"Fire Watch" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Connie Willis.
The story, first published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in February 1982,[1] involves a time-traveling historian who goes back to the Blitz in London, to participate in the fire lookout at St Paul's Cathedral.
He develops a deep emotional attachment to the cathedral and is highly devoted to his role in defending it – especially due to his bitter knowledge that St. Paul's would survive the World War II bombings but would be obliterated in a terrorist attack nearer to the protagonist's own time.
[3] The idea of a time-traveling history department at University of Oxford, introduced in this novelette, was also used in her later novels Doomsday Book (1992), To Say Nothing of the Dog (1997), and Blackout/All Clear (2010), as was the character of Professor James Dunworthy.
Although Willis' writing of "Fire Watch" predates the production of Doomsday Book by about a decade, Kivrin Engle, the main character of Doomsday Book, also appears as a minor character in "Fire Watch".