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Blackout/All Clear

Blackout first edition hardcover
Author	Connie Willis
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Spectra
Publication date	2010
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	Blackout – 512 pages All Clear – 656 pages
ISBN	[[Special:BookSources/%27%27Blackout%27%27+%E2%80%93+ISBN+0-553-80319-0%3Cbr%2F%3E%27%27All+Clear%27%27+%E2%80%93+ISBN+978-0-553-80767-7 |Blackout – ISBN 0-553-80319-0 All Clear – ISBN 978-0-553-80767-7]] Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

Blackout and All Clear are the two volumes that comprise a 2010 science fiction novel by American author Connie Willis. Blackout was published February 2, 2010 by Spectra. The second part, the conclusion All Clear, was released as a separate book on October 19, 2010.^[1] The diptych won the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel,^[2] the 2011 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel,^[3] and the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Novel.^[4][5] These two volumes are the most recent of four books and a short story that Willis has written involving time travel from Oxford during the mid 21st century.^[6]

Willis imagines a near future (first introduced in her 1982 story "Fire Watch" and featured in two of her previous novels: Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog) in which historians conduct field work by traveling into the past as observers. The research is mainly conducted at the University of Oxford in England in the mid-21st century. In their world, time travel has been known since the early 21st century. The time travel device remains in the future, and travelers are sent through a portal called "the Net," which places them in a particular location and time. They can return from the same location—known as the "drop"—when someone in the future re-opens the Net for them at the agreed upon "rendezvous" time.

Historians in Willis' world believe that the rules of time travel resist possible alterations to the past by preventing visits to certain places or times. In some cases, the machine used for time travel will refuse to function, rendering the trip impossible. In other cases, "slippage"—a shift from the exact, desired target in time and space—occurs. The time traveler arrives at the nearest place and time suitable for preventing a time paradox; although sometimes this is only a few minutes later than planned, it can be as much as several years. An example is when the character Polly wishes to arrive on September 10, 1940, in London, but arrives on September 14, instead, without her knowledge or understanding.^[7]

In addition to slippage, which the technicians operating the net cannot control or predict, there are other reasons why a historian might not be able to travel to a certain time. Once a time traveler has visited a certain date, he or she can never go to that same time again. The 21st-century authorities controlling time travel also have rules and can deem some historical periods too dangerous for time travel, even though those times might be theoretically accessible.

In August, 2006, at the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, in a give-and-take with her audience, Willis described her novel-in-progress: "It's about World War 2, and I have four historians... One of them is with the evacuating children in the North of England; one of them is doing the Blitz; one of them is doing the civilian evacuation from Dunkirk, of soldiers but by civilians; and one of them is doing the Intelligence War involved in the lead-up to D-Day, where they fooled Hitler into thinking we were attacking at Calais, instead of at Normandy. And their lives are hopelessly intertwined; but then they all get in trouble -- you know my books -- they all get in terrible trouble and can't get out of it. And are stuck in World War II, for God's sake! So: Not a safe place to be." (An audience member called, "Better than the Plague!") Willis laughed but replied, "Not necessarily better than the Plague! In slightly better survival chance because they have the advantage of some knowledge that the locals don't have, but then again, historical events are notoriously inaccurate, and just because you think you know where all the bombs fell, doesn't mean you do. So that will figure heavily in the book... I have a lot of stuff to tell you about the war.. The Brits were absolutely wonderful... They were great and plucky and funny under pressure."^[8]

In a February 12, 2010 interview^[9] Connie Willis said:

What are Blackout and All Clear about? They're about Dunkirk and ration books and D-Day and V-1 rockets, about tube shelters and Bletchley Park and gas masks and stirrup pumps and Christmas pantomimes and cows and crossword puzzles and the deception campaign. And mostly the book's about all the people who "did their bit" to save the world from Hitler—Shakespearean actors and ambulance drivers and vicars and landladies and nurses and WRENs and RAF pilots and Winston Churchill and General Patton and Agatha Christie—heroes all.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2011)

It's the year 2060, and the history students at Oxford University are a hair's breadth away from revolting. Mr. Dunworthy keeps changing their assignments at the last minute, for reasons not explained until All Clear. Michael Davies, who had prepared for a first-hand look at the events of Pearl Harbor, for example by having brain implants to give him an American accent and knowledge of that time, abruptly finds himself instead being sent to witness the response to the Battle of Dunkirk. The constant changes mean that the wardrobe department can't assemble the proper wardrobe for Polly Churchill, who plans to work as a shopgirl during the Blitz. Merope Ward, overseeing child refugees from London in Warwickshire, finds herself utterly unable to find the support she needs to complete her first assignment in the past. Dunworthy himself is nowhere to be found, having set off for a meeting with another academic, Ishiwaka, who theorizes that continued time travel has pushed the laws that safely govern it to the breaking point.

When they make it to World War II England, all initially seems fairly well.

Merope, a red-head, takes on the persona of an Irish girl, Eileen O'Reilly, to secure a position in the staff of an English country manor house. From December, 1939, to May, 1940, she works for Lady Caroline as a servant; she desires to observe children evacuated from London during World War II.^[10] She sees far more of these children and their predicaments than she bargained for, especially some undisciplined trouble-makers, sister and brother street urchins Binnie and Alf. Merope, referred to mostly in both books as Eileen, excels at her assignment, even when she comes to dislike it and to try desperately to escape to her "drop," which is located in the woods outside the manor grounds. The children love her, and when Alf comes down with measles, and then infects the dozens of other children, the house is quarantined; Eileen proves an excellent and tireless nurse, against her own wishes. She is appalled by what she considers the barbaric medical treatments of 1940 (she errs by referring to "a virus," a term not generally known then), and manages to save Binnie's life only by stealing some aspirin to bring the girl's fever down.

Eileen finds herself repeatedly unable to return to 2060 via her drop. She helps to return most of the children to their homes, and then plans to travel by train to seek help from her friend Polly, who should, by September, 1940, be a shopgirl in London. To her dismay, the vicar has arranged for Binnie and Alf to be given "safe passage" to Canada, so that they will not have to remain with their neglectful mother in Whitechapel, which, as Eileen knows, was bombed during the Blitz. But, as she also knows, they are likely to be transported on the SS City of Benares, which was torpedoed by a German submarine. Unable to allow this to happen, Eileen accompanies the brats to London, after which she can seek Polly. During their train trip, Alf's mischievousness delays their train; if the train had proceeded on time, it would have been destroyed by German bombers. When they disembark from the train and cross a field to find a bus, they witness in the sky the beginning of the Battle of Britain. Alf, who fancies himself a plane spotter, and Binnie are delighted to watch an air battle between a German Messerschmitt fighter plane against a Hawker Hurricane and a Spitfire. The Messerschmitt is destroyed, and Eileen manages both to return the children to their home and to find Polly.

Polly, fair-haired and pretty, secures employment at a department store in Oxford Street in the West End of London. Her intention (that is, her planned homework assignment) was "to observe shelterers in the tube stations",^[11] but she ends up joining a group huddling under St. George's Church. The group, most of whom become fond of Polly, includes the nasty-tempered Mrs. Rickett, who owns a boarding house where Polly rents a tiny room; some other boarders, including the sweet but flighty spinster Miss Laburnum; Sir Godfrey, a Shakespearean actor who forms a crush on Polly; a rector; Mr. Simms and his dog Nelson; Lila and Viv, young women who chat constantly about dances and movie stars; and others.

Michael Davies had planned to travel to witness the attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, he is sent to Dover, a trip he had intended to make later, where he had planned to witness heroism during the Dunkirk evacuation. When he discovers that, instead of Dover, he has landed in Saltram-on-Sea, a town 30 miles south, with his "drop" within some rocks on the beach, he tells the locals that he is Mike Davis, an American war correspondent, who wishes to cover the British anti-invasion preparations of World War II. The residents are pleased to find a "Yankee" interested in them.

To his horror, he is brought against his will onto the small, barely seaworthy craft Lady Jane of Commander Harold and taken across the English Channel to help evacuate the soldiers from the beach at Dunkirk. When they arrive at the mole there, soldiers begin scrambling onto the boat, but Michael must dive underwater to free the propeller from a corpse which has become entangled with it. Michael frees the boat and joins the evacuees on the deck, which is too crowded for movement, and the Commander guides the boat back to England. During the trip, Michael goes into shock and barely hears a rescued soldier, Private Hardy, thanking him for saving his life. When they return, Michael finds his right foot has been mangled. He awakes in a hospital in Orpington, where he is adored as a hero, but, for months, he is terrified that he has changed the course of history by saving soldiers.

Eventually, Merope, Polly and Michael meet each other in London. They are all worried because they cannot find drops which will return them to Oxford.

All Clear begins where Blackout left off, with Michael Davies (as Mike Davis), Polly Churchill (as Polly Sebastian), and Merope Ward (as Eileen O'Reilly) trapped in 1940 Britain during the Blitz. Just as in Blackout, the novel switches between multiple people and times.

As the novel opens, Polly Churchill, who is posing as Polly Sebastian, a shop assistant, realizes that she has a deadline. She had already visited Oxford and London in 1943. Since she was able to do that, and she now believes she is trapped in 1940, she must either have returned to the future by 1943, or died. She is convinced that she will in fact die. Meanwhile two other time travelers, Merope Ward (posing as Eileen O'Reilly) and Michael Davies (posing as an American journalist, Mike Davis) have found Polly after discovering that their drops are also unable to return them to the future. Mike originally went to Dover to observe the Dunkirk evacuation, but became an unwilling participant. Eileen began observing the evacuation of children from London to the countryside in 1939. Now together, the three believe that their own actions, particularly in Mike's case, may have changed the future so that there is no time travel, and that possibly it involves Germany winning the war.

Knowing something has gone wrong which prevents them from returning to 2060 Oxford, the three time travelers attempt to determine an escape plan, but none of their efforts are successful. Gerald Phipps, who was supposed to be at Bletchley Park studying Ultra, never came through to his assignment. Due to a misunderstanding, they only realize that another Oxford historian, John Bartholomew, is also in their place and time less than a day before he will leave. Frantically they try to get to him, but the three are separated and repeatedly delayed, not helped by the fact that this is the night of December 29, 1940, some of the worst raids of the war. They are unable to find Bartholomew before he returns to 2054 Oxford. When Mike and Eileen figure out that Polly has a deadline in June 1943 – meaning that if she isn’t out by then she’ll die, since she’s already visited that time – their search for a way out becomes even more desperate. Their frustration turns into tragedy when Mike is killed during a raid. Eileen refuses to accept his death, but upon realizing Alf and Binnie’s mother has been dead for months, volunteers to raise the orphans, giving her life meaning.

In 2060 Oxford Mr. Dunworthy sends himself on a rescue mission to retrieve Polly in September 1940. However, when he arrives at St Paul’s Cathedral he is unable to determine the date before the raids start. (St. Paul's, and especially one of the paintings in the Cathedral, The Light of the World, are viewed several times by most of the important characters in the book. They are either inspired or depressed by their current view of the painting.) When he realizes it is December 1940, he becomes hopeless and distraught. Polly stumbles across him in the cathedral a few weeks later. He explains that slippage isn’t a result of the time continuum trying to prevent historians from changing the past as was previously thought, but is a response to changes they’d already caused. The continuum around World War II is in such disarray that it has sealed itself off to time travel, and will engage in 'corrections' – likely the death of the historians and those they have influenced. Their worst fears – that they have been able to influence the past and cause discrepancies – have been realized, possibly to the point the war will be lost.

However, all hope is not lost. Mike fakes his own death and in 1944 is engaged in Operation Fortitude, a misinformation campaign. He is able to plant notices in newspapers hinting where Polly and Eileen are located in the hopes that someone in 2060 Oxford will find the notices and be able to rescue the girls. Another potential rescuer is Colin Templer, an overeager teenager from 2060 Oxford with a crush on Polly. He goes back to 1944 and finds Mike, right after he has been hit by a bomb and helped by a clueless 1944 Polly. Mike explains that Polly and Eileen are together and falls unconscious as Colin brings him back to 2060 Oxford. Colin also goes to the 1970s for research and 1995 to try to find someone who knew Polly. To his surprise, he meets an elderly Binnie, who tells him Eileen died in 1987. Binnie also revealed that she has learned all about time travel and has been looking for him through the years to tell him where and when he can rescue the stranded historians. Equipped with this knowledge, Colin is able to return to 1941 to rescue Polly and Mr. Dunworthy.

Polly’s worries about leading to the deaths of those around her by interfering do not prevent her from saving the life of Sir Godfrey in a bombing. She finally realizes what is going on as she lies recovering in the hospital; the historians have caused small things to happen which ultimately led to winning the war. She concludes that they’re stuck in World War II not to be killed by the continuum, but because there are things they need to do so that the war is won and history is as it should be.

In April 1941, an older Colin comes through at St. Paul's and finds the historians. Polly and Mr. Dunworthy leave with Colin to return to 2060 Oxford, but Eileen stays behind. She reasons that she must remain in the past so she can tell Colin in the future where to find them, and she refuses to abandon Alf and Binnie. Colin tells them that Mike had faked his own death, but died from his 1944 injuries. Finally Polly, Mr. Dunworthy, and Colin return to the St. Paul's drop and Oxford. Eileen, Alf, and Binnie stay behind to live their lives in the past. Binnie meets Colin in 1995, and gives him information that helps him plan his rescue.

While waiting for the drop to open for her to return to Oxford, Polly also realizes that there is a resemblance between the grown-up Colin and Eileen, implying that Eileen will become his ancestor. Eileen also seemed to see this, since she called Colin "dear boy" and said "I will always be with you" before they left. Thus Eileen had another reason to remain behind in 1941.

• Badri Chaudhuri runs "the Net" (Oxford's time-travel installation) in 2060. (This was also Badri's role in Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog.)

• Polly Churchill is a 25-year-old Oxford student historian (in 2060), with previous time-traveling experience, who goes to London as Polly Sebastian to become a shopgirl, in September 1940, to observe Londoners' reactions to the Blitz. She is unable to return to 2060 through her "drop" in London, and comes to believe she has a "deadline" to return or die, due to a previous trip back to a later time during World War II (since a time traveler cannot exist in the same time more than once). Polly can be sneaky and deceitful; she often lies to her friends Merope and Michael, apparently for the self-serving reason that she doesn't want to see them feel hurt if she tells them the truth about their situation. She rebuffs Colin Templer, who has a crush on her, without wishing to learn anything about his character or his liking for her. In one of her previous time-traveling trips to WWII, she was known as Mary Kent a FANY nurse, who unknowingly treated Ernest (Michael Davis) after an HE attack, and who also saw Eileen (Merope Ward) on VE-Day.
  Not wishing to use the last name Churchill during a trip to WWII, she tells Polly that she chooses aliases from the plays of William Shakespeare; in this case, that of Sebastian from Twelfth Night, a play often quoted throughout the novel.

• Michael Davies is another 2060 Oxford student historian, while pretending to be an American reporter, Mike Davis, tries to reach Dover in May 1940 to observe soldiers being evacuated back to England from Dunkirk. Instead, Mike (Michael) is transported to Saltram-on-Sea, and ends up on a boat which goes to Dunkirk where he is injured helping evacuate soldiers. After spending several months in a hospital in Orpington (in Greater London) he discovers that he cannot return to the future via his "drop" in Saltram-on-Sea, and in September 1940 travels to London in seeking Polly and her drop. When Michael later works on Fortitude South, he goes by the codename Ernest Worthing. (Fortitude South operatives in the book are named after characters in The Importance of Being Earnest).
  Willis might have taken Davies's last name from that of Lieutenant Robert Davies (GC), who distinguished himself during the Second World War with the Royal Engineers and was awarded the George Cross (GC) for the heroism he displayed in defusing a bomb which threatened to destroy St Paul's Cathedral on 12 September 1940.

• Merope Ward is a red-headed young Oxford historian (in 2060) making her first trip back in time to Warwickshire as a servant, Eileen O'Reilly, in a country house in 1939 to observe children evacuated from London. After Merope is unable to return to 2060 Oxford via her drop in Warwickshire, she travels to London to seek help from her friend Polly.

• James Dunworthy, a Fellow (professor) of History in charge of time travel from Oxford in 2060. (Dunworthy was a pivotal character in "Fire Watch", Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog.) His students think that he is overprotective.^[12]

• Lady Caroline Denewell - lives at Denewell Manor in Warwickshire where Eileen first serves and where the Hodbin children are evacuated; later she becomes the Major, Polly/Mary Kent's commanding officer at the FANY station in Dulwich.

• Alf and Binnie Hodbin (Binnie is an 11-year-old girl; Alf is her younger brother) are very troublesome young urchins evacuated from London to Warwickshire in 1939. Despite causing difficulties for Eileen (Merope), she nurses them after both catch measles (and saves Binnie's life when her measles turns into pneumonia). After a measles quarantine is lifted, Eileen delivers them both back to their mother in London in September 1940. Binnie, it turns out, has never been given a first name; "Binnie" is merely a nickname derived from her last name, Hodbin. When she fears dying and having no given name on her tombstone, Eileen tells her she can choose any name she likes. Binnie searches film magazines for a glamorous actress name. At one point, she chooses "Spitfire"; later she opts for Dolores. Finally she takes Eileen's name as her own too.

• Sir Godfrey Kingsman is an elderly Shakespearean actor encountered by Polly in London in September 1940. A mutual attraction between them develops (despite the large difference between their ages), beyond their shared love of Shakespeare. Sir Godfrey intuits more about Polly than what she tells him.

• Gerald Phipps is a 2060 Oxford historian with a background in maths. When Mike and Polly realize the need to contact him, they find that Merope is the one who last spoke with him, and she admits that she did not listen closely; she finds him boring and unbearable; she is certain he is there at the same time as they are, going to a place with a name (she says) consisting of two words which begin "with a D, I think. Or a P. Or possibly a T." It turns out that he is at Bletchley Park in the Government Code and Cypher School, working on the Ultra program.

• Colin Templer is a 17-year-old Eton student (in 2060) who wants to become a time-traveling historian even before he's eligible to attend Oxford, and who has a crush on Polly. (An unauthorized previous trip into the past by Colin, occurring in Doomsday Book, is mentioned at the beginning of Blackout.)

• Hugh Tensing is a civilian whom Mike Davies encounters in the hospital in Orpington, who broke five ribs and injured his back after "a typewriter fell on me." Hugh is vague about where he works, but is very good at solving crossword puzzles quickly. (The ability to solve crossword puzzles quickly was, at that time, one of the recruitment tests used by the British government for cryptographers.)

• Mrs. Rickett is a civilian landlady whom Polly meets in a shelter and rents a tiny room from. (Polly is paying for breakfast and dinner at the boarding house, along with boarders Miss Laburnum, Miss Wyvern, Mr. Dorming, and eventually Eileen). Mrs. Rickett is notorious for her foul cooking, which often consists of boiled tripe, thin soup, or worse. The boarders are outraged when they have saved up their ration points to have a roasted goose for Christmas in 1940, and Mrs. Rickett takes the goose away to visit a relative in her country and leaves them with only turnip soup instead.

Connie Willis worked on the story for almost eight years, during which, she said during the Hugo Awards ceremony, she pushed "everyone's patience to the limit".^[5]

• Heroism - In one way or another, all of the time travelers journey to World War II in order to observe heroism; they also all partake of it.

• "For Want of a Nail" - Characters frequently quote or think of the proverb which teaches that small actions can result in large consequences.

• Luck - Polly often murmurs, quoting Sir Godfrey, "How all occasions do inform against me!" This is a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the Act 4, Scene 4 soliloquy. She means that everything always seems to be going wrong for her; but during All Clear she begins to hope that the rules of time travel are doing what they must do, however it may seem to her, personally.

• Paying attention - Mike, Eileen and Polly all realize at different moments that they have not paid attention to important details they were either taught or had seen for themselves. Eileen bears the brunt of Mike's and Polly's scolding for not having listened closely to Gerald Phipps, whom she dislikes, about where he was going and whom they therefore spend months seeking, but Mike and Polly are "guilty" of it, too. Badri is scolded by Mr. Dunworthy for not having realized that Dunworthy was rearranging the travels in chronological order; then Dunworthy scolds himself for not having made it clear why he was rearranging them. Even Agatha Christie is shown, in All Clear, as not paying attention at a crucial moment; the only characters who reliably pay attention are Alf and Binnie Hodbin.

• Sharing - Each of the time travelers, knowing that there is a safe future to escape to, spends time bemoaning his or her own misfortunes because he or she cannot find the way back as soon as intended . Belatedly, each also realizes that the contemporary war-time sufferers have nowhere to escape to and that they exhibit, to greater or lesser extent, a willingness to share in the common misfortunes and show courage. Eileen, then Mike, then Polly each learn that they must take part in the war-time spirit. When Mrs. Rickett (see above) steals the goose and leaves the boarders with only turnips, they all share the Christmas gifts they have managed to find for each other, and they make a feast of biscuits, pears in ambrosia, and other treats.

Michael Dirda of The Washington Post praised the diptych as "as vivid an evocation of England during World War II as anyone has ever written" and wrote that that "Blackout is, by turns, witty, suspenseful, harrowing and occasionally comic to the point of slapstick."^[13] Adrienne Martini of Locus Online called the 1940s Britain that Willis created "richly textured".^[14] A. M. Dellamonica described the story as "an intricate puzzle" and "a celebration, too, of courage and heroism, of perseverance, of ordinary people doing small things to aid in great causes, of devotion, friendship, keeping one's word. It has funny characters and laugh out loud moments aplenty, but it is no wacky romp, this book, no To Say Nothing of the Dog. At the same time, I found it funnier and, strangely, cheerier than previous Willis novels with a comparable body count."^[15]

Thomas M. Wagner called Blackout "an absolute monster of an epic, a time-travel saga so rich in scope that it's taking two volumes to tell, yet so intimate in its observation of character that what you take away from it are not thrilling action setpieces but those moments of bonding people share — warm, funny, confused, trivial, angry, heartfelt — that take on a new and infinitely greater meaning in the shadow of death... Amid the growing suspense, Willis builds an engrossing work of humanist fiction that avoids pathos and easy sentiment in depicting the quiet practicality and occasional heroism (and yes, the callousness) of Londoners surviving the Blitz. Memorable characters abound, and Willis's gift for natural dialogue brings scenes to life in a way that makes you feel you're in their presence. And she never pulls the lame stunt of creating a character for you to love just to kill them as an exercise in cheap button mashing. We get to know every one of the people with whom Polly shares a shelter every night, like the blustery, avuncular stage actor Sir Godfrey Kingsman, who quotes the Bard every time he opens his mouth yet whose personality rings true all the same. Eileen finds herself saddled with two of the most ill-behaved children in history, and yet you kind of like them, especially because, as a sort of brother-and-sister demolition duo with an appallingly indifferent and irresponsible mother, you realize they've only ever had each other."^[16]

Julie Phillips of The Village Voice wrote, "Blackout/All Clear is neither tragedy nor comedy, but a mystery story with touches of grief and slapstick... None of the three historians manages to stand by and observe... The cast of characters is long, but Willis convinces you to care about almost all their fates — and to surprise you about their connection to each other. Willis's evocation of wartime London sometimes feels romanticized, and it has few moral or demographic complications... Nor is Willis's theme, the heroism of ordinary people, especially original. But by the time the three historians and Mr. Dunworthy have unraveled the mystery and arrived at the full-on, three-hanky finale, you'll no longer be a disinterested observer."^[17]

Some reviewers complained of the length of the books and their narrative modes. Christopher DeFilippis, writing for the SF Site, said he thought the books "can best be described by words like 'belabored' and 'exasperating.' That's because the single story told in Blackout and All Clear didn't have to encompass two novels. Had it not been marred by endlessly repetitive prose and character actions, the narrative could have fit neatly into a single volume... Unfortunately, the bulk of Blackout is taken up by Polly, Mike and Eileen's individual realizations that they're trapped in the past, with each caught in a state of seemingly perpetual denial about their circumstances. Instead of acknowledging the blatant truth of their predicament, they concoct endless mental scenarios as to why their gates won't open... Willis goes on for pages with her protagonists repeatedly ruminating about the same "what ifs" over and over (and over) again. It may be understandable in the beginning of the story as the characters adjust to the magnitude of their situation. But it soon becomes apparent that this is what constitutes drama in Willis' universe and it never stops... It's a shame that these negatives so overwhelm Blackout and All Clear, because despite them the books feature many terrific characters moving in extremely interesting historical situations."^[18]

Similarly, Adam Roberts of The Guardian wrote, "The result is a mildly interesting 200-page novel about the ordinary heroism of British civilians during the war, bloated to 800 pages via an egregiously handled time-travel conceit, eked out with great jellied quantities of historical research, endless meandering conversations, long passages disposed into that tiresome typographical convention by which characters' inmost thoughts are spelled out in italics, and a string of inconsequential chapter-end cliffhangers/immediate resolutions that got increasingly on my nerves as the book went on. There's little overall tension, and the time-travelling historians come over as both panicky and amateurish – an undesirable combination, one might think, where timelines are lying about ready to be mucked up." He added, though, "The aim is a commendable one. Despite walk-on parts by General Patton, Agatha Christie and Alan Turing, the bulk of the characters in All Clear are ordinary people getting on with their ordinary lives... And it can't be denied that the subject here, the heroism of ordinary people in testing times, is worthy and honourable."^[19]

• Shawl, Nisi (2010-02-04). "Blackout: 21st century time-travelers, stranded in the Blitz of wartime England". The Seattle Times. Seattle, Washington: Frank A. Blethen. Retrieved 2010-02-17.
• "Connie Willis talks about Blackout (interview, part 1)". Retrieved 2010-10-29.