & storyline, it made for disjointed reading. Consequently, it took a while before I really got into the book -- to the point where I wanted to stop the world so I could read to the end and find out what happened. You know, when a book is really, really good and you just don't want to stop reading to sleep, or eat, or do anything else in real life.
That's my only criticism. Connie Willis is one of my favorite authors, because she is indeed a master storyteller, an excellent writer, and she always deals with some intriguing question -- in this case "can the past be changed?" (The same question Diana Gabaldon took up in the Outlander series.) This book is also a window on what it was like to live through the Blitz, and it's terrifying: the loss of life, the destruction of most of London, the not knowing what the future holds either for your personal life (or death) or whether or not Germany will win the war, with all the dread consequences that would impose.
One of the time-travelers begins to panic when she realizes that things are not going as planned and there's a possibility she's stuck in England for the duration of the war (and maybe beyond.) She's feeling very vulnerable and sorry for herself, until she begins to understand that that's what life is like for the "contemps" (short for contemporarys). Interesting to think that if time-travel were possible, time travelers would know what was going to happen, and so could make decisions based on that knowledge -- not weight probabilities like we have to do now.
I rate this book as 4.5 stars -- all that bouncing around (which I suppose is to mirror and reinforce the fact that if you can time-travel, you can be here today, be in yesterday tomorrow, and were in tomorrow yesterday) was enough to knock it down from 5 stars.
Show Less
LibraryThing member melydia
Blackout and All Clear are two separate books, but you can't follow All Clear without reading Blackout first, and you don't get any resolution to the story started in Blackout without reading All Clear, so I'm reviewing them both as one.
In the future, historians study history by traveling through
In the future, historians study history by traveling through
Show More
time and witnessing events first hand. They go incognito, with false identities and backstories, and when their assignments are up they return to the "drop," the portal back to their own time. This is the story of three such Oxford students in World War II: Mike visiting the rescue at Dunkirk, Eileen studying evacuated children, and Polly working as a shopgirl during the London Blitz. One by one, they discover that their drops will no longer open and they are stuck in the past, in a country under attack. Back in Oxford, young Colin and Professor Dunworthy are scrambling to figure out the problem with the drop and find their students. I fully admit to a lack of knowledge of the English homefront during WWII. I didn't know anything about the Blitz or the shelters or the sheer extent of the bomb damage. And all that was fascinating (and distressing, of course), but what really kept me enthralled were the characters. I loved Sir Godfrey the slightly snobby Shakespearean actor, Earnest and his adventures inflating tank decoys, and the party-obsessed FANYs - and I loved to hate the horrible Hodbins. As in all of Willis's books, there is plenty of suspense, drama, and humor, and I loved every minute of it. It really should have been one book, but I guess that would have made the binding rather unwieldy. Definitely recommended, even if you're not a WWII buff (which I certainly am not). Show Less
LibraryThing member StigE
Time-travel with three main characters that are supposedly historians who are seemingly incapable of taking care of themselves. One character has trouble finding a black skirt. Working on Oxford Street. In a large departement store.
The three main characters turn everything into a huge problem and
Show More
every chapter is a cliff-hanger with most of them fake scares. At the end of the book you just want the blasted thing to end. Some of the supporting characters are quite engaging, human and well written but these books are ruined by the inner monologue of the trio from the future. Whingebags, the lot of them.
I have decided to read all the Hugo and Nebula winners come hell or high water and this book is so far one of the low points.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ramblingivy
I thought the concept of this novel was innovative enough, but was quite disappointed in how it was handled by the author. The period detail was often laboured, with too much reliance on transcribed wartime sources, such as newspapers, and too little effort put into creating a truly evocative
For me, the most irritating aspect of the book was the author's inability to really get her characters to speak and think like wartime Britons. British people don't "write" someone: they "write to" them. They wouldn't think that a tally of British vs German air casualties looked somewhat like a table of baseball scores; in fact, would be unlikely to know much about baseball at all. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the novel was riddled with scores of such clangers and, for me, did a lot to ruin my enjoyment of this book. It very much came across as a novel written by an American, who had very little feel for the culture and the period about which she was writing.
Show More
wartime atmosphere. For me, the most irritating aspect of the book was the author's inability to really get her characters to speak and think like wartime Britons. British people don't "write" someone: they "write to" them. They wouldn't think that a tally of British vs German air casualties looked somewhat like a table of baseball scores; in fact, would be unlikely to know much about baseball at all. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the novel was riddled with scores of such clangers and, for me, did a lot to ruin my enjoyment of this book. It very much came across as a novel written by an American, who had very little feel for the culture and the period about which she was writing.
Show Less
LibraryThing member nbmars
It’s difficult to convey just how good Connie Willis is by merely summarizing the plot of one of her books, since so much of what is good about her has to do with the incredibly life-like characters she creates. Further, her work tends to be classified as “science fiction,” which
Generally, in her books, she starts from a time in the future and has time travelers go back to another period for study. The time travel element is not really central, except that it gives the characters an additional perspective to interpret what they see, and of course, an additional area for plot complications to arise. But it seems to me that the most important latent effect is to give a human face to great historical events.
In Blackout, which takes place in London and the vicinity during World War II, we follow the paths of three time travelers from the year 2060: Mike, Eileen, and Polly. They have come back to witness three key aspects of the war years: the heroism of ordinary Britains from Dover who helped rescue soldiers from Dunkirk, the evacuation of children from London to the English countryside, and the ways in which ordinary Londoners coped with the “Blitz” (the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between September 6, 1940 and May 10, 1941).
As the characters develop affection for the “contemps” or contemporaries, we can’t help but do so ourselves, for they are so richly portrayed and so wonderfully and idiosyncratically flawed. The time traveling historians discover the same variety of people there are in any age: good-hearted; crabby; loveable; trying; optimistic; sarcastic; heroic; crazy; shallow; memorable. Children play a large part in this story, and they are as Dickensian as you could want: some are so irrepressibly bratty you want to wring their necks, and some so scared and vulnerable you want to rock them to sleep. Because Willis places all of these people in a historic context, she helps us see that not only is history alive, but that the past isn’t so very different after all; it was just earlier. ….
Evaluation: I highly recommend this with a couple of caveats. This is only part one of a two-volume story. Part II is called All Clear. You would probably want to get them both at once. Secondly, if you are only going to read one Connie Willis book (even though you would be missing out terribly on a wonderful author!), I would pick either Dooms Day Book (which focuses on the advent of the Bubonic Plague to England) or The Passage (relating to the sinking of the Titanic). Blackout is good, but those two are even better!
Show More
automatically turns off some potential readers. I think she can [also] justifiably be characterized as a writer of historical fiction. Her research is meticulous and is an added bonus to everything she writes.Generally, in her books, she starts from a time in the future and has time travelers go back to another period for study. The time travel element is not really central, except that it gives the characters an additional perspective to interpret what they see, and of course, an additional area for plot complications to arise. But it seems to me that the most important latent effect is to give a human face to great historical events.
In Blackout, which takes place in London and the vicinity during World War II, we follow the paths of three time travelers from the year 2060: Mike, Eileen, and Polly. They have come back to witness three key aspects of the war years: the heroism of ordinary Britains from Dover who helped rescue soldiers from Dunkirk, the evacuation of children from London to the English countryside, and the ways in which ordinary Londoners coped with the “Blitz” (the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between September 6, 1940 and May 10, 1941).
As the characters develop affection for the “contemps” or contemporaries, we can’t help but do so ourselves, for they are so richly portrayed and so wonderfully and idiosyncratically flawed. The time traveling historians discover the same variety of people there are in any age: good-hearted; crabby; loveable; trying; optimistic; sarcastic; heroic; crazy; shallow; memorable. Children play a large part in this story, and they are as Dickensian as you could want: some are so irrepressibly bratty you want to wring their necks, and some so scared and vulnerable you want to rock them to sleep. Because Willis places all of these people in a historic context, she helps us see that not only is history alive, but that the past isn’t so very different after all; it was just earlier. ….
Evaluation: I highly recommend this with a couple of caveats. This is only part one of a two-volume story. Part II is called All Clear. You would probably want to get them both at once. Secondly, if you are only going to read one Connie Willis book (even though you would be missing out terribly on a wonderful author!), I would pick either Dooms Day Book (which focuses on the advent of the Bubonic Plague to England) or The Passage (relating to the sinking of the Titanic). Blackout is good, but those two are even better!
Show Less
LibraryThing member amberwitch
A rather fragmented story with 6+ different points of view, jumping across 2060 and different times during WWII.
Everybody seems to be rushing around, missing their clues, tied up in bureaucracy. If it was funny, I'd call it a comedy of errors or maybe a screwball comedy, but as it is not, it seems
Neither particularly entertaining or engaging, this was a it of a slog to get through.
Everybody seems to be rushing around, missing their clues, tied up in bureaucracy. If it was funny, I'd call it a comedy of errors or maybe a screwball comedy, but as it is not, it seems
Show More
more Kafkaesque than anything else.Neither particularly entertaining or engaging, this was a it of a slog to get through.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Helenliz
I don't read a lot of sci fi, as I know I am rather pernickety about breaking the rules of science at a whim. So when I enjoy a book that has timetravel at its heart, you know you are in the presence of something rather special. I think the way that the time travel in Connie Willis' book has its
In this book, we have a group of 3 different historians that are all looking at different elements of WW2. Eileen (aka Merope) is studying evacuees at a country house outside London, Mike is posing as an American reporter looking at heroes at Dunkirk and Polly is studying the effect of the start of the Blitz. In turn, each finds that their "drop", their route back to Oxford of 2060, has failed to function. And they start to wonder if they have, in fact, changed history. Mike ended up being injured at Dunkirk, having saved one man's life - who then went on to save another 500. Has that changed history? Polly had studied the reported dates of various bombing raids and locations bombed so can check that the progress of the war is as expected. But there remains that fear that they are now stuck in the past and the rescue team is not going to come and get them - so what has gone wrong.
The fish out of water element is excellent. They start by being able to view events dispassionately, knowing what is happening, but gradually they become sucked in and that foreknowledge becomes more a hinderance than a help. I think there is a big difference between events when viewed in retrospect and events as experienced at the time, we all put on rose tinted glasses once the danger is over - and that appears a lot between the information the trio have and what they experience first hand.
This is very clearly the first part of 2, and I now need to find book 2 pretty sharpish.
Show More
own rules it what, for me, makes it work. She's allowing one piece of science fiction, but then it follows its rules and it does so entirely consistently. So a historian can't time travel with the intent of changing history, you can;t go back and shoot Hitler, for instance, the net simply doesn't allow it. There are places and events that they usually can;t get close it, known as divergence points. In this book, we have a group of 3 different historians that are all looking at different elements of WW2. Eileen (aka Merope) is studying evacuees at a country house outside London, Mike is posing as an American reporter looking at heroes at Dunkirk and Polly is studying the effect of the start of the Blitz. In turn, each finds that their "drop", their route back to Oxford of 2060, has failed to function. And they start to wonder if they have, in fact, changed history. Mike ended up being injured at Dunkirk, having saved one man's life - who then went on to save another 500. Has that changed history? Polly had studied the reported dates of various bombing raids and locations bombed so can check that the progress of the war is as expected. But there remains that fear that they are now stuck in the past and the rescue team is not going to come and get them - so what has gone wrong.
The fish out of water element is excellent. They start by being able to view events dispassionately, knowing what is happening, but gradually they become sucked in and that foreknowledge becomes more a hinderance than a help. I think there is a big difference between events when viewed in retrospect and events as experienced at the time, we all put on rose tinted glasses once the danger is over - and that appears a lot between the information the trio have and what they experience first hand.
This is very clearly the first part of 2, and I now need to find book 2 pretty sharpish.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kdcdavis
I would not have stayed up until 1 am to finish this book if I'd known that it was only the first half of the story!! I was so mad I almost threw the book across the room when I got to the most agonizing cliffhanger ever. How am I going to make it until this fall?!
I love Connie Willis's books,
"Blackout" is an intricate, breathlessly fast-paced, well-written, historically-packed science fiction novel, and I am desperately eager for the "All Clear" to sound this fall.
I love Connie Willis's books,
Show More
although they remind me of bad dreams where you're searching and searching and can't find anything or keep missing someone and get more and more panicky. I must also admit that though I'm fascinated by time travel, I have a hard time suspending my sense of reality for it, especially when characters worry that they've somehow changed the course of history. If they had--they wouldn't exist! However, once I started this book I did not want to do anything but read it (and I didn't, really). "Blackout" is an intricate, breathlessly fast-paced, well-written, historically-packed science fiction novel, and I am desperately eager for the "All Clear" to sound this fall.
Show Less
LibraryThing member karieh
I absolutely LOVED “The Doomsday Book” by Connie Willis. I’ve read it – 5 times, 6? Beyond the fact that I am a sucker for “what if?” type plots…the characters in the book caught hold of me and wouldn’t let go.
“Blackout” was a slightly different experience. I did enjoy it…but
And? The end? Did I miss something? Did the story just end? Seriously – if the package didn’t specifically say 16 CDs – I would think the last CD was missing.
Soooo – I want more!
“Blackout” was a slightly different experience. I did enjoy it…but
Show More
the experience of listening to an audiobook is wildly different than reading the actual book. The narrator’s voice was wonderful – it was like the aural equivalent of a cozy chintz chair. (I’m sorry – that was an awful simile – but that’s what came to mind.) However – the story was severely lacking in appearances by Mr. Dunworthy, one of my favorite characters, and while the reader learned a great deal about the time travelers in World War II, there was very little about what was going on in the time they came from. The parallel storylines was one of the best parts of “Doomsday”.And? The end? Did I miss something? Did the story just end? Seriously – if the package didn’t specifically say 16 CDs – I would think the last CD was missing.
Soooo – I want more!
Show Less
LibraryThing member keenchris
Blackout by Connie Willis 4 stars
Willis just gets better and better with another tale of time travel the way it would probably work (or not...) This entry in the Oxford Time Travel series is the first of a two part story (to conclude in All Clear) that finds our intrepid historians stuck in London
I've found with Willis to just read on without trying to make sense of it because she will eventually tie all the pieces together-is there anything better in a book than those "Ah Ha" moments when you figure it all out?!
If you have read the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, I urge you to read this series-Willis knows how to make history part of the story instead of turning the story into a textbook. She brings the story to life with authentic details about the War, the Blitz and how folks went about their daily lives during that terrible time. From the Acknowledgment page, Willis thanks the Imperial War Museum ladies for sharing their stories with her. Willis works these personal reminisces into her book in such a way that Blackout is really elevated into more than sci-fi.
I did give this book only 4 stars since I got bogged down in the amount of padding Willis threw in: characters gathered to discuss the same events over & over, there was a lot of running around on trains, buses and subways that had no purpose and a couple of characters that seemed like they had more of a part to play in the plot but just went away and were never mentioned again. I haven't read All Clear yet so maybe things will be resolved in that book. 4 stars.
Willis just gets better and better with another tale of time travel the way it would probably work (or not...) This entry in the Oxford Time Travel series is the first of a two part story (to conclude in All Clear) that finds our intrepid historians stuck in London
Show More
as World War II rages. The book does take its time getting started as Willis re-introduces us to these characters and gives a little background on how the 'net' works to hurl them through time. I've found with Willis to just read on without trying to make sense of it because she will eventually tie all the pieces together-is there anything better in a book than those "Ah Ha" moments when you figure it all out?!
If you have read the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, I urge you to read this series-Willis knows how to make history part of the story instead of turning the story into a textbook. She brings the story to life with authentic details about the War, the Blitz and how folks went about their daily lives during that terrible time. From the Acknowledgment page, Willis thanks the Imperial War Museum ladies for sharing their stories with her. Willis works these personal reminisces into her book in such a way that Blackout is really elevated into more than sci-fi.
I did give this book only 4 stars since I got bogged down in the amount of padding Willis threw in: characters gathered to discuss the same events over & over, there was a lot of running around on trains, buses and subways that had no purpose and a couple of characters that seemed like they had more of a part to play in the plot but just went away and were never mentioned again. I haven't read All Clear yet so maybe things will be resolved in that book. 4 stars.
Show Less
LibraryThing member buffalogr
What would happen if three time travelers went back to 1940 London from 2060? This is the story, in excruciating detail, of their lives. Granted, it's tinctured with time travel concerns, but it's really about the everyday lives of Englishers during that time. It's very, very long...a 24 hour
Show More
listen. To boot, it ends abruptly--referring the reader to the next book. I feel swindled. Show Less
LibraryThing member bjappleg8
Oh, dear. I like Connie Willis so much . . . at least, I love some of her books and stories so much that it is a huge disappointment when I don’t like one of them. Blackout is her newest novel, and really it’s only Vol. 1 of a two-volume novel which will be finished in October with All Clear.
Show More
The last Connie Willis book I read was Passage, which tried my patience and perseverance severely and of which I was, most unfortunately, strongly reminded as I struggled through Blackout. The gist of the story is that there are lots of historians (time-travelling graduate students from 2060 Oxford University) using the net to research first-hand WWII. Only something has gone wrong somewhere – is it that the net is overloaded? Has one of the historians caused a history-altering event (something that is not supposed to be possible)? Because three of them, Polly, Merope (aka Eileen) and Michael are trapped in London during the Blitz. It’s a fascinating premise with lots of possibility, but this thick novel literally doesn’t go anywhere. It’s an endless recitation of which department store, subway station, air shelter (take your pick) is supposed to be bombed on which night and the machinations necessary for the time-traveler to get from point a to point b without going through somewhere that’s going to be bombed, or finding a train line that’s functioning, or without being turned away by some sort of security guard– which, even when one of them manages to do, proves to be have been a wasted effort for one reason or another. It’s exhausting and . . . boring. All that has really happened at the end of close to a thousand pages is that the three of them have managed to meet up in London to confirm to each other that, in fact, none of the drops (ports of entry for time travelling) that they were using is apparently working. (And lest you think I’m giving something away . . . this information is in the advertising blurbs.) The novel is extremely thin on plot and character, and ponderous with minutiae that just didn’t further the plot or enrich the story. It left me, not only cold, but frustrated and aggravated. Will I read All Clear when it is released later this year? Yes . . . but very grudgingly. Would I recommend this? Sadly, no. Show Less
LibraryThing member nmele
missed connections, people seeking and missing one another by seconds, and chance meetings are all pretty standard Connie Willis tropes. They are so much a part in the first pages of this novel that I nearly gave up on it. There is a point when an author's idiosyncrasies become annoying tics, and
Show More
Willis imho relies on this sort of thing too much in this novel about time travelers stranded in London during the Blitz. And...this is half of the full story. So why three stars? Because I got past the annoyances and got involved with the characters, their milieu and their problem. Show Less
LibraryThing member MickyFine
In Oxford in 2060, the history department is a chaotic place with historians time traveling to many different times and places. In WWII England Eileen is studying the experience of evacuated London children at a country manor, Polly is observing the lives of Oxford Street shopgirls during the
Time travel, WWII-era England, and slow-build of tension made this novel an obvious hit with me. While I did find it helpful to have read Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog prior to this book, it is by no means a requirement. A great combo of science fiction and historical fiction, the novel will appeal to readers of both genres. With three central characters that the novel follows, it can sometimes be tricky to keep track of some of the smaller details and remembering exactly when Polly, Eileen, and Mike are, which becomes important over the course of the novel. As part of a duology, the novel does end on a bit of a cliffhanger so I do recommend having the follow-up novel on hand to dive into right away.
Show More
London Blitz, and Mike is seeking out examples of heroism of ordinary individuals during the evacuation of Dunkirk. But as Eileen, Polly, and Mike work on their projects, it slowly becomes clear that the rules of time travel aren't behaving like they should be. Suddenly Eileen, Polly, and Mike must face the unthinkable: that it is possible for historians to change the past.Time travel, WWII-era England, and slow-build of tension made this novel an obvious hit with me. While I did find it helpful to have read Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog prior to this book, it is by no means a requirement. A great combo of science fiction and historical fiction, the novel will appeal to readers of both genres. With three central characters that the novel follows, it can sometimes be tricky to keep track of some of the smaller details and remembering exactly when Polly, Eileen, and Mike are, which becomes important over the course of the novel. As part of a duology, the novel does end on a bit of a cliffhanger so I do recommend having the follow-up novel on hand to dive into right away.
Show Less
LibraryThing member debs4jc
I got so enthralled with this story that I just wanted it to go on and on and never end. It of course does go on in the book "All Clear" which I am waiting impatiently to read. The premise is that time travel is a commonplace thing in the year 2060, and that historians from Oxford University make
Don't let the time travel aspect through you off. That aspect of the novel is it's only weak point, for such a sophisticated technology the means used seem rather antiquated, as do the brief scenes depicting future life. The strength of this novel is the vivid creation of the people and places that makes this era of history come alive. My words can't describe how enjoyable it is to follow the characters on their stories, all I can say is read it and see if you are just as mesmerized as I was by them. The fact that the observers are from another time and are frantic to figure out why they can't get back just adds a element of suspense to an already superb story. I heartily recommend it to anyone!
Show More
regular trips to the past to study historical events. The historians in this novel are all traveling to places in England during World War II. At first things seem routine, despite a bit of chaos concerning their schedules they arrive more or less where and when they are supposed to be. The story moves along as the historians get involved in various adventures with evacuated children, the Dunkirk evacuation, and London during the blitz. But then they each realize that their "drops" aren't working and they can't return to their own time.Don't let the time travel aspect through you off. That aspect of the novel is it's only weak point, for such a sophisticated technology the means used seem rather antiquated, as do the brief scenes depicting future life. The strength of this novel is the vivid creation of the people and places that makes this era of history come alive. My words can't describe how enjoyable it is to follow the characters on their stories, all I can say is read it and see if you are just as mesmerized as I was by them. The fact that the observers are from another time and are frantic to figure out why they can't get back just adds a element of suspense to an already superb story. I heartily recommend it to anyone!
Show Less
LibraryThing member bwhitner
This was a pretty good book. It kept me interested. It was about historians who time traveled. There were three main characters Mike, Eileen and Polly. They all traveled back to different points in WWII. They weren't supposed to change anything that originally happened. I found the book very
Show More
interesting. The interactions between the people in the shelters. How close they became. I guess if your stuck together night after night for hours you build a relationship with those around them. I could never begin to know what it's like to live in a country a war. I think the author did a good job portraying this. I just found the topic interesting and not something that has been written too much about. Show Less
LibraryThing member Gwendydd
Mr. Dunworthy's time-traveling Oxford historians return. As always, their lives are too hectic for them to ever finish their conversations, which means none of the characters knows everything they need to know. Three main characters travel back to England during the Battle of Britain, and all three
Willis manages to sustain the suspense throughout the long book. This is actually only the first half of their story, and the end is a cliff-hanger - I was glad that I had "All Clear" on hand when I finished this. The characters are charming and likeable, if a bit frustratingly dense about their dire situation.
The historical detail is fascinating. Willis has really done her research well. The Blitz is an absolutely fascinating episode in history, and reading this book has piqued my interest enough that I have done some of my own research into the period.
I can't wait to finish the next one and find out what happens!
Show More
of them get stuck in the past. They are all uncertain as to why this is happening, and struggle to find their way home. Unlike the previous time-traveling Oxford historians books, this time the readers don't know what is happening either. Willis manages to sustain the suspense throughout the long book. This is actually only the first half of their story, and the end is a cliff-hanger - I was glad that I had "All Clear" on hand when I finished this. The characters are charming and likeable, if a bit frustratingly dense about their dire situation.
The historical detail is fascinating. Willis has really done her research well. The Blitz is an absolutely fascinating episode in history, and reading this book has piqued my interest enough that I have done some of my own research into the period.
I can't wait to finish the next one and find out what happens!
Show Less