Blackout - a book of AH and timetravel

[Iamwinterborn]

So, I saw this book in Borders today, and picked it up and sped-read it.

It's called Blackout, and it is by Connie Willis.

Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Blackout-Conni.../dp/0553803190

Basically, in 2060 there are timetravelers called historians that go back in time and observe events. They avoid "divergence points" so as not to upset history, and the small things they have changed in the past seem to get fixed by time, and the timeline remains intact.

However, as the protagonists (students it seems, doing their thesis projects by traveling to historical spots) attempt to do their projects, something is not going well. For some reason, everyone's time travel's are being rescheduled, and plans are going awry (Mike, for example, has an implant to simulate an American accent from the 1940s so he can go to Pearl Harbor and observe the japanese attack, followed by another American city during V-E day, and then he will get another implant to switch to a British accent to see the preparations in Dover for the evacuation at Dunkirk, followed by a few more times around Britain. Dunkirk itself is off limits for being 1. Too dangerous. 2. A Divergence event.)


I spedread it, so my comprehension is not good, but it seems causing small changes in history can lead to time "slippage", and while the flow of history will remain (no butterflies apparently), some issues may popup. (Where's Lobsang Ludd when you need him...) The protagonists arrive at their destinations.. late. And in the wrong places.


Michael attempts to get to Dover in time, but in his haste he gets shangaied into the Dunkirk evacuation, where his actions accidently save the life of a young soldier who would have died. (Or would he have...)


I noticed on a page, someone was yelling that "The Germans are coming up the Thames", so it seems that the Mammal-Which-Must-Be-Named makes an appearance, yet that was the only time I remember seeing anything about that. (Again, spedread). Perhaps it was just a panicked idiot.

I was very confused at the end, having spedread it, and was still wondering if they had majorly changed history or not.

I will definitely read it more thoroughly later, and look forward to the second book to see how it turns out.


I find the concept of history undergraduates going back in time to do their projects... hilarious.

[Bill Cameron]

Iamwinterborn,

Willis is a superb author and you should immediately go out to buy her other time travel books, Domesday and To Say Nothing of the Dog, especially the latter. Willis explains how time travel "works" in those books, how historians cannot get near important events and why people aren't looting the treasures of the past willy-nilly.

I won't explain things further as they would spoil Willis' books but if Michael actually did save that soldier there's a "higher purpose" involved. And by higher purpose I'm not suggesting some sort of religious nonsense either.


Bill