Doomsday Book is a 1992 science fiction novel by American author Connie Willis. The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and was shortlisted for other awards. The title of the book refers to the Domesday Book of 1086. Kivrin Engle, the main character, says that her recording is "a record of life in the Middle Ages, which is what William the Conqueror's survey turned out to be".
The novel is the first in a series about Oxford time-traveling historians, which includes To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998) and Blackout/All Clear (2010).
Plot introduction
Willis's mythos is a near future, first introduced in her story "Fire Watch" (1982), in which historians conduct field work by traveling into the past as observers. The research is conducted at the University of Oxford in mid-21st-century England.
In the book's fictional universe, history resists time travel that would alter the past by preventing visits to certain places or times. Typically the machine used for time travel will refuse to function, rendering the trip impossible. In other cases, "slippage", a shift in the exact time of arrival, occurs. The time-traveler arrives at the nearest place-and-time suitable for preventing a paradox; variance can be anything from 5 minutes to 5 years. Some periods theoretically accessible can also be deemed too dangerous for the historians by the authorities controlling time travel.