Think of the traditional war narrative: guy goes off adventuring, faithful gal waits at home. Because the guy goes off to do his warring elsewhere, the reader doesn't have to feel too bad about the death and destruction that is wreaked on them. The repercussions are all limited in time and place, and the guy can come back a hero. Rarely does the narrative tell us much about the gal waiting except that she's patience on a monument, the embodiment of perfection.Over the past hundred years or so, there has been an exponential increase in war narratives. The focus has shifted from the great leader and hero to the more average guy, not necessarily brave, overwhelmed by the situation in which he finds himself. Fiction or memoir, 20th century narratives focused on that crazy, dislocated feeling, using time travel or other juxtaposition as a device. Of course, there were also far more stories about people caught up in war who were not traditional heroes: women, children, lower class folks who had an opportunity to rise suddenly.Willis goes that narrative one better. She writes of World War Two as a conflict that involves everyone in Britain. Because it's such a big thing it can't be done in a single book. All of her time travel stories fit in, from Fire Watch to Doomsday Book, and even To Say Nothing of the Dog, as well as the two centerpieces, Blackout and All Clear. Not many people have the skill to write an engaging epic about people doing mundane tasks, but in her focus on the concrete and specific (queuing for sandwiches in the tube station, selling a coat for a child about to be evacuated) Willis manages something transcendent.Later on I may change my mind, but I'm willing to say that collectively these volumes are the greatest work of science fiction ever written.