To Say Nothing of the Dog

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last is a 1997 comedic science fiction novel by Connie Willis. It takes place in the same universe of time-traveling historians she explored in her Doomsday Book, however, the tone is much lighter -- extrapolated from the classic book Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, whose original subtitle it borrows for its own title. To Say Nothing of the Dog won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1999. It was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1998. The story takes place in 2057 at Oxford University. A technique for time travel has been developed, but time travel itself is used primarily as a tool for historical research. Lady Schrapnell, a wealthy American neo-aristocratic woman with a will of iron has dragooned most of Oxford's history department to help her rebuild Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was when it was destroyed in the Nazi Blitz during World War II. (The post-WWII cathedral has itself... full article at wikipedia