really wonderful book

I have to thank everyone who suggested "To Say Nothing of the Dog" as a book to read over my short vacation. (In fact, I read nearly all of it on the train coming back, and then had to finish it last night.)

It's really a remarkable book - one of those that works on several levels.

On the most basic level, it's just a darn good story. It combines elements of the "comedy of manners," elements of mystery novels, and elements of historical novels - all things I enjoy. And there's the science-fiction bit overlaid on top of that.

(An aside: I think part of the reason I don't care for some science fiction is that some of it is set on board space stations or spaceships or in colonies on Mars, things like that. And they always seem kind of close and claustrophobic to me, where all your surroundings are man-made, and venturing outside of the man-made surroundings means instant death. One of the reasons I think I enjoyed the two Willis novels I read is that the "science fiction" part of it is more a plot device, and less a setting, for the novel).

And it's funny. And the characters - Ned and Verity in particular, but to a lesser extent Finch and T.J. Lewis and "Baine" are sympathetic - they're trying to do what is right and best and trying to "fix" things, but the single-minded wrongheadedness of people around them get in their way. And there are enough roll-your-eyes-at-them characters - Lady Schrapnell, and "Tossie," and the fake spiritualist - to keep you entertained.

(I will admit, at first, to groaning a bit when I ran across Terence St. Trewes. "Oh no," I thought, "Am I going to have to plow through pages of upper-middle-class-twit-speak and Tennyson quotations every time he's 'on stage'?" But you get used to it. I never did quite get used to Professor Peddick, who'd start out talking about one thing and abruptly shift subjects midsentence, though.)

However, beyond the story, there are some interesting ideas to think about: one of them being the Peddick/Overforce conflict: is what we see as "history" the result of individual actions of people, and those individual actions have a great impact, or is it more a series of trends and "populations" are what is important? Also, is there a "grand plan" (And, as Peddick hints, that "grand plan" under some sort of divine control), or is history random, and could truly be changed by some event in the past being different?

My interpretation - without giving too much away - is that apparently in the universe of the novel, there is some kind of grand plan, that certain things "have" to happen, or "have to have happened." The whole issue of "incongruities" and the fact that they somehow correct themselves. (Actually, I find that idea oddly comforting - that if something goes wrong, if something happens that steers things off course, they will get steered back on course, even maybe involving events no one would imagine were important.)

I also like Willis' treatment of time travel. She has dealt with two of the theoretical problems (at least, theoretical problems I would have had): for one thing, you cannot bring a "significant" object back from the past (One of the characters - maybe it was Ned - remarks archly that once the multinational corporations learned they couldn't go back to the past and "pillage its treasures," they lost interest and time travel became an academic exercise). (However, later in the novel, there's an interesting corollary to the "can't bring back 'significant' objects" that comes up, and seems like it will be used in an interesting - if perhaps ethically problematic - way)

She also describes the idea of "slippage" - sometimes, when people get "dropped" into the past, they're not where or when they planned to go. Apparently there is something in the "system" that prevents people from showing up at crisis points - for example, as hard as someone might try to go back to Berlin in 1930 to assassinate Hitler before he had a chance to do his harm, the traveler would find himself winding up in Heidelberg. Or London. Or in 1950 instead. So it solves the major paradox and major question, sometimes phrased as "If time travel existed, what would happen if someone went back and prevented his father and mother from meeting?" (The slippage gets worse when the system is trying to correct itself, as well - the degree of slippage can provide a clue to whether there are problems or not).

I think this novel has the time-travel idea more fully developed than in the earlier "Doomsday Book," but that might be in part because time travel is a major plot feature - whereas in "Doomsday Book," epidemics were more the plot point, and time travel mainly a way to get from here to there. (Also, this novel is "set" three years later than "Doomsday," which means maybe in its universe, that much more had been learned).

I'm not sure which of the two novels I prefer. The tone is different - there is a lot of sadness in "Doomsday Book," it's set in the time of the plague, and yet, as I said earlier, it's a fundamentally hopeful book (I went back this morning and re-read the ending, and I stand by that). Hopeful, in the sense that characters in horrible situations behave honorably and even nobly. "To Say Nothing of the Dog" is much lighter, and yet, there is that overlay of the question of "Is there some predetermined sense to the world, or is it all random?"

So, despite all the humor, there's a thoughtfulness to it as well. And I like that. I think I'm going to look up her book of Christmas stories - I've read several people remark online that they are good, too, and contain some of the same ideas of hopefulness.

(Another aside: in Willis' universe, time travel was discovered in 2013. So Oxford: you've got just over 2 years to get on it.)

Anyway: "To Say Nothing of the Dog" is a really fantastic book, whether or not you're a hard-core sci-fi fan. (As I said before, I'm not). I'm now tempted to look up the Jerome K. Jerome book referenced in it and read that.