Doomsday Book
A history student from the future is accidentally sent to the Black Death instead of her intended medieval period, while a flu epidemic in her present prevents rescue. Willis interleaves the two timelines to create the most emotionally devastating time-travel novel in SF.
Pacing draws the loudest fire: hundreds of pages of the contemporary Oxford chapters get called padding, crossed phone calls and missed messages until “nothing in this story goes anywhere ever,” “a monument to the gods of boredom” to the harshest readers. A mid-2050s Oxford running time travel but communicating by answering machine reads as a contrived delay device, the objection compressed by one reader into “THE FUCKING CELL PHONE.” Sending an inexperienced student alone into a documented lethal period strains belief. And readers admit the modern chapters “felt like a chore that I had to do,” skimmed entirely.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
