Few authors have the pedigree of Connie Willis, named to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, winner of six Nebula (and ten Hugo) awards for her fiction, her books become classics the instant they are published, and her most recent one-book-in-two (more on that later) Blackout/All Clear is no different. Full of the engaging characters, gripping plot, humour, and depth of emotion that inhabit each of Willis’ works, these two books take events of World War II and make the terror, humour, bravery, and sheer confusion of the time come vividly to life. Reading her books, living the lives of her characters along with them, feels like a privilege, holding on to the roller coaster ride of a plot is intoxicating, and leaping between times, lives, and identities takes the reader along, breathlessly at times, in a world where much is obscured and little, even the facts of history, known for certain.

We begin with Blackout, but it is worth knowing that All Clear must be thought of more as a second-half than a sequel, and thus Blackout does not so much end as pause, and wait, and tantalize the reader with what might happen next. They are worth buying together, if only to reassure yourself that the end of Blackout is not, in fact, the end, that there is more to come, that these characters have a future. Blackout throws the reader, tumbling head over heels, into 1940s England (and the edge, really, of Europe) and Oxford of 2060, a place that feels semi-familiar as it is still mostly inhabited by academics. These academics are intrepid historians, sent back in time to observe history as it happened, completely prepared to blend discretely into the background of great events. Time travel itself has been (almost) perfected, with only the occasional near disaster to keep the teams on their collective toes (chronicled so gorgeously in Willis’ other time-travel novels: Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog), and they have the greatest protector of all, the timeline itself, which steadfastly refuses to let historians in at points where their presence could alter history beyond imagining, protecting the scientists from themselves with aplomb.

Or, rather, it has until now. Something is making the always cool under pressure Mr. Dunworthy recklessly change assignments, send historians to Dunkirk instead of Pearl Harbor, to rural England without learning to drive, to London during the Blitz without a way to find work. There are multiple identities and names, and the story flits between times and places, underscoring even more the confusion and isolation of a war. Suddenly, the historians must find their own way through a history that seems flexible, must look for help from people they were taught to observe, must connect with something beyond the history they have studied, and must always, always, search for a way home.

This is the heart of Willis’ genius. Her stories are meticulously researched, and London, the Blitz, rural 1940s England, the boats striving to cross the Channel, they all feel real, but her characters, their reactions, the friendships they cannot help but build with people dead centuries before their birth, give the story its shape and the plot its purpose. Sent on what should have been typical assignments, Oxford’s historians are now wading through history without support, unsure whether the mere act of observing has become dangerous, struggling to reconcile the history they know with the people they meet, feeling a very long way from home. They are living out multiple lifetimes, out-of-sync with the rest of the world, trying to find a refuge, waiting for a rescue.

Even the supporting cast, children, actors, nurses, shop girls, each feel solid, real, and important, with all of the glare of history around them. Willis uses these catastrophic (and occasionally comic) events to showcase individuals, to shine a spotlight on the everyday heroics and hilarity that make up life, to remind her readers that, while history may be made up of larger-than-life-events, the people’s lives, their loves and hopes and dreams, are what make everything possible. Even the little things, a child’s bedtime story; even the big things, getting home safely.

I’m facing the wrong way, he thought, paddling in a circle to orient himself, and there was the Lady Jane, silhouetted against the burning town. Another flare fizzled down, illuminating Jonathan, still in the stern, waving the flashlight around erratically, searching for him.
“I’m here!” Mike called, and Jonathan swung the flashlight out onto the water behind him. “Here!” Mike called again, and began to swim toward the boat. There was a whoosh, a blinding splash, and the water went up in a sheet of flame around him.

Blackout is a tremendously exciting read. It has the feel-as-if-you’re-in-the-middle-of-the-action quality of a thriller, comedy worth laughing out loud over, and characters lost in history, individuals you will want to fight alongside with, people that you will, above all, want safely home. This is a story about search, and rescue, rise and fall, and of all humanity, no matter its place in history or future.

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