Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book is a science fiction novel by the American writer Connie Willis, published in 1992. It won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and its title refers to the Domesday Book of 1086.

The novel introduces the near-future Oxford of Willis's time-travel stories, where historians conduct research by going into the past as observers and where the past itself resists interference: trips are refused, or arrive at a time slightly different from the one asked for, in order to prevent a paradox. Kivrin Engle has read everything she can about the Middle Ages and is eager to see it for herself, and her tutors finally allow her to go.

The book moves between two places. One is the England Kivrin arrives in, where the people she meets are living through events she has only read about and where she cannot explain who she is or why she has come. The other is the Oxford she left, where the team who sent her find that the machinery is not behaving as it should and that they cannot bring her home when they intend to.