Roundworld is in trouble again, and this time it looks fatal. Having created it
in the first place, the wizards of Unseen University feel vaguely responsible fo
r its safety. They know the creatures who lived there escaped the impending Big
Freeze by inventing the space elevator - they even intervened to rid the planet
of a plague of elves, who attempted to divert humanity onto a different time tra
ck.
But now it's all gone wrong - Victorian England has stagnated and the pac
e of progress would embarrass a limping snail. Unless something drastic is done,
there won't be time for anyone to invent spaceflight and the human race will be
turned into ice-pops. Why, though, did history come adrift? Was it Sir Arthur N
ightingale's dismal book about natural selection? Or was it the devastating resp
onse by an obscure country vicar called Charles Darwin, whose bestselling "Theol
ogy of Species" made it impossible to refute the divine design of living creatur
es? Either way, it's no easy task to change history, as the wizards discover to
their cost.
