She loses track of the 'drop point,' the location where she arrived and must return at a prearranged time in order to get home. She awakens after several days of fever and delirium at a nearby manor whose residents have nursed her. Kivrin also falls ill as soon as she arrives in the past. Shortly after sending Kivrin to the 14th century, Badri Chaudhuri, the technician who set the time travel coordinates for the trip, collapses, an early victim of a deadly new influenza epidemic that disrupts the university and leads to the city being quarantined. This period had previously been thought too dangerous, because it stretched the time travel net 300 years earlier than it had ever been used before. Kivrin Engle, a young historian specializing in medieval history, asks her reluctant instructor, Professor James Dunworthy, and the authorities running the project to send her to Oxford in 1320 near Christmas.

Some periods theoretically accessible can also be deemed too dangerous for the historians by the authorities controlling time travel. 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. In other cases, 'slippage', a shift in the exact time target, occurs. Typically the machine used for time travel will refuse to function, rendering the trip impossible. In the book's fictional universe, history resists time travel that would cause the past to be altered by preventing visits to certain places or times. The research is conducted at the University of Oxford in mid-21st century England.

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 novel is the first in a series about the Oxford time-traveling historians, which includes To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998) and Blackout/All Clear (2010). 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 title of the book refers to the Domesday Book of 1086. The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and was shortlisted for other awards. Doomsday Book is a 1992 science fiction novel by American author Connie Willis.

Connie willis blackout all clear