Three Men in a Boat a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, replaced by the 1880s craze for boating as a leisure activity. Following the overwhelming success of "Three Men in a Boat", Jerome later published a sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, titled "Three Men on the Bummel" (also known as "Three Men on Wheels", 1900). The story begins by introducing George, Harris, Jerome (always referred to as "J."), and Jerome's dog, named Montmorency. The men are spending an evening in J.'s room, smoking
To Say Nothing of the Dog in the dedication: "To Robert A. Heinlein, Who, in "Have Space Suit—Will Travel", first introduced me to Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog"." Ned Henry is a time traveler in 1940 studying Coventry Cathedral after the Coventry Blitz of World War II. He is specifically searching for the location of the "Bishop's bird stump", a MacGuffin that isn't defined by the narrator. The narrator shows confusion explained by "time-lag", the time-travel-induced form of jet lag. He returns unsuccessfully to his time, 2057, at Oxford University. The Bishop's bird stump is needed for