Over the weekend, I read Connie Willis’ 1992 novel Doomsday Book, which won both a Hugo and Nebula award. Now, I’m not saying it wasn’t worth reading, and it did keep me up, but it did have me flipping to front flap to check the copyright date. I wasn’t bothered by the thin explanation of the time-travelling device (the novel traces the parallel stories of a historian sent back to the middle ages and the near future from whence she came), but I was surprised how many of the obstacles were based on miscommunication contrivances that seem enormously obtuse today (phone lines being jammed, phones themselves being in short supply, phone messages being taken and lost, etc.). I’ve read a lot of older sci-fi and I’m not usually bothered by anachronisms, but it really is mind-bending that even as late as a decade ago, there was still a class of people that viewed our future as not being completely connected at all times (no mobile phones, pagers, answering machines, laptops/PDAs, Internet of any sort — well, some of it I can understand, some of that just seems lazy). In comparison: True Names (1981), Neuromancer (1984), Snow Crash (1992)
A lot of annoying (read: dumb) characters and plotting, false tensions, not-funny diversions, and regularly belabored/melodramatic/repetitive (there shouldn’t be a single plot “twist” you don’t see coming at least a dozen or more pages in advance once you get that yes, it is this obvious). Actually, I shouldn’t start critiquing because I think I could keep going on, but I do think it was worth reading, if only for the line of thoughts it sets your mind on. (apparently, the historical aspects were fairly well researched, as well) Umm, yeah, so this won a Hugo and a Nebula? I guess looking back on this after writing this… well, it’s no Dune, that’s for sure.
