The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
From bestselling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world
When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for the rather large sum of money.
Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace — the world’s fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world “jams” the “frequencies” used by magic, and it’s up to Tristan to find out why.
And so the Department of Diachronic Operations — D.O.D.O. — gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive... and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial — and treacherous — nature of the human heart.
Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that characterize all of Neal Stephenson’s work and steeped with the down-to-earth warmth and humor of Nicole Galland’s storytelling style, this exciting and vividly realized work of science fiction will make you believe in the impossible, and take you to places — and times — beyond imagining.
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Neal Stephenson
In a literary landscape filled with genre walls and boundaries, Neal Stephenson has spent his entire career walking straight through them—sometimes with a sword, sometimes with a quantum computer, often with both. Whether he's dissecting cryptography during World War II or reimagining the architecture of a metaverse long before Silicon Valley caught up, his fiction doesn’t just explore the future, it interrogates the systems that shape it.
Born in Fort Meade, Maryland, and raised in a family steeped in science and engineering, Stephenson was surrounded early on by the kind of analytical thinking that would later permeate his fiction. He studied physics and geography at Boston University, a dual interest that seems almost inevitable in hindsight—his novels often chart the intersections of space, time, history, and human ambition with the precision of a scientist and the curiosity of a historian.
D.O.D.O.
In D.O.D.O., the lines between science and magic blur in an exhilarating tale that explores the intersection of history, technology, and the impossible. This ambitious series, co-created by Nicole Galland and renowned fantasy author Neal Stephenson, introduces readers to a world where magic is real, but its existence has been erased from history. What happens when this hidden world resurfaces, and the forgotten art of magic is rediscovered? The result is a mind-bending journey that seamlessly blends speculative fiction with historical intrigue.
D.O.D.O. consists of two books and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
