{"id":50356,"date":"2023-11-28T06:54:40","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T14:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=50356"},"modified":"2024-05-28T13:51:15","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T20:51:15","slug":"%f0%9f%93%9a-the-doomsday-book-by-connie-willis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2023\/11\/28\/%f0%9f%93%9a-the-doomsday-book-by-connie-willis\/","title":{"rendered":"&#x1f4da; Doomsday Book by Connie Willis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:1096,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/app.thestorygraph.com\\\/books\\\/7d1c493c-ee4b-4f46-ae19-3245e0b6d804&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>66\/2023 &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/7d1c493c-ee4b-4f46-ae19-3245e0b6d804\">&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;<\/a> 1993 Hugo Best Novel<\/p>\n<p>Technically a time travel book, but the time travel itself is kind of the least important part, little more than a hand-waved MacGuffin necessary to get the characters in the right places. From there, you have the dual stories of near-future and historical pandemics. And, of course, any pandemic-centric tale can\u2019t help but be read somewhat differently now than it would have been five years ago. In some ways, the near-future part seemed rather prescient, referring to a prior flu pandemic that would have hit in the mid-2010s, only about a decade off from our COVID reality, or the presence of protesters blaming the government; in others, it now seems sadly na\u00efve (now that we know that most people\u2019s reaction to a pandemic too quickly turns to \u201cmeh\u201d or outright denial rather than taking it seriously). Both stories are excellently handled, often with a subtle dry humor in the \u201cpresent day\u201d portion balancing the tragedies of the historical portion.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/cw_db-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"Me holding Doomsday Book\" title=\"cw_db.jpeg\" border=\"0\" width=\"2016\" height=\"1512\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A time travel McGuffin to frame excellent near-ish future and historical pandemic tales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036,2049],"tags":[2210,2012,3313,5820],"class_list":["post-50356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-photos","tag-connie-willis","tag-hugoaward","tag-hugobestnovel","tag-oxford-time-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51240,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50356\/revisions\/51240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}