VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM (14)
By:
August 19, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of science fiction novels and comics from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
CONNIE WILLIS | DOOMSDAY BOOK | 1992
“Rocks fall, everyone dies.”
Or, “The Black Death comes, (almost) everyone dies.”
One wouldn’t think that to be the summary of a deeply hopeful, humanist book — especially not when combined with the stringencies and obsessions of medieval religious belief, nor with the kind of missed-connections and misunderstandings that form the backbone of many of Connie Willis’s novels — but it is.
The great teaching of all the world’s religions is not that there is an afterlife. (They don’t, in fact, all teach that.) Rather, they teach us to accept death as a natural part of life, often tragic but with redeeming qualities. The Buddhist develops non-attachment; the Christian understands that death brings them closer to God.
Connie Willis does not actually endorse any of these specific ideas in Doomsday Book, even though she is a Christian writer and the story takes place at Christmas, often in the context of churches. She does not try to explain death away, or suggest that there is something noble in it. In this way, Doomsday Book is not a religious but a humanist novel. It carefully and precisely depicts the ways that humans care for each other, even in the greatest extremity of disaster.
In the novel, a young historian named Kivrin has traveled back in time to observe medieval society; she accidentally is sent to the Black Death, and a pandemic back in her own time prevents her friends from retrieving her. She is doomed therefore to watch as all of the people she has met die, painfully, of a plague against which she has been inoculated. The “contemps,” the inhabitants of the village of Skendgate, understand Kivrin (at the end) as an angel sent from God to care for them, even as she psychologically disintegrates from the pressures she is under. She comes to the uttermost of her wits and strength, and with that last energy she rings the church bells to mark their deaths, even though there is no one to hear.
Yet at the end she does not regret anything that has happened. “I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.” Through her actions there is a record of the village of Skendgate, and people in the future learn about them. They do not really die — not because of God, but because of the love and care that people give to each other and the way that Kivrin remembers them. Io suuicien lui damo amo: you (this record) are here in the place of the friends that I love.
VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on SNOW CRASH | Mandy Keifetz on THE GENOCIDAL HEALER | Matthew De Abaitua on SWAMP THING | Carlo Rotella on THE PLAYER OF GAMES | Lynn Peril on GEEK LOVE | Stephanie Burt on THE CARPATHIANS | Josh Glenn on DAL TOKYO | Deb Chachra on THE HYPERION CANTOS | Adam McGovern on KID ETERNITY | Nikhil Singh on THE RIDDLING REAVER | Judith Zissman on RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE | Ramona Lyons on PARABLE OF THE SOWER | Jessamyn West on the MARS TRILOGY | Flourish Klink on DOOMSDAY BOOK | Matthew Battles on THE INTEGRAL TREES | Tom Nealon on CLAY’S ARK | Sara Ryan on SARAH CANARY | Gordon Dahlquist on CONSIDER PHLEBAS | Alex Brook Lynn on VURT | Miranda Mellis on STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND | Nicholas Rombes on RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH | Adelina Vaca on NEUROMANCER | Marc Weidenbaum on AMERICAN FLAGG! | Peggy Nelson on VIRTUAL LIGHT | Michael Grasso on WILD PALMS.
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