ABSTRACT
Given the number of times that Connie Willis invokes Sayers’s works (especially Gaudy Night) in her novel To Say Nothing of the Dog, readers should not be surprised that Willis also explores the challenge of finding a “precarious balance” between stability and chaos. In both novels, the chaos of love not only affects the lives of the protagonists but also provides the impetus for the mysteries the characters must solve. For both authors, however, the focus is not simply on the chaos of love, for finding this “precarious balance” becomes even more of a challenge in the characters’ search for truth. Like Sayers’s Peter Wimsey who repeatedly wonders if he has made situations worse because of his investigations, Ned and Verity worry about the negative repercussions that result from their actions as they attempt to solve the mystery of the missing bishop’s bird stump. Have they introduced incongruities into the space-time continuum? Are they helping to repair others’ mistakes? Or are their individual actions simply irrelevant in the whole scope of time? By invoking Sayers and combining the mystery genre with science fiction, Willis suggests that perhaps the truly “precarious balance” comes through reconciling the value of individual action with the Grand Design of the universe.
