Plot Introduction
Willis imagines a near future (first introduced in her 1982 story "Fire Watch") in which historians conduct field work by traveling into the past as observers. The research is conducted at the University of Oxford in England in the late-21st century.
In theory, history resists time travel which would cause the past to be altered 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 target, 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.
Read more about this topic: Doomsday Book (novel)
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