Doomsday Book

Written in 1992, Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book follows Kivrin Engle, a young historian who is preparing to study the medieval period by traveling into the past as an observer. As Kivrin receives inoculations against fourteenth-century diseases, her twenty-first-century instructors perform meticulous calculations to determine the rendezvous location in which she will be received. However, when Kivrin finds herself amid a strange crisis linking the past to the present, her instructors must struggle desperately to rescue her. Kivrin is forced to rely on herself in a time of great fear and superstition. Her journey raises the ageless issues of good and evil and the will of the human spirit.

Doomsday Book is set in mid-twenty-first-century England at the University of Oxford, where historians conduct field observations using time travel. As part of the book’s premise, history resists any time travel that would alter the past by preventing visits to certain times and places. The time travel machine typically refuses to operate, making such trips impossible. In cases of “slippage,” a slight shift in the precise time target will occur, with the time traveler arriving at the nearest suitable time and place to avoid creating a paradox, which can produce a window of variance between five minutes and five years.

As the book opens, Kivrin Engle is a young historian who specializes in the medieval period. She asks her instructor, Professor James Dunworthy, and the authorities that run the project to send her to Oxford in the year 1320. There are concerns that this period is too dangerous to travel to because the journey would take Kivrin three hundred years earlier than the time travel machine has ever brought anyone to.



Professor Gilchrist, who takes charge of the project, persuades the authorities to allow her journey to take place in order to enhance his own prestige, skipping various protocols that would ensure Kivrin’s safety. The first of the historians to visit that time period, she feels confident that she is fully prepared for what she will face.

Soon after Kivrin is sent to the fourteenth century, Badri Chaudhuri, the technician who entered the time travel coordinates for the trip, suddenly collapses. He is an early victim of a fatal flu epidemic that disrupts the university and eventually results in the whole city being quarantined. Kivrin is also ill when she arrives in the fourteenth century. After several days of delirium and fever, Kivrin awakens at a manor, surrounded by the residents who have been nursing her. Having been moved from the “drop point” of her arrival, Kivrin is unsure where to go to return home, as the gateway will open to return her at a prearranged time.

The narrative then switches between Kivrin’s experience and the mid-twenty-first-century flu epidemic at Oxford. Kivrin quickly learns some things about the time: the Middle English she has learned differs from the local dialect, her maps hold no value, her clothes are too nice, and she is way too clean. Her literacy is also unusual for the time, especially for women. She fakes amnesia, fearing that the background story she was going to use would present similar inconsistencies.



As Kivrin searches for the drop off point, she becomes somewhat integrated into society. Meanwhile, Dunworthy desperately attempts to determine whether Kivrin is safe as the university devolves into panic. As fears increase about the virus having been transmitted from the past through the time travel net, Professor Gilchrist orders the net to be closed, leaving Kivrin stranded.

In their respective timelines, Kivrin and Professor Dunworthy eventually realize that Kivrin was accidentally sent back to 1348, during the Black Death pandemic, which is more than twenty years later than her intended destination. Delirious with the flu, Badri had used the incorrect code when sending Kivrin back in time.

The Black Death continues to ravage those in both timelines, and many fall ill and die. The predetermined date for Kivrin to be retrieved passes, with neither side able to figure out a solution. Finally, despite being ill himself, Professor Dunworthy arranges for Badri to send him to rescue Kivrin.



Meanwhile, Kivrin watches as all the individuals she has come to know during her time in the Middle Ages perish from the Black Death. She sits with Father Roche, the priest who found her and brought her to the manor after her arrival, as he lies dying in the chapel. He reveals to her that he was close to the drop site when Kivrin came through the time travel net. Seeing her manifest out of thin air, he believed her to have been a saint delivered by God to help with the sweeping illness. He dies still holding to this notion; Kivrin expresses appreciation at his selfless devotion to his faith.

Suddenly, Professor Dunworthy appears, having successfully made his way through the time travel net. They return to the twenty-first century shortly after New Year’s Day.