Connie Williams Part 2

To Say Nothing of the Dog: How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump

This is by far the most lighthearted of Connie Willis’ time travel stories.  It is based on Jerome K. Jerome’s semi autobiographic and comic novel “Three Men in a Boat, to Say Nothing of the Dog” about three men and a dog who go on a boating vacation on the Thames.  In Willis’ story, the historians have been recruited by a rich benefactor to recreate Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed in the Blitz.  Ned Henry, a time traveler who is a 20^th century specialist, is sent to return items back to the late 19^th century because he is the only one available to fix a possible problem in continuity, but he is effected by time lag.  He meets up with two contemporaries and they go on a leisurely trip up the Thames along with a dog and the same time Jerome did in real life.  Eventually he meets another historian Verity Kimble and they have to solve the mystery of what happened to the Bishop’s bird stump, an item that was in the cathedral at some point, but which may have been destroyed in the blitz.

The book is a mix of comedy, romance, and mystery.  Ned gets dragged into repeated complicated misadventures involving pets and social demands.  There is a mystery full of clues as to what happened to the Bishop’s Bird stump, a very ugly iron vase that was donated to the church and which vanished for seemingly no obvious reason.  And several characters fall in love over the course of the story.  The main science fiction themes are the problems of determinism vs free will which crop up some in her other time travel stories along with thoughts on the space-time continuum.  Besides the time travel there is not that much other science fiction apart from a plague that killed all cats in the future, but this actually has relevance since historians take a cat into the future, which isn't supposed to be allowed by the laws of time travel.

All in all this is a novel appropriate for all ages and is a good choice for comedy, mystery or romance fans.

Connie Williams Part 1

Connie Williams best known stories focus on Time Travelling historians from the late 21st century in her novels and short stories.  While she has written other works, mostly her stories are soft science fiction that all follow a group of late Oxford historians who travel back in time to England disguised as contemporary people.

She has a simple set of rules in place that govern her universe. Deadlines: You can't be alive at the same time twice.  No altering past events: her time machine won't even send you back if you will alter major events or else it will send you back hours or days later.  This is called slippage and also works to send you to a slightly different time if someone could see you arrive.  You can't go to "divergent points" such as triggers for wars or other decisive events in history, where even a small action could have major consequences that history couldn't correct.  You can't take things or people back with you, especially if that would alter history.  You have to travel through "drop sites", which are certain specific locations where you can time travel and no one will notice you coming or going.

She is one of my favorite current writers and she tends to focus a lot more on plot, dialog, characters, and setting than most other science fiction writers.  She does a lot of detailed historical research before writing these stories and the science fiction details are mainly there to advance the usually fairly complex plot.  For the most part her books are fairly cheerful and fun (except for the end of Doomsday Book) even when she focuses on fairly serious matters like World War II.

Doomsday Book

This is the darkest and most depressing of her four historian novels, though the first two thirds are not particularly dark.  A historian named Kivrin travels back to oxford in 1320, but unknowingly arrives several decades after that.  There are two parallel plots involving disease, one a modern deadly strain of influenza that has infected both Kivrin and the technician who sent her back in time and another one with an outbreak of the plague in the 14th century that happens towards the end of the book. Kivrin becomes delusional from the influenza when she arrives in the past and can't remember her drop site, while the local contemporaries think she is a runaway nun since she can do things like read and write.  She becomes stranded in the past since the future time influenza outbreak means no one can come and rescue her for fear of spreading the disease.  Soon after becoming stranded the black death arrives in her village and wipes out the local population while she can do nothing to stop it.

Doomsday Book won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel and was nominated for other awards.  It is fairly dramatic and presents a interesting description of 14th century English life.  It has several memorable characters and the disease story lines in particular are extremely tense.  Like some of her other work she includes some religious symbolism in her work, particularly when dealing with the priest of the local church.

For the most part its very appropriate for teenage and above audience and will appeal to people interested in the middle ages and history.  The only possibly disturbing parts of the book are the vivid descriptions of the plagues the infect the various characters.