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May. 31st, 2011 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOkay, you guys know I am a Connie Willis fan from way back - To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book were some of my formative texts - so believe me when I say there is a really good book buried somewhere deep in the depths of the Blackout/All Clear duology. There is! Probably about two hundred pages' worth of one. The problem is that those two hundred pages are wrapped up in NINE HUNDRED MORE pages of CONSTANT POINTLESS PANIC.
All right, I shouldn't say pointless; that is unfair. The three lead characters of the book - Polly, Mike, and Eileen-called-Merope - are all grad student historians trapped in the past during the Blitz, and they don't know if they can go home, and there are bombs falling around them, it's probably fair to panic about this. But, I am sorry, after the first week or two of panic you would think you would maybe . . . settle down? Learn some coping mechanisms? Deal with the fact that, yes, there are bombs falling down on you and you don't know exactly when they'll fall, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE that you are interacting with? Or maybe, if you insist on retaining a historical perspective, try maybe TAKING SOME ACTUAL NOTES?
(This is maybe what frustrated me the most: none of them seemed excited or interested to be in the past or acted like historians at any point! None of them evidenced any kind of passion; from the minute they arrive, even before things go horribly wrong, it's constant flailing panic! Kids, you are all going to get failing grades on your theses and it SERVES YOU RIGHT.)
They would be great drinking game books, though.
Every time a historian sees a small detail that doesn't match something they saw reported in a future newspaper and jumps instantly to the conclusion that they have CHANGED THE PAST, LOST THE WAR and DESTROYED THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM: drink
Every time Mike flails off somewhere on a pointless mission to get them all out of there that yields zero results: drink
Every time Polly keeps a pointless secret from the other historians because she doesn't want them to panic (despite the fact that everyone is already panicking and nobody as much as Polly): drink
Every time someone hopefully mentions how the RETRIEVAL TEAM is coming to get them: drink (drink twice for every time this happens a solid month after it has already become blindingly clear that NO ONE IS COMING.)
Except the problem is that playing with just one of these rules would get you exceedingly trashed by the time you were halfway through All Clear, and playing with all of them would probably give you a serious case of alcohol poisoning!
Alternately, if you just want the shortcut version to alcohol poisoning, try this rule:
Every time a chapter ends on an OMINOUS CLIFFHANGER about something that MIGHT BE PROOF OF HISTORY BEING CHANGED (that is then resolved with proof that history was not in fact changed): drink
<---- THIS IS 50% OF THE CHAPTERS
Every time a chapter ends on an OMINOUS CLIFFHANGER about someone JUST MISSING an important communication with someone: drink
<---- THIS IS THE OTHER 50%
As I said, there are interesting stories going on in this book! Connie Willis could just have written a straight historical novel about the Blitz, and it would have been great. Or she could have written the book about how the self-absorbed historians learn to get over their self-absorption and their assumptions of safety, about how they live in the same danger as the people in the past and fulfil their human responsibilities to them - which is what Eileen's story, I think, was meant to be, which is why Eileen was the most likeable and why her arc actually felt like an arc! It could have been, as I said, a nice reasonable two-hundred-page book. Instead it is a twelve hundred page epic which I spent wanting to smack Mike (constantly), Polly (90% of the time), Eileen (50% of the time) and, sadly, Mr. Dunworthy (100% of the time) over the head and tell them to GET OVER THEMSELVES. And - look. I've read the Connie Willis book in which she killed off the protagonist. I've read the Connie Willis book in which she killed off everyone but the protagonist, leaving her to cope with eternal psychological damage and survivor's guilt. I know she's capable of bleak and horrific endings, and yet everyone in these books spent so much time worrying about the space-time continuum dissolving and inevitable doom and everyone dying horribly that I never, not even for a single instant, thought that it was likely to happen.
Because I could not smack everyone over the head though, I instead spent a large portion of this weekend shouting atvaradia about how much I wanted to smack them all over the head. And that was very satisfying!
All right, I shouldn't say pointless; that is unfair. The three lead characters of the book - Polly, Mike, and Eileen-called-Merope - are all grad student historians trapped in the past during the Blitz, and they don't know if they can go home, and there are bombs falling around them, it's probably fair to panic about this. But, I am sorry, after the first week or two of panic you would think you would maybe . . . settle down? Learn some coping mechanisms? Deal with the fact that, yes, there are bombs falling down on you and you don't know exactly when they'll fall, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE that you are interacting with? Or maybe, if you insist on retaining a historical perspective, try maybe TAKING SOME ACTUAL NOTES?
(This is maybe what frustrated me the most: none of them seemed excited or interested to be in the past or acted like historians at any point! None of them evidenced any kind of passion; from the minute they arrive, even before things go horribly wrong, it's constant flailing panic! Kids, you are all going to get failing grades on your theses and it SERVES YOU RIGHT.)
They would be great drinking game books, though.
Every time a historian sees a small detail that doesn't match something they saw reported in a future newspaper and jumps instantly to the conclusion that they have CHANGED THE PAST, LOST THE WAR and DESTROYED THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM: drink
Every time Mike flails off somewhere on a pointless mission to get them all out of there that yields zero results: drink
Every time Polly keeps a pointless secret from the other historians because she doesn't want them to panic (despite the fact that everyone is already panicking and nobody as much as Polly): drink
Every time someone hopefully mentions how the RETRIEVAL TEAM is coming to get them: drink (drink twice for every time this happens a solid month after it has already become blindingly clear that NO ONE IS COMING.)
Except the problem is that playing with just one of these rules would get you exceedingly trashed by the time you were halfway through All Clear, and playing with all of them would probably give you a serious case of alcohol poisoning!
Alternately, if you just want the shortcut version to alcohol poisoning, try this rule:
Every time a chapter ends on an OMINOUS CLIFFHANGER about something that MIGHT BE PROOF OF HISTORY BEING CHANGED (that is then resolved with proof that history was not in fact changed): drink
<---- THIS IS 50% OF THE CHAPTERS
Every time a chapter ends on an OMINOUS CLIFFHANGER about someone JUST MISSING an important communication with someone: drink
<---- THIS IS THE OTHER 50%
As I said, there are interesting stories going on in this book! Connie Willis could just have written a straight historical novel about the Blitz, and it would have been great. Or she could have written the book about how the self-absorbed historians learn to get over their self-absorption and their assumptions of safety, about how they live in the same danger as the people in the past and fulfil their human responsibilities to them - which is what Eileen's story, I think, was meant to be, which is why Eileen was the most likeable and why her arc actually felt like an arc! It could have been, as I said, a nice reasonable two-hundred-page book. Instead it is a twelve hundred page epic which I spent wanting to smack Mike (constantly), Polly (90% of the time), Eileen (50% of the time) and, sadly, Mr. Dunworthy (100% of the time) over the head and tell them to GET OVER THEMSELVES. And - look. I've read the Connie Willis book in which she killed off the protagonist. I've read the Connie Willis book in which she killed off everyone but the protagonist, leaving her to cope with eternal psychological damage and survivor's guilt. I know she's capable of bleak and horrific endings, and yet everyone in these books spent so much time worrying about the space-time continuum dissolving and inevitable doom and everyone dying horribly that I never, not even for a single instant, thought that it was likely to happen.
Because I could not smack everyone over the head though, I instead spent a large portion of this weekend shouting at
varadia about how much I wanted to smack them all over the head. And that was very satisfying!
no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 04:52 pm (UTC)(I realized partway through the book that the other half the problem is that Finch is no longer Mr. Dunworthy's secretary! NO WONDER everything goes to hell and incompetence.)
no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-31 08:11 pm (UTC)(I really do think Polly needs to try some of those positive-thinking exercises so every thought she has does not lead straight to INEVITABLE DOOM.)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 09:34 am (UTC)I might be misremembering because it's been a while since I've read To Say Nothing of the Dog (and I'm not digging it out again until I'm done with All Clear. By then I'm going to be in serious need of a palate cleanser) but didn't Badri figure out that all the shenanigans taking place in that book were part of a correction by the continuum? One centred on 2060? I swear I remember that happening. Did nobody make a note? Write it in their diary? "If things go a bit crazy in 2060: DON'T PANIC!"
They've seen that historians from earlier in Oxford's history can get back without a problem, why hasn't it occurred to any of them that the problem isn't getting out of WWII, it's arriving in Oxford? That 2060 is a divergence point and that's why drops to that period won't open? Granted, if that's the problem then there isn't anything they can actually do about it, but at least they could stop worrying so much that they've destroyed Oxford! And lost the war! And doomed everybody they've so much as made eye contact with!
People have already mentioned that these people are terrible historians and that's irritating enough, but they're also terrible time travelers and that just might be unforgivable. They keep saying: "This is time travel!" but they never stop to think about what that actually means. They talk about the continuum and chaotic systems, but talk about their origin point in 2060 as if it's not also part of the same continuum. They worry that Oxford could be destroyed by what they're doing, but never consider that events there might also be affecting them in the past! Have these people never studied any metaphysics? Surely some understanding of the philosophy of time should be a requirement for anybody who wants to be a time traveler? At least make them sit down for five minutes and think the whole thing through. A pretty basic requirement but still more effort than any of these characters seem to have made in their lives.
If nothing else, reading this book is causing me to make lots of mental notes about stupid things to not have my characters do in the time travel novel I'll almost certainly never write.
Also, I have a new pet theory: the reason why Mr Dunworthy's new secretary is so incompetent is because he's not a secretary at all. Maybe the slippage thing really is all the fault of Mr Dunworthy and his obsession with St Paul's. Polly and the others could be trapped in WWII purely so the continuum could get Mr Dunworthy out of Oxford and keep him out while it fixed things. (The characters keep referring to the continuum as if it were sentient, so I don't see why I can't.) The secretary could be a historian from a point in time after things are repaired, come back to observe the early history of time travel and to watch a known example of the continuum self-correcting. And by being there he becomes part of the correction because *it's all connected* which would at least be a good reason for all the chaos at the start of the book with people just missing each other and messages not getting through. Which annoyed me so much! If I'd known that basically the whole book was going to be like that I might have stopped reading then and saved myself a lot of stress.
I love time travel stories and To Say Nothing of the Dog is one of my favourite books, probably in the top five. It's been a long time since I was so disappointed by a book as I have been by this one, but I'm going to finish reading this damn thing if it kills me. Which it might - half the reason this comment is so long is that I'd rather rant about this stuff than actually carry on reading.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 12:04 am (UTC)Also: you are not misremembering, that DID happen, although - I'm not sure it was 2060? I think it might have been a further-off date, and the reason I say that is because it says at one point in All Clear that Ned and Verity's wacky hijinks adventure was two years before this one.
BUT I DON'T KNOW why none of these other time travel theories occur to them! To ANYBODY! It is so frustrating! These people are meant to have been studying space-time metaphysics for years and years and years, can they not think of anything more productive to come up with?
Also: your theory about the incompetent new secretary is hilarious. *giggling* (I still also like my theory that they can't afford any staff because the department has lost all its funding.)