To Say Nothing of the Dog

by Connie Willis

First published 1998

Ned Henry travels back and forth between the 1940s and 2050s, gathering historical data about Coventry Cathedral for a wealthy benefactor who wants to reconstruct the bombed building. His research missions take him repeatedly into the past until something goes wrong with the timeline itself. The temporal disruption threatens the careful balance historians maintain between past and future. Ned must navigate the complications of time travel while dealing with the consequences of a continuum that no longer flows as it should. His work becomes more than academic research when the stability of history itself hangs in the balance. The story explores how small changes ripple through time and what happens when the mechanisms that protect the past begin to fail.

Genres: science-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, 21st-century, alternate-history, academic

Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking, whimsical

Tropes: fish-out-of-water, time-travel

Setting: Coventry, Cathedral

Period: 1940s, 2050s

493 pages · Hardcover · Turtleback

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