The Big Time

Well! This is a weird one. There's a whole rich backstory about two mysterious factions called the "Snakes" and "Spiders" that are fighting a crosstime "Change War" with the whole of history as their backdrop and dangerous dudes drawn from all eras, past and future as their soldiers. Each of them is simultaneously mounting some near-infinitude of missions to alter how it is/was/will be and put themselves in charge across a timestream that is trying to knit itself back together and preserve its logic even though one minute the Nazis are in Cleveland and the next the Horgons are on Glovax 7. But none of that intrudes here, not really; instead, we get a bunch of "Soldiers" on furlough and their "Entertainers" trying to soothe their show more screaming psyches and philosophizing and machinating against one another in their different ways to escape from under the thumb of their masters/cause death on a cosmic scale/have a rollicking Elizabethan adventure in outer space/punch out the guy who stole their lady/find out what's really going on here/etc. It all goes on in some kind of crazyphysics lounge at the end of the universe, and people embody Nietzschean and existential ideas in different ways and there is an a-bomb. All this in 135 pages. I understood about as much as I enjoyed, which was a reasonable amount I'd say. show less

1958 Hugo winner, and what an interesting surprise!

This is the Cure for the Common (modern) SF. Tired of the old rehashing of drawn-out plots and over-deep character explorations full of pathos, pathos, and more pathos? Then pick this one up. See the universes without being a Space Opera, enjoy the perks of touching all time without a time lord in sight. Drink your favorite alcohol and listen to your neighbor wax poetic. And oh yeah, don't get caught in the war across all Time. (The title of the book is kinda crappy. It's actually referring to the field of battle.)

So, this novel is about as far as you can get from modern SF.
It's laden heavily with a ton of interesting ideas and alternate reality sets and times thrown at you without show more explanation or depth, having a very quick progression of plot and and a stage as big as all time and all the spaces of an infinity of universes.

If that doesn't blow your mind, then good.

We're hanging out with the entertainment crew that services the space-time warriors that snipe big changes through history, a neutral zone that caters to the Snakes (one time-traveling faction) and the Spiders (another time traveling faction.) It's chaos, to say the least. Is it war, or is it really something else? No spoilers.

There's plenty to think about, of course. Wanna invert a huge pulsating brain or name drop the Comandant of Toronto or murder baby Einstein? It's fun as hell.

I got the impression that Heinlein's "All You Zombies" was a better Time Travel story, with more and deeper exploration of plot and character, but I'm also pretty sure that the two authors were playing with each other. Heinlein's story came out one year after this one won its Hugo. Fun fact: the 2014 movie Predestination was based on "All You Zombies".

BUT, Leiber's novel was NOT about going deep, but going really, really wide in an attempt to tackle a really big idea. What idea? Oh no. This is an easy and quick book, people. Enjoy it for yourself. :)

We zip here and there and everywhere, like a knee-jerk reaction to all the Golden-Age SF that had just come before. But Leiber takes all the old square-jawed heroes with all their can-do attitudes and amped them up to mind-blowing proportions, giving them an unlimited landscape, and then, for our "heroes" we're thrown into the minds of "normals" caught in the middle of it all.

Why is this the opposite of modern SF? Because it doesn't slow down to explore any single plotline or character in detail. So much happens so quickly that it's a delight and a blur and I feel like I need to sit down and deconstruct the living hell out of every paragraph and chortle at the wordplay and the thousands of alternate reality implications. There's SO MANY. :) It's like falling into Wonka's candy store.

Zip, zip, zip, zip. It kept a smile on my face and a snicker in my laugh for practically the entire novel. Even the late reveals reverse the fact that endless (literally) war is not quite as dark as we first thought. That immediately turns this novel into a comedy by the old traditions, and I feel like I've been needing something very light-hearted for a while, so this definitely fits the bill.

If you're getting the deep desire to have an idea-packed and an amazingly quick read, I'd absolutely recommend this novel. Fritz Leiber has such a light and clever voice! :) show less

Say you're about to die in a few minutes, maybe, like our narrator Greta Forzane, after ten minutes of being raped to death by soldiers of a Third Reich that goes from the salt mines of Siberia to the cornfields of Iowa. And then you are offered an opportunity to escape your fate - an opportunity no one ever refuses. Of course, you have to enroll with the Spiders or the Snakes, become a Demon in their eternal Change War, a vast cosmic struggle across millions of years to change history to ... well, no one is really sure what the war's point is. You just serve your side as a Soldier or an Entertainer.

Greta's an Entertainer, one of the staff in the Place, a zone outside of regular time and space, an R&R stop for the Soldiers back from show more missions to terminate the Roman Empire early, nuke Ancient Crete, or kidnap a baby Einstein. History is a stubborn, hard thing to change. And, if you succeed, there's always the blowback of the Change Winds which may you take you into nonexistence.

Part party girl, part song and dance trouper, part sex therapist and comfort woman, she has a thing for Sid, former contemporary of Shakespeare - when duty doesn't have her attending to Nazi soldier boyfriend Erich. Her co-workers are Beau, formerly of a Great South that never knew Grant's gunboats on the Mississippi, and Doc, a drunken, derelict medical officer, formerly of a Nazi occupied Czarist Russia. And then there's Maud from the 23rd Century and New Girl who seems destined to off herself in many versions of the early 20th century - until recruited.

Enter three soldiers - a Nazi, a Roman, and a casualty of Passchendaele - back from a botched mission. New Girl falls for the latter, a poet who starts suggesting something suspiciously like rebellion against their Spider masters. And then a distress call, a rescue mission for three other Soldiers - two of them aliens.

In 160 pages of story, Leiber creates and explains a world of Demons, Ghostgirls, Doublegangers, and Zombies, throws out a bunch of alternate histories, convincingly shows the psychology of those who are comfortable with the chaos of the Change War, and, ripped from normal lives, what they most miss.

Leiber puts his theatrical experience to good use. With only nine characters, one setting, and offstage action related in convincing, if sometimes poetic, dialogue, this is one classic that lives up to its billing. In fact, it's one of those rare science fiction classics that history and technological progress have not dated, not even a bit.

The book comes with an informative introduction by Leiber about the creation of the novel and the Change War series - though this story stands entirely on its own and an afterword by Robert Thurston on the theatrical elements of the novel. show less

The Change War has been going on for along time now, an eternal conflict of altering history on many planets between two groups called the Spiders and the Snakes. Greta is an "entertainer" for the Spiders, a hostess of sorts at an R&D station for change war soldiers. When the entire station is threatened with destruction... well, you'd think a lot of character would be revealed, but actually, you'd be wrong.

Perhaps this style of writing was revolutionary in the 60s (or the 50s), but Mr. Lieber's characters are cliches and not particularly sympathetic, if that's what they're meant to be. And attitudes towards women are very difficult to overlook.

It's never made clear what, exactly it is that Great does for the Spiders. Is she a warm show more fuzzy therapist/ friendly figure? A prostitute? One might argue that this ambiguity allows the character not to distract from the plot, but the plot isn't interesting enough to warrant this. The temporal war -- a radical concept in its day -- is kept distant, the plot revolving around the mystery of who planted a bomb in the station, and cut the station loose into the void outside of the universe. Making this dull is quite the accomplishment.

Fritz Lieber has a lot of fans, but based on this book, I'm not one of them. I finished The Big time because it was short and I did want to find out what happened -- parts of it are gripping, but the ending disappoints. show less

A Riff on Time, War, and Existence

Fritz Leiber was a man of many skills and trades, among them brilliant student who graduated from the University of Chicago, minor roles in theater and film (he was the child of Shakespearean actors), and writer. His novel The Big Time appeared first in Galaxy Magazine. Though having only appeared in the magazine, it won the 1958 Hugo for best science fiction novel. Later, in 1962, Ace Books published it in book form, and the Library of America has included in its classic science fiction volumes.

The Big Time is as much a philosophical query into the nature of life, the effects of perpetual war, external life, love, and cynicism about pretty much everything, as it is about time travel and the disruption show more of the time line. In the novel, Leiber introduces his Law of the Conservation of Reality, which states that changed time will eventually return to its forgone timeline, and that the only way to change time permanently is to effect many small changes in time over the course of the timeline. This is what the Change War, the backdrop for the novel, is all about. Two cosmic factions, the Spiders and the Snakes, wage war on an epic scale, across time and space, on all the inhabited planets, from the start of time to the end of it. For their troops, they resurrect people from all eras, team them up, and send them off on missions to change events. For example, we learn that the Nazis have won WWII and rule most of the world, including the U.S.

The novel itself transpires in a more finite space and time, a few hours in a way station know as The Place. It’s a combination recuperation field hospital and entertainment venue for soldiers finishing a mission and on their way to another. The story begins when three soldiers pass through the door and begin mingling with the staff, among them four women, one of whom serves as the narrator, Greta. Over the course of their hours together, they argue about war, about rebelling and trying to effect peace, and about just retiring and returning to a normal life. To sharpen the arguments and introduce a bit of urgency and theater, Leiber introduces an A-bomb into The Place and has one of the characters start it ticking, giving the occupants only thirty minutes to avoid oblivion.

As mentioned, Leiber was an intellect and Shakespearean and both show in this novel. The meditations prove weighty and the dialogues between characters not only are jammed with literary allusions, references, and palaver in the slang of the time, but also Shakespearean prose, German, and Latin. Perhaps, then, not for everybody, but definitely for sci-fi readers who like their imaginations stimulated and challenged, often all in the same sentence. show less

A Riff on Time, War, and Existence

Fritz Leiber was a man of many skills and trades, among them brilliant student who graduated from the University of Chicago, minor roles in theater and film (he was the child of Shakespearean actors), and writer. His novel The Big Time appeared first in Galaxy Magazine. Though having only appeared in the magazine, it won the 1958 Hugo for best science fiction novel. Later, in 1962, Ace Books published it in book form, and the Library of America has included in its classic science fiction volumes.

The Big Time is as much a philosophical query into the nature of life, the effects of perpetual war, external life, love, and cynicism about pretty much everything, as it is about time travel and the disruption show more of the time line. In the novel, Leiber introduces his Law of the Conservation of Reality, which states that changed time will eventually return to its forgone timeline, and that the only way to change time permanently is to effect many small changes in time over the course of the timeline. This is what the Change War, the backdrop for the novel, is all about. Two cosmic factions, the Spiders and the Snakes, wage war on an epic scale, across time and space, on all the inhabited planets, from the start of time to the end of it. For their troops, they resurrect people from all eras, team them up, and send them off on missions to change events. For example, we learn that the Nazis have won WWII and rule most of the world, including the U.S.

The novel itself transpires in a more finite space and time, a few hours in a way station know as The Place. It’s a combination recuperation field hospital and entertainment venue for soldiers finishing a mission and on their way to another. The story begins when three soldiers pass through the door and begin mingling with the staff, among them four women, one of whom serves as the narrator, Greta. Over the course of their hours together, they argue about war, about rebelling and trying to effect peace, and about just retiring and returning to a normal life. To sharpen the arguments and introduce a bit of urgency and theater, Leiber introduces an A-bomb into The Place and has one of the characters start it ticking, giving the occupants only thirty minutes to avoid oblivion.

As mentioned, Leiber was an intellect and Shakespearean and both show in this novel. The meditations prove weighty and the dialogues between characters not only are jammed with literary allusions, references, and palaver in the slang of the time, but also Shakespearean prose, German, and Latin. Perhaps, then, not for everybody, but definitely for sci-fi readers who like their imaginations stimulated and challenged, often all in the same sentence. show less

Soldiers from across Time fight in the endless Change War for their unseen masters the Spiders and Snakes. And when it all gets too much, they retire briefly to a Place outside space and time for some R&R. There, Entertainers like narrator Greta or Elizabethan actor Sidney look after their needs. But this time some radical Change War veterans, a nuclear bomb and getting cut off from the Big Time make for a most unrelaxing stopover.