'Doomsday Book' by Connie Willis

Doomsday Book, Connie Willis (4.0)

I first read this book many years ago and was surprised how little I had remembered. While it won both the Hugo and Nebula award, I would not classify it as Sci-Fi. It’s a combination of the history of 14^th century Oxford, England and time travel from ~2040AD. In that future, the time travel is used by historians to verify their understanding of past events, so the majority of the book is set in the Middle Ages. The book was published in 1992 and Ms. Willis was amazingly prescient. As the historians of future Oxford send a student to the Middle Ages, a flu pandemic arises in the area and they are all quarantined. What a time to read this book! While the student has been inoculated for the diseases of the 1300’s, she brings the flu through the net with her. It becomes obvious that she also has missed the time (i.e. slippage occurred) and she is really smack dab in the days of the plague. The book has some humor to deflect the horrific details of a life in plague, but what was really scary reading this in 2020 was how unphased many people were to the seemingly common-place occurrence of a new flu pandemic.