DB: November 2017 Pick - Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

[AndrewP]

Phil wrote: "It won both the Hugo and Nebula in its year so it was well loved by both critics and fans. I loved it myself so I was a little bemused by some of the hate here. To each his own I guess. ."

If you look up the other nominees for those awards in 1992/93 you will see that the only other contender was 'A Fire Upon the Deep' and 'Red Mars'. (Which I am surprised didn't win.) All the others were obscure so I think it was a lack luster year overall.

[John (Taloni)]

Hm, I mean, I was disappointed in the finale of the Mars trilogy but would have picked it over DB. A Fire Upon the Deep is another endlessly long book but for me would have edged DB.

Slight quibble with Phil: The Nebula is voted on by SFWA which is primarily writers, not critics, but your point is well taken.

[David H.]

Red Mars is the first book, not the finale.

Also, I've heard good things about China Mountain Zhang and have been wanting to read it for ages, since I love alternate history. So obscure, sure, but I've heard lots about it (and Varney's Eight World series).

[Brendan]

David wrote: "Also, I've heard good things about China Mountain Zhang and have been wanting to read it for ages, since I love alternate history. So obscure, sure, but..."

China Mountain Zhang is good.

[John (Taloni)]

David wrote: "Red Mars is the first book, not the finale."

Yeah, I was jamming to work so didn't post in full. The idea being, I didn't like the finale, but Red Mars was fine. It was only later that I got disappointed in unresolved plot lines and silly extensions.

[Serendi]

The way I remember it, China Mountain Zhang was a VERY big deal at the time. It's like if you didn't read it, you were *totally* not a True Fan. (I liked some threads, not others.)

[Patrick]

The Doomsday Book, aka let's write a time travel book about really interesting things like the middle ages and the black death, and spend most of the book in essentially a modern university under a quarantine which prevents any of the characters from doing anything.

Characters are too passive. Problems are too contrived. Stakes don't feel impactful because, while there is a possible plague that could possibly wipe out the planet - the characters are too distracted with other things to signal any kind of rising tension. The story never goes anywhere, and then the novel finally gets to the point and just ends.

If I had been reading the hard copy, I would have started skipping the modern sections, and having listened to them I wouldn't have missed much. I'll grant that some of the hijinks in the modern chapters are called back nicely in the conclusion... but we didn't need 20 hours of it for that to happen.

Of course all of the inanity contrasts with some very beautiful passages and some of the most immersive and impactful fish-out-of-water time traveler scenes I've ever read, and an ending that left me almost in tears despite how annoyed I had been with the book until then. The book has some good things going for it, but it felt really disjointed, and just doesn't seem to be crafted very well at all.

I gave it 2 stars. 2 stars are for the black death and the depiction of the medieval village, and 0 stars are for many many chapters of "well I tried to convince/talk to this person but it didn't work/they didn't give me any information" and "no you can't go in the lab because we might have let loose the plague which is now quarantined anyway." Super frustrating, because if the whole book had been like the parts I liked it could easily be a 4 or a 5.

[Dominik]

Aaand I'm done. Not bad at all, though the first 90% could stand to lose a LOT of the fluff and circular bickering. Once the dying begins, it's very good, though a stone cold bummer. And so, in conclusion:
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