Blackout

Usually, on the occasions when I am underwhelmed by a book that has rave reviews and prestigious awards to its name, I find myself wishing I could see in it the things that others see. Usually, it's just a matter of taste, whether in style or subject matter or – increasingly – the penchant people have for having their half-baked socio-political opinions unquestioningly mirrored back at them. But in Connie Willis' Blackout, none of that was the case. Blackout wasn't a book that I didn't get; it was just legitimately, objectively poor.

It sounded so great, which was why I wanted to read it: an experienced sci-fi author writes a story about a group of Oxford historians in the year 2060 who regularly go back in time to observe first-hand show more the events of the past. I was immediately sold on the premise, and on the early chapters where various characters speculate on the possibilities of going back to observe Pearl Harbor, the Crusades or 9/11. Even though this was only background colour, Blackout's subsequent plotline of three such historians being trapped in wartime England in 1940 and unable to return seemed a compelling one.

Six hundred pages later and I am dispirited at how the book panned out. In retrospect, Blackout's problems are evident even in those early chapters: a lot of hustle and bustle, not knowing which characters we should be paying attention to, and with poor scene-setting and plot progression. The three main characters take a long time to emerge, not only because of the helter-skelter plotting but because there's so little to differentiate them as characters. Their inner monologues become repetitive, mostly concerned with managing their schedules: how they are going to hitch a ride, catch a train, run an errand on their lunch break, or get to such-and-such a place before the nightly air raid sirens. "Polly looked at her watch, trying to decide if she had enough time to get to Mrs Rickett's and back" (pg. 597). It is that sort of triviality which passes for the bulk of 'time travel' in Blackout.

The growing sketchiness of the book exacerbates other minor irritants. Strange grammar choices like "the water'd risen" (pg. 130) or "Merope'd gone" (pg. 499) repel with their clumsiness. Anachronisms can be forgiven, but when a time-travelling Oxford historian researching the Blitz doesn't know what an Anderson shelter is, because she was there to study evacuees in the countryside and "hadn't researched shelters" (pg. 405), you have to ask: where in the hell had this historian built up her working knowledge of the Blitz, that she'd never heard of a bloody Anderson shelter?

The greatest irritants, however, are the constant plot teases and misdirects. The book should be called Fake-Out rather than Blackout: Willis often writes a chapter in which it seems a certain character is dead, or late, or something contrary has happened, only to write a few chapters later, when we have returned to this character, that it was a simple misunderstanding or, more commonly, a deliberately contrived circumstance to titillate the reader. For example, one character, fearing that he has broken the timeline and lost Britain the war, ends one chapter with a man telling him "the Germans are coming!", only for it to emerge in his next PoV chapter that the man is a mental patient. Every reader will quickly cotton on to this trick, which is repeated over and over again throughout the book: the most egregious is the chapter where the department store where one character works is said to have been bombed, and in a few paragraphs we flip-flop between revelations that it has been bombed or left unscathed (which would have implications that they have altered the timeline). When it turns out to have been a non-issue, much is made of the many bodies outside the bomb site (where in the original timeline there were only three), only for it to emerge in the next chapter that the 'bodies' are shop mannequins. The reader begins to feel insulted.

Though not a terrible book – Willis' writing is easy enough, if mediocre, and her concept is interesting – it is this sort of fake-out that destroys the reader's goodwill. And after 600 pages, the book ends on a cliff-hanger without any sort of pace or drama: it is painfully clear that Blackout and its follow-up, All Clear, were a single manuscript cleaved into two. And it's hard to see why: much of Blackout is contrived fakery and padding and could have been discarded. The reader realises the characters' predicament – "we can't use any of our drops" (pg. 562) – many hundreds of pages before the characters do, and we follow them interminably towards this understanding. I can see myself reading All Clear at some point, just to finish the story, but, damningly, this is largely out of a sense of obligation and without any of the excitement with which I first opened Blackout. Perhaps the story will redeem itself in the end, but Blackout cannot stand by itself on merit. show less

I don't read a lot of sci fi, as I know I am rather pernickety about breaking the rules of science at a whim. So when I enjoy a book that has timetravel at its heart, you know you are in the presence of something rather special. I think the way that the time travel in Connie Willis' book has its own rules it what, for me, makes it work. She's allowing one piece of science fiction, but then it follows its rules and it does so entirely consistently. So a historian can't time travel with the intent of changing history, you can;t go back and shoot Hitler, for instance, the net simply doesn't allow it. There are places and events that they usually can;t get close it, known as divergence points.
In this book, we have a group of 3 different show more historians that are all looking at different elements of WW2. Eileen (aka Merope) is studying evacuees at a country house outside London, Mike is posing as an American reporter looking at heroes at Dunkirk and Polly is studying the effect of the start of the Blitz. In turn, each finds that their "drop", their route back to Oxford of 2060, has failed to function. And they start to wonder if they have, in fact, changed history. Mike ended up being injured at Dunkirk, having saved one man's life - who then went on to save another 500. Has that changed history? Polly had studied the reported dates of various bombing raids and locations bombed so can check that the progress of the war is as expected. But there remains that fear that they are now stuck in the past and the rescue team is not going to come and get them - so what has gone wrong.
The fish out of water element is excellent. They start by being able to view events dispassionately, knowing what is happening, but gradually they become sucked in and that foreknowledge becomes more a hinderance than a help. I think there is a big difference between events when viewed in retrospect and events as experienced at the time, we all put on rose tinted glasses once the danger is over - and that appears a lot between the information the trio have and what they experience first hand.
This is very clearly the first part of 2, and I now need to find book 2 pretty sharpish. show less

Blackout has everything that I’ve come to expect from a Connie Willis novel. A plot composed mostly of missed connections. British stereotypes. Characters being in comas, asleep, or delusional for critical action. Annoying/adorable children. Getting involved with a stranger’s domestic disputes substituting for character development. On some purely technical measures, this is a better book than her previous Hugo winners, with short suspenseful chapters and a few finely tuned sentences, but overall it remains a shambles masquerading as a novel.

This time around, three time traveling historians are sent to 1940 Britain to observe the “ordinary heroism of ordinary people.” Eileen is a maid taking care of evacuated children at a show more country manor. Polly is a shop girl observing life in the shelters during the heights of the Blitz. Mike is observing the Dunkirk evacuation from Dover. Of course nothing goes right, and when our three historians find themselves unable to make their drops for months, they realize that they’re stuck in the past, and that no one is coming. The novel ends with the trio standing under falling Nazi bombs, wondering how they’re going to survive. The story is told in triplicate, with three more or less identical characters coming to similar realizations.

If I may step back, Willis’ whole Historians series fails on two measures. First, time travel in fiction is a device that lets authors play around with causality and destiny. What does changing the past change in the future? Is history on rails or can it be changed? How does one event play out in different ways depending on the interference of time travelers? Did anything unusual happen behind the scenes to set up a perfect main timeline? (There’s a secondary use of time travel to go somewhere distant an unimaginable, a million years in the future rather than 100, but we’ll put that aside for now). Willis takes the most boring possible interpretation of time travel. Historians can’t do anything because the past is a chaotic and a single change might ramify throughout history and lead to say, the Nazis winning the war, but history also can’t change because the space-time continuum protects itself by slippage and weird coincidences. The results is a setting where characters have to walk on eggshells, but also can’t really do anything.

Second are the characters of the historians themselves. This is “Cops complaining about Law & Order” level griping, but I have a PhD in interdisciplinary social sciences. Real academics behave nothing like Willis’ historians. We have methods, we have data, we have a publican plan. At the very minimum, we have a research question. There is no way that a unique world-class facility like the Oxford Time Travel Lab would send three people back to 1940 to observe the “ordinary heroism of ordinary people.” There’s no question there, no data collection, no analysis, no history.

And as a personal insult, I still need to read All Clear, because for some reason (profits? Sheer physical size?) this book was split into two volumes. still have another 500+ pages of this crap to wade through before I can call it done. There is only one merit to this book, which are the well drawn depictions of Blitz Britain, but if you’re into that, a quick search reveals actual popular histories in Gardiner's The Blitz: The British Under Attack and Longmate's How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War. show less

2016 July 14
I love these books so much. Stories about women in wartime are catnip to me. But this book, in which the daily struggle to keep calm and carry on is so hard for Britons: it gives me all the feels, but also hope for humanity.
2013 January 1
2010 March 14

It was everything I could do not to start this so far ahead of its proper turn in the stack. Just saying.

***

My, what a big book. But such an enormous pleasure. Much of the time, after turning the last page on a 500 page book, and discovering a note saying: hey, you'll have to read the next book to find out what happens, I'd be slightly vexed. Here, the only disappointment is that I'll have to wait six months.

Willis uses the device of time-travel so effectively, she's made it her show more own. It enables her to address modern sensibilities and issues, as well as to enter into the mindset of a given period. In fact, time travel exists in order to permit her characters to really understand a time, and the people who lived through it, as fully human. The historians start out with some information, but with a great deal of distance. She won't let them leave until they really become an active part of the time they're visiting.

In this book she sends historians back to Britain in WWII. One guy is a jerk, the other isn't, the gals are pretty nearly indistinguishable. But trapped in their assignments they become Britons fighting the war, and they become distinct individuals as well.

I've said before that Willis is the master of writing bureaucratic muddle. She can turn it to comic effect, as in [b:To Say Nothing of the Dog|6357894|To say nothing of the dog|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1294212780s/6357894.jpg|696], or she can use it to heighten the drama and add poignancy, as in [b:Passage|7402459|Passage|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1276540417s/7402459.jpg|25745]. Here, she does both. And the net effect is to take the accounts of survivors and pull them together into an engrossing and coherent narrative. Blackout, together with All Clear, is going to be one of the most memorable novels of WWII that I've ever read. show less

(This is a review for both Blackout and All Clear, because they are really one book)

Connie Willis is one of my favorite writers, mainly because she combines history and science fiction so very well. What also helps is that her novels are sort of wish-fulfillment for me, because they have historians from the now (well, the future now) travel to the past to study it, even if the historians usually get into trouble. The first book I read by Willis was "Doomsday Book", which takes place in 1300s/2060, well in my favorite historic period, the middle ages. The second book was "To Say Nothing Of the Dog", taking place in 1800s/2060, not my favorite period, but the Victorians are still interesting and entertaining. The latest time travelling show more historians book(s) is/are "Blackout" and "All Clear", two novels that are one story (they cannot be read out-of-order or separately). This story takes place in 1940/45 and 2060, the Second World War in England. Definitely not my favorite period, too close to home. Because of that I was hesitant to read this story. Eventually the fact that it was by Willis won out over my non-love (not hate) for the period. And I am so glad I did, because this story was terrific.

We're back with the Oxford historians in the 2060s. Several students have trips planned to the past for their research. However, the lab is canceling trips left and right and switching schedules around. Michael, Polly and Merope try their best to have their trips to the past happen anyway, despite being less than well prepared. Merope goes to the English countryside in WWII, as a servant at a country house that has taken in evacuated children from London. Polly is in London during the Blitz, safe because she knows where the bombs will hit. And Michael is near Dover to experience the evacuation of British soldiers from France by the local fishermen.
But the lab had its reasons for being so panicky with regards to the time-travel trips. Because things don't seem to happen as they should. And our students are doing things that seem to affect the past. Could they, by saving one of their local friends or by being caught up in the moment, change the outcome of the Battle of Britain? And how will they return to Oxford, now that the drop sites seem disabled? And is Professor Dunworthy just going to leave them stuck in the past?

Because the historians in these stories are remarkably similar to us (living in relative peace, with advanced technology) their observations of the period of WWII and the people living through that time are very relatable. Even for me, someone who rather avoids any 'entertainment' to do with WWII, these two books were great. I think the fact that the story is contained in England (mostly London and surroundings) and because the people who Merope, Polly and Michael meet are just the regular people from the street, it makes it hit home. People working in a store, trying to keep their daily lives going despite nightly bombing raids. The time-travel adventure (will they return home, have they ruined the future, will they die in the past?) is very good too, and you feel the sense of urgency in the story. Simply terrific, and I really understand why this book has already won the big three awards of science fiction (Hugo, Nebula and Locus) and was nominated for one more (Campbell memorial award). For me, both parts are five out of five stars. show less

I absolutely loved this book, but possibly not for the reasons that others have liked it. While I found the story of the time travelers to be interesting and engaging, what really caught me was Willis's detailed portrait of life during the Blitz. I feel like I understood it on a level I hadn't before. In fact, without tremendous amounts of gore and in-your-face horror, she gives you a real understanding of life in a besieged city, the daily struggles, the ways that people both do and don't become inured to life on the edge. I can't recommend this book enough.

Blackout – Connie Willis
Audio performance by Katherine Kelligren
4 stars

Important vocabulary for time traveling historians:

The Net – the time portal technology which allows Oxford historians of 2060 to study high points of history; such as the Dunkirk evacuation and the London Blitz

A Drop - a predetermined safe location for the time traveling historian to enter The Net to go back to the future

Slippage – a discrepancy in the desired time and/or place of arrival; when a time traveler does not arrive as planned; it is understood that slippage has occurred to avoid a time paradox

Law One of time travel: Slippage will prevent time travelers from having any significant impact on history.
(Of course it will….but what if it doesn’t ? show more What if.. what if… what if….)
Law Two of time travel: A traveler may not may not occupy the same place in history more than once..

Three historians, two women and one man travel back to WWII England to observe the ‘contemps’ in their darkest hour. All three find that their carefully laid plans are useless when set against the war’s realities. And they get stuck there. There are several different time lines. There are lots of bombs. There are many, many cliff-hanger near misses. It’s complicated.

I’ve read two previous books in this series; The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. I liked them, and they annoyed me. I had a similar experience with this book. I enjoyed the many colorful ‘contemp’ characters, especially Alf and Binny. I thought the historical detail and description were outstanding. The endless circular, second-guessing, self-talk of the time traveling characters drove me up the wall. I must have found more enjoyment than annoyance in this book experience, because I did read the next one.

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