Blackout

by Connie Willis | Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ISBN: 9780345519832 Global Overview for this book
Registered by freezone of Leominster, Massachusetts USA on 5/3/2014
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by freezone from Leominster, Massachusetts USA on Saturday, May 3, 2014
welcome to BookCrossing! I hope you enjoy your free book.

Journal Entry 2 by freezone at Panera Bread, 299 Harvard St. in Brookline, Massachusetts USA on Saturday, May 30, 2015

Released 8 yrs ago (5/30/2015 UTC) at Panera Bread, 299 Harvard St. in Brookline, Massachusetts USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Taking to the Bookcrossing meet up...

Journal Entry 3 by wingGoryDetailswing at Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Saturday, May 30, 2015
I got this book from BCer freezone at today's Boston BookCrossing Meetup; many thanks! I'd read it before, but liked it enough to welcome another release copy. And it was great to see you again!

***

One note up front: this is only the first half of the book. Not part of a series, half of a much larger book. This one ends at a fairly dramatic point, and if you don't acquire the second book, All Clear, you'll never know how any of the characters' lives turn out - and there's no warning about this on the cover or title page, just a mention in the "acknowledgements" about how one book morphed into two. But I enjoyed the book enough to get the second volume, and perhaps whoever finds this one next will feel the same way!

The story opens in Oxford in 2060, where the time-travel department is busier than ever - but also seems to be in disorder, with their boss Mr. Dunworthy rearranging the schedules, sometimes at such short notice that one time-traveling scholar, Michael, finds himself all prepared with an American accent-implant and wardrobe suitable for Pearl Harbor, but instead is assigned to witness the evacuation at Dunkirk. Much scrambling ensues for proper wardrobe and local information, with some chit-chat and grumbling between main characters Michael, Merope, and Polly, each of whom is now going to be in England during the Blitz at slightly different times and places. We also get to see young Colin again - he was a child-prodigy in Doomsday Book, and now is 17, still keen to join the time-travel crew despite being too young (and not having finished prep school yet). He also has a powerful crush on Polly, who's some six years older than he is - but his solution is simple: he can just take time-travel jaunts until he ages up a bit! (She doesn't think this is a good idea.)

We don't learn a lot about life in 2060 outside the time-travel possibilities, and in some ways it feels like a step back rather than forward - people taking phone messages by hand, for example, instead of everyone having instant-text capabilities. But we do know a couple of things about the intervening decades - devastating things, such as a terrorist attack in London in 2015 (close enough to make me rather nervous!) that involved a nuclear bomb and took out much of the city and a million people. That, and a vaguely-referenced global plague, may have changed the types of technology that are in widespread use - but since we spend little time in 2060, and most of that in or near the time-travel lab, I suppose it doesn't matter.

The story takes a while to get going (and then takes a while to keep going - both books together are something like 1200 pages!), introducing each main character in their London Blitz personas: Merope is Eileen, tending children who were evacuated out of London; Polly's a shop-girl - or would be if her drop hadn't gone awry; and Michael, as mentioned, is to witness the Dunkirk evacuation (though with an American accent, so he's going to be a foreign journalist). But Eileen misses her return drop when the children get the measles and are quarantined, and after that she finds that her drop isn't working. Polly manages to get a toehold in London, but finds that HER drop isn't working either. And Michael finds himself much more actively involved in the Dunkirk evacuation than he was supposed to be, in the company of a crusty old man on a rattletrap boat, with the man's 14-year-old grandson as the only other hand.

They all get some quick and rough lessons in life-in-wartime, and eventually all of them find that they can't get back to their own time - and, what's more worrying, that no rescue teams have turned up to retrieve them. As one of them keeps muttering, "It's time travel - no matter how long it takes them to fix what went wrong, they can still turn up here RIGHT NOW." Normally she'd be right, but things have gone more pear-shaped than any of them realize...

The story turns into a running series of new and difficult experiences for the characters, with some of them coping better than others - poor Polly almost loses it for a while there - before they each work out a plan of action for (a) leaving tracks as to where they are - disguised newspaper ads, for example - and (b) trying to rendezvous with other time-travelers whom they know to be in the same general place and time. This last is complicated because - in the way of busy grad-students everywhere! - none of them were paying much attention to anyone else's trip-schedules, so while they know vaguely who's in the area they aren't sure exactly where or when, and may not know whether the person's using an alias or not. It's not too surprising, under the circumstances, that it takes nearly the entire first book before any of them meet, and even then it's unclear if it'll help. (We don't get much of a look at the problem from the 2060 side in this book, either, and have to wonder, as the stranded travelers do, what's going on; is there a technical problem with the time-travel technology itself, or some kind of paradox that's preventing more than X people visiting this time and place at once - or, much worse, is it possible that they've somehow altered history, and their old future no longer exists?)

While I did feel that some parts of the story were getting too repetitive - the number of times that Eileen's plans were interrupted by the rascally young Hodbin siblings, the "this is how time travel works" musings, the coincidences-or-were-they - I was caught up in the story enough that I didn't find myself wanting to skip any of it. The immersion in life-in-the-Blitz, the gradual attachments made by our lost time travelers to other people - who, they gradually realize, are going to have to live through the war (or not) without any hope of being whisked away into a far future, and the growing pattern made by the different timelines (some of which have characters in common, though that's not always obvious at first what with the heavy use of aliases), all kept me reading, and guessing, and - occasionally - coming to a surprising realization. "Wait, isn't that... But that means... Oh, drat, this isn't good!"

I admit that once the main characters realized how badly off they were, and as I realized how tenuous their connection to 2060 was, the whole time-travel-studies thing began to look pretty darned irresponsible, especially as they were using it for what seemed like fairly minor studies: sure, it might be interesting to see the child-evacuees first-hand, but aren't there still plenty of autobiographies out there by those children? It's not as if the scholars didn't know that there were limits on time-travel capabilities, from the very serious (you can't go to the same time twice, and if you visit an earlier time but stay there until the same time as another of your visits, this will result in your death) to the simply inconvenient (you can't go to the same time twice, so if you've used up your slot in a particular year to, say, talk to those child-evacuees, and then find yourself wanting to take up a more serious study that involves the same time, you're out of luck). But it's all treated rather like we treat many technologies these days, accepting the risk and (ironically) letting the future take care of itself.

As if the main setup weren't confusing enough, we get a couple of extra timelines to follow: the three main characters are lost in (roughly) '39-'40, but there are some '44 timelines too, one involving a set of covert-ops folks working to fake out the Germans with misleading signs of troops and munitions. (They all have aliases based on Oscar Wilde characters, and those sequences are pretty funny, but I can't help wondering how they'll tie in to the main story.) Another '44 timeline involves women ambulance drivers, who have to switch between picking up body parts when on the job, and juggling their few surviving party dresses when going out dancing. If any of these people are the same characters as the main ones, does it mean they get rescued and come back later, or that they were here earlier and now have a deadline - or that they've had to stay the entire time?

The characters grew on me over time, and I enjoyed many of the contemporary characters too, from the courtly actor Sir Godfrey (who befriended a terrified Polly in a bomb shelter during her first raid) to the kindly vicar who helped Eileen with the evacuees - and even the obnoxious Hodbin siblings, whose aim in life seemed to be to cause trouble for everyone, even for Eileen (whom they almost kinda/sorta seem to like). Turns out they're very clever and resourceful, and often very funny - though even when they're being helpful they sometimes wreak havoc!

As the story proceeds, a pattern commences - near-misses, as someone has to catch a train before interviewing the one person who could have connected them with the person they're looking for. This goes on so often it almost becomes funny, but I admit after a while I found it frustrating - though there was something of a payoff to all this in the concluding book.

This volume wraps up with a satisfying rendezvous - and the surprise addition of yet another traveler to this continuum...

[There's a TV Tropes page for the book.]

Journal Entry 4 by wingGoryDetailswing at Rotary Common in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Released 8 yrs ago (6/3/2015 UTC) at Rotary Common in Nashua, New Hampshire USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I left this book on a boulder near the meditation labyrinth at Rotary Common at around 1:30 or so; hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released as part of the 2015 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***

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