This Tweet from the New York Times is disgusting.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. I'm going to recommend that everyone here read "The Doomsday Book"

by Connie Willis. In the middle of this century time travel has been invented and is in the hands of historians. A young woman is preparing for a visit to 1320 England, to research a particular town. Just as she is sent back, from 2054, a virulent flu outbreak occurs, making many people very sick and killing a fair number. A quarantine for that part of England is quickly imposed. The novel goes back and forth between 1320 and 2054, and although I'd read it several times since it was first published in 1992, a recent rereading was very resonant.

Possible plot spoiler



















After a while the young woman who is back in 1320 sees people around her dying, and clearly dying from the Black Death. She thinks she's in 1320, so she asks some one, "What the fuck year is it?" Well, okay, she doesn't use such harsh language mainly because Connie Willis is simply not that kind of writer. Anyway, the person she asks says, "It's the year of our Lord one thousand three hundred and forty-eight." Oh, crap. She was sent to the wrong year and arrived just in time for the plague.

A book club group I belong to read this book last month, and we had the spectacular joy of having Connie Willis herself participate in our zoom meeting. I've met Connie before at various science fiction things. She's a completely amazing person. What was best about this book club meeting was that she talked at some length about her writing process, and why things were as they are in the book. Totally fascinating.