To Say Nothing of the Dog is a science-fiction fantasy in the guise of an old-fashioned Victorian novel, complete with epigraphs, brief outlines, and a rather ugly boxer in three-quarters profile at the start of each chapter. Or is it a Victorian novel in the guise of a time-traveling tale, or a highly comic romp, or a great, allusive literary game, complete with spry references to Dorothy L. Sayers, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle? Its title is the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's singular, and hilarious, Three Men in a Boat. In one scene the hero, Ned Henry, and his friends come upon Jerome, two men, and the dog Montmorency in--you guessed it--a boat. Jerome will later immortalize Ned's fumbling. (Or, more accurately, Jerome will earlier immortalize Ned's fumbling, because Ned is from the 21st century and Jerome from the 19th.)
What Connie Willis soon makes clear is that genre can go to the dogs. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a fine, and fun, romance--an amused examination of conceptions and misconceptions about other eras, other people. When we first meet Ned, in 1940, he and five other time jumpers are searching bombed-out Coventry Cathedral for the bishop's bird stump, an object about which neither he nor the reader will be clear for hundreds of pages. All he knows is that if they don't find it, the powerful Lady Schrapnell will keep sending them back in time, again and again and again. Once he's been whisked through the rather quaint Net back to the Oxford future, Ned is in a state of super time-lag. (Willis is happily unconcerned with futuristic vraisemblance, though Ned makes some obligatory references to "vids," "interactives," and "headrigs.") The only way Ned can get the necessary two weeks' R and R is to perform one more drop and recuperate in the past, away from Lady Schrapnell. Once he returns something to someone (he's too exhausted to understand what or to whom) on June 7, 1888, he's free.

I loved it! It's a very fun and entertaining novel, a meddley between Jerome K. Jerome, Agatha Christie and Isaac Asimov, but not only that: Connie Willis's knowledge of history -dates and facts- and literature -hundreds of quotations and allusions to other works- seems unlimited (God is in the details!).

The story is very well written and structured, and the end comes as a surprise. Human characters are delightful, to say nothing of the dog... and the cat!. What else can be asked of a novel?

I found interesting the way Connie Willis treats time travels, the continuum and the idea of "self correcting".

Negative points: in my opinion some character is quite repetitive (Proff. Peddick and Mr. Mering), and it is necessary to have a good grasp of British history and culture to be able to understand all the details. For example, not everybody knows about the battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror or the Magna Carta, and what they meant in British history.

There's something I didn't quite catch, I hope next readers can help me (that's you, H0BB1T!): Why Waterloo is so important as a model to check temporal incongruities. Anybody???


It goes now to H0BB1T, who won it at the RABCK-Lottery.

Maravillosa sorpresa que me he encontrado en el buzón a la vuelta de mi viaje. ¡Muchas gracias Meranis! :))

Fun and entertaining, even though it drags and repeats itself every now and then. Moreover, one should be somewhat familiar with British literature, history and culture to "get" some jokes and allusions. As for the Waterloo model; it's pretty much the only reliable simulation because the historians have studied the Battle of Waterloo down to the smallest details, and the more detailed and accurate parameters one can feed into a simulation of a chaotic system, the better accuracy in the results one can expect.

Thank you Meranis for sharing this book with me. Soon I will find a good place so it can go on its trip. :)