To Say Nothing of the Dog: How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last is a 1997 comic science fiction novel by Connie Willis. It takes place in the same universe of time-traveling historians she explored in her story Fire Watch and novel Doomsday Book. To Say Nothing of the Dog won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999, and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998. The book's title is inspired by the subtitle of an 1889 classic work, as explained by the author in the dedication: "To Robert A. Heinlein, Who, in Have Space Suit—Will Travel, first introduced me to Jerome K. Jerome's... Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog." The story takes place in 2057 at Oxford University. A machine which makes time travel possible has been developed, but time travel itself is used primarily as a tool for historical research. Although millions were spent to develop time travel as a commercial venture, it turned out to have no profit potential. The natural laws of the "time continuum" prevent anything of significance from being brought from the past to the future, and also act to keep time travelers away from historically critical events, such as the Battle of Waterloo.
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| Author: | Connie Willis |
| Genre: | Science Fiction, Comedy, Fiction |
| Year published: | 1997 |
| Number of editions: | 5 |