Blackout
By Connie Willis
(Spectra, Paperback, 9780345519832, 512pp.)
Publication Date: September 14, 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover
Categories: Historical - General, Science Fiction - General
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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.
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.
“A tour de force . . . [Willis] is one of America’s finest writers.”
—The Denver Post
“This compassionate and deeply imagined novel . . . gives the reader a strong you-were-there feeling.”
—The Times-Picayune
“[Willis has] researched Blackout so thoroughly, her readers may imagine she had access to the time machine her characters use.”
—The Seattle Times
“A page-turning thriller . . . Willis uses detail and period language exquisitely well, creating an engaging, exciting tale.”
—Publishers Weekly
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