ABSTRACT
In a quantum system, Connie Willis suggests, causation may be impossible to discern; context may be the most we can know, while all else is speculation. Her response to scientific uncertainty about truth is humanistic empathy, arguing that the historian’s ethic is humanity’s best recourse in the chaos of a quantum universe. Over the course of the Oxford Historians series, and especially in its climax in Blackout/All Clear, Willis defines an ethical approach to the past as one that recognizes the impossibility of objectivity and eschews silence in favor of speech and memorialization. Even as they become enmeshed in the past, the time-travelers employ the methods of historical research to enable the flow of messages across time and place, as an examination of the actions of Michael, Merope, Polly, and Colin demonstrates. For Willis, historical consciousness is more than consolation in times of collective trauma; it is a moral imperative. Making historians her protagonists, Willis upholds the ethical work of historians—observation, empathy, humanism—as the key to finding meaning and purpose in a universe that connects us both backward and forward in time.
