The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland

It only took a few pages for Neal Stephenson to become one of my favorite sci-fi authors a while back.  Many pages later (he writes some rather long books), he hasn't disappointed me yet.  In his latest, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., he has collaborated with Nicole Galland, who has written some of her own historical fiction and who previously contributed to Stephenson's Mongoliad series (OK, maybe Mongoliad was a bit of a disappointment). 

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. opens with journal entries from Melisande Stokes, a linguist who taught at Harvard in the 21st century until she was recruited by D.O.D.O., the Department of Diachronic Operations.  Her task was to help with the translation of documents from a wide range of time periods and locations, with the purpose of tracing the decline of magic, but now she is stranded in nineteenth-century England.  As we learn, magic was used actively throughout human history until the mid-19th century, when it completely ceased.

D.O.D.O. developed a way to isolate the historical stream so that a witch could perform magic within an enclosed space called an ODEC (Ontic Decoherence Cavity).  The witch can send someone back in time, where they can manipulate events and then find a contemporary witch to send them back where they came from.  D.O.D.O. used this technique to shape history in subtle ways, sometimes with unexpected results, such as the military headquarters known as the Trapezoid suddenly being renamed (and reshaped) as the Pentagon.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O is all about time travel, magic, and--bureaucracy.  As D.O.D.O. grows in scope and effectiveness, Stephenson and Galland tell the story via journal entries, inter-office memos, reports, letters, e-mail chains, and other means.  Part of the fun of the book is seeing D.O.D.O. become a full-fledged department under military command, with personnel issues, funding requests, and office politics.  Example: a memo about ISO 9000 compliance, and the use of the word "witch" as "a violation of our Diversity Policy."  (FYI, the Policy on Official Jargon and Acronym Coinage has determined that MUON is the preferred title, for Multiple-Universe Operations Navigator.)

In one hilarious chain of events, a thirteenth century warrior comes to modern times.  He is particularly impressed by Wal-Mart.  He gets himself sent back to Viking days, where he composes, in the style of Norse epic verse, "The Lay of Walmart."  It goes on for several pages; here's a sample:

South face the glass gates; the fat fool
Northward led me, shouldering them aside
Greeting a guard, vested in blue,
Scarcely strength to stand had that old ogre.
. . . .
From there, to the west, lies all the food in the world.
North, a cornucopia of clothing, all colors.
Doubling back south, white witches
Doling out drugs, physicians philtres.

As Stephenson's readers know, he weaves complex plots, and while there may seem to be random diversions from the story, he and Galland bring it all together.  Of course when anyone, including the military, start messing with time travel, something is going to get botched up.  And when you recruit individuals who have magical powers, you have to anticipate that some of them may want more power for themselves. . . .

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is great fun to read and, I suspect, will be fun to read again and again.