Doomsday Book (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Connie Willis
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—time travel
- Time of Work: December, 2054-January, 2055, and 1348
- Setting: Oxford, England, and Ashencote, a nearby village
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: Future, Twenty-first century, Villages, England or English people, Time travel, Plague, Rescue, Fourteenth century
- Locales: Oxford, England
The Plot
Kivrin Engle, a brilliant and determined young woman, is the first historian to journey back to the Middle Ages. She makes the trip despite the misgivings of her teacher and mentor, Mr. Dunworthy. His anxieties seem justified when the technician in charge of the time “net” mumbles that something is wrong and then collapses from a deadly new strain of influenza shortly after sending Kivrin to the past. What gradually becomes clear is that Kivrin has been infected with that same flu and sent not to 1320, as intended, but to 1348, the year the Black Death began to...
[The entire page is 1000 words long]
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