Doomsday book
Somewhere in the future, ordinary history students must travel back in time as part of their university degree. An award-winning best-seller in the United States, this is the first of Connie Willis' brilliant Oxford trilogy.Kivrin knows everything about the Middle Ages - she's read all the books. She knows it's dangerous: cutthroats in the woods, witch hunts, cholera, and millions dying in the plague. For a young historian, it's fascinating.When Kivrin's tutors in Oxford's history lab finally agree to send her on an on-site study trip, she jumps at the chance to observe medieval life first-hand. But a crisis that strangely links the past and future leaves her stranded in the most deadly and terrifying era in human history, face to face with the heart-rending reality behind the statistics. And while she fights for her own life, Kivrin finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope in this dark time.Five years in the writing, Doomsday Book is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the timeless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit.
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12recommend
16mentions
16people
2008–2026years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Which books did you read at least twice? Please give author, title, and how often you have read it.
For me the (probably incomplete list) is:
Connie Willis: Doomsday Book (three times)
Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon, Anathem, Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World (twice or three times)
Frank Herbert: Dune (three times)
Tolkien: Lord of the Rings (three times)
Stephen King: Salem's Lot, The Shining, It (three times each)
Stephen King & Peter Straub: The Talisman (twice)
Vernor Vinge: A Deepness in the Sky, A Fire Upon The Deep, Rainbow's End (each twice)
Tracy Kidder: The Soul of a New Machine (twice)
Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove (twice)
Ross Thomas: Chinaman's Chance (twice)
William Gibson: Neuromancer, The Peripheral, Agency (each twice)
- This was fascinating to read early ideas of limited social gatherings - although six servants is still a lot of people.
This is in the sixteenth century, and it's striking how many centuries the plague remained a threat for. I wonder what it was like, knowing that maybe one year, after decades have passed, the plague would strike -- like knowing Covid would return, continued for hundreds of years, but normalised and ingrained. Just: part of life. You would grow up knowing and expecting it. Perhaps influenza was like this early 20th century.
It would be remiss not to point other HN readers at Connie Willis's Doomsday Book: an amazing novel, Hugo and Nebula Award winner, which mixes both a modern day plague and the horrifying medieval one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Book_(novel)
- Recommendation: The Doomsday Book. Connie Willis. Heartbreaking.
- Great book. Some other historical fiction recommendations:
- The "Welsh Princes" series by Sharon Kay Penman (same era, different perspective)
- Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (Black Death)
- The "Grail Quest" series by Richard Cornwell (Hundred Years War)
- The "Last Kingdom" series, also by Cornwell (Viking invasion, Alfred the Great)
- The baroque cycle was great, if a bit long. Connie Willis, another great sci-fi author, has some good historical fiction like Doomsday Book
- Here is my bell related science-fiction recommendation: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.
"The drop had been scheduled for noon. If she had come through on time and Probability was right about the slippage, it would be six o'clock in the evening, which was too late for vespers. And if it were vespers, why did the bell go on tolling?
It could be tolling for mass, or for a funeral or a wedding. Bells had rung almost constantly in the Middle Ages—to warn of invasions or fires, to help a lost child find its way back to the village, even to ward off thunderstorms. It could be ringing for any reason at all."
