To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2) in Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy

Jan 13, 2011 Anmiryam rated it it was amazing

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Time travel with a sense of humor and homage Victoriana. A grand romp.

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Jun 08, 2016 Fungus Gnat rated it liked it · review of another edition

Ned Henry is a historian, one of a number working out of Oxford University in the mid-21st century to test the recently discovered physics of time travel and verify hypotheses about the past. (Readers of Willis’s story “Fire Watch” and her novel Doomsday Book will recognize this world.) His current task is to find a piece of Victorian decorative art (a “bird stump,” or flower-holder) in the ruins of Coventry cathedral just after the 1940 Luftwaffe attack, or establish that it is not there. But N Ned Henry is a historian, one of a number working out of Oxford University in the mid-21st century to test the recently discovered physics of time travel and verify hypotheses about the past. (Readers of Willis’s story “Fire Watch” and her novel Doomsday Book will recognize this world.) His current task is to find a piece of Victorian decorative art (a “bird stump,” or flower-holder) in the ruins of Coventry cathedral just after the 1940 Luftwaffe attack, or establish that it is not there. But Ned has been on too many “drops,” and has gotten physiologically disoriented, so he is sent to Victorian Oxfordshire for some R&R. Unfortunately, one of Ned’s colleagues has imprudently taken something forward in time, resulting in temporal incongruities in the course of events that could disrupt the “space-time continuum” on which all events depend. Needless to say, this is a higher priority than chasing a bird stump around the countryside, forcing Ned to involve himself with the minutiae of time travel through 1888 Oxford. Oh, right, and fall in love while he’s at it.

Now, I have no particular problem with time travel. To me, the value of SF’s tropes arise from what they signify to us earthbound, 21st-century-bound readers, not principally from some calculus of scientific sense or probability. As Jo Walton so well puts it in a review of this book, “If it’s possible to have a huge effect on the past by [traveling there and] doing some tiny thing, it stands to reason that we have a huge effect on the future every time we do anything.”

But, potentially serious issues notwithstanding, this book belongs in tone with the lighter works in the Willis oeuvre. What you think of it therefore depends at least partly on what you think of Willis as a comic writer. You can see where this is headed. Well, okay, she draws the occasional chuckle out of me. And I appreciate a story-teller voice that doesn’t take itself too seriously. However, I find her humor mildly amusing at best and, too often, belabored. Moreover, Willis occasionally uses attempted humor to extend her already-uneconomical narration (Dog is roughly 175K words). For example, early in Chapter 7, Ned’s friend Terence and a lock-keeper spend almost a page bellowing incomprehensibly at each other. To some people, this must be funny. Likewise, at the end of Chapter 4, Ned’s meet-cute with Cyril is dragged out at the narrator’s expense and that of the reader. But Willis sometimes hits the mark; her evocation of the spirits at the close of Chapter 10 is an inspired (oops) touch.

Part of the reason why Willis is so voluble is that she’s a stickler for detail, and that applies here at least as much as in her other work. Like other good SF writers, she generally attends closely to the internal consistency and the ramifications of the world she has created, which revolves almost solely around time travel—a gnarly topic that invites confusion. (See Pat Cadigan’s intro for some clarification—and appreciation.) By and large, I find the science makes sense at some level of abstraction, but what is more impressive to me is the degree to which Willis elaborates her story’s branches into a complex structure that melds well the narrative art and the underlying science. This degree of complexity is risky, though, particularly for a writer who has a tendency to blab. How is an ordinary mortal reader supposed to follow material like this?

“And having Terence miss meeting someone would hardly make things better, especially if meeting them might have kept him from getting to Iffley in time to see Tossie. Which means Terence must not have been supposed to meet Maud, and we don’t have to worry about it being a symptom the incongruity’s getting worse.” (Chapter 12, late)

The windy nature of Willis’s writing and the inconsistency risks can lead to a reader’s (or the writer’s) missing something important. This can be especially true during set-up. The story starts neither in the time travelers’ “home” year of 2057 nor in 1888, where most of the action occurs, but in 1940. Your ability to figure that out (absent this review) would depend on your familiarity with the Battle of Britain. But that isn’t even the first bit of misdirection the reader will encounter. The book’s initial sentence reads:

“There were five of us—Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger.”

In a long, complex novel like this one, getting an introduction to some of the major characters in the very first sentence could be helpful. Or, to put it another way, you might hope that early intros are to important people. Not here. The narrator is important, and Carruthers might qualify as a minor character. The other three have very little to no role after Chapter 1; one of them turns out to be, preciously enough, a dog. Where do the real principal characters show up? Not in 1940! Dear un-Willised reader, I’ll let you find out! While you’re working on that, make sure you don’t miss any hints as to the definitions of discrepancies, incongruities, and slippages. Pay attention! Take notes! And familiarize yourself with cathedral layout while you’re at it. And also, do me a favor and report back on the dates and locations of the old cathedral, the new one, and the supermarket . . . or megamall . . . no, wait . . . I’m becoming Disoriented . . . Let’s switch the scene to something more solid . . . Like the Titanic . . .

Actually, I think I’ll take a little vacation from SF . . .

gnat
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Dec 29, 2015 Jon rated it did not like it

This book was terrible. I've read how funny it is, and that it was a "tour de force" to follow up on the tremendous success of the Doomsday Book. Don't waste your time.

I really like the Doomsday Book. It had a great story.

In this case, the story doesn't make sense. It's got terrible descriptions and I'm really considering not getting any other books by Ms. Willis. ...more

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