To Say Nothing of the Dog
Hugo and Locus winner: the proof that a time-travel comedy of manners could stand beside the genre's tragedies — and the gateway through which countless non-SF readers entered the field.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency about?
Dirk Gently, exposer of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things (and biller of expenses on that principle: the trip to Bermuda was structurally necessary), investigates a case involving a software millionaire's murder, an Electric Monk that believes things for you, a Cambridge don with a time machine in his rooms, Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan', and the salvation-or-not of the entire human race, retroactively. Adams plaits Doctor Who leftovers, quantum mechanics and Romantic poetry into the most ingeniously plotted thing he ever wrote — the jokes conceal a clockwork of genuine elegance.
Why it matters
A cult classic twice adapted for television, and the bridge between comic SF and the holistic-detective strain of urban fantasy; its time-loop plotting is quietly among the genre's best.
Read next
American Gods
Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Bram Stoker awards in one sweep — the codifying text of the gods-among-us genre — and a Starz television series besides.
Behold the Man
Nebula winner and the New Wave's most notorious provocation: time-travel paradox as theology, handled with a seriousness that outlasted the scandal.