Oxford Historians 1
Doomsday Book
by Connie Willis
We may never know just how young Kivrin Engle wrangled her academic advisor and the
powers-that-be at the University of Oxford into sending her to previously off-limits,
14th-century England, but her timing was not ideal given that she’dd just been exposed
to a recently re-emerged influenza virus. Oh, and the inexperience tech who also got hit
with the virus with the virus after the drop may have sent Kivrin to the wrong year.
— Ruthie Mariner
You know what he said when I told him he should run at least one unmanned? He said, “If
something unfortunate does happen, we can go back in time and pull Miss Engle out before
it happens, can’t we?” The man has no notion of how the net works, no notion of the
paradoxes, no notion that Kivrin is there, and what happens to her is real and
irrevocable.
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (Bantam Spectra,
July 1992).