"Fire Watch", by Connie Willis

[nwhyte]

Second paragraph of third section:Excitement last night. The sirens went early and some of the chars who clean offices in the City sheltered in the crypt with us. One of them woke me out of a sound sleep, going like an air raid siren. Seems she'd seen a mouse. We had to go whacking at tombs and under the cots with a rubber boot to persuade her it

Comments

[fanf]

I like Connie Willis’s short stories: it’s fun how the characters talk past each other and miscommunicate. But at novel length it gets very tiresome and I lose sympathy for the characters’ idiotic behaviour. And I agree with you about the irritating americanization of her british settings.

[pwilkinson]

I am fairly sure I read Fire Time quite a number of years back (probably, like you,,sometime around 2002), though I've never felt like re-reading it, despite regarding two of its novel-length sequels, Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, as, in very different ways, genuine (if flawed) masterpieces.

Though, having said that, your criticism here of Fire Time:
The idea that someone would spend four years preparing for (and being prepared for) the wrong mission is simply ridiculous; the investment of resources for a time trip is surely significant enough to make certain that the person sent back in time is fully prepared for their environment.
seems to apply as strongly to Doomsday Book (which, of course, tells Kivrin's back-story) - even allowing for the fact that Kivrin is actually sent to somewhere a generation away from her intended destination, she seems very badly prepared for the 14th century. And her depiction of Oxford University seems to remain just as much out of its actual character (to the point where it could

[nwhyte]

"Fire Watch", not "Fire Time!"

I do apply most of that criticism to Doomsday Book, but when I last read it I think I was in a better mood.

Willis writes more by creating characters and getting us to care about them than by world-building, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.