The Big Time

Spiders and Snakes and A-Bombs to bake! Fritz once again proves that he could handle almost any medium, any subject with this wild tale of a time war between these two S & S organizations (and the SS is deliberate). A war that stretches from 100 million years in our past to at least as far in the future - but all the action of this tale takes place in a very confined space known simply as The Place, isolated from the Change Winds that continually blow in from the Void. A Place where time-warriors go for some rest and recuperation from the stresses of fighting and a continually changing past and future, staffed by some rather odd individuals. There's Sid, nominally in charge, a 16th century Englishman, and Greta, who died both in 1929 and in 1955 in Hitler's Greater Chicago. Then there's Maud, everybody's idea of a grandmother, Doc, who normally staggers about in extreme inebriation, and Lilli, nurse and good-time girl from WWI. Now throw in Erich, recruited from Hitler's army, Bruce, an early 20th century Englishman, a octopoid Lunarian from 100 million years ago, a satyr from far in the future, thrown into the Place at the end of their mission, and a couple of Ghost Girls just to liven up the party. Add one A-bomb, courtesy of rescuing a failed attack mission, and a gadget that cuts off the Place from everything - not just normal time, but even Change time and the physical universe. This is the stage setting - and it does read very much like a play (Fritz was no stranger to the theater). And from these materials Leiber constructs a fascinating set characters sharply illuminated by stress, both from the Change War and internally, as the A-bomb is triggered to go off in half an hour. Each of the characters manages to present a different perspective on life, love, war and peace, and the purpose of intelligent entities, a discourse that gets wrapped up in something of a locked room mystery story, and is enfolded by very appropriate quotes from some of the great poets and philosophers of the world. The society of these Change War denizens is sharply evoked as almost a side-discourse to the main story, a society that is rich and complex, and invites comparison to Asimov's The End of Eternity's rather sterile and compartmentalized one. There is more meat packed into the slim bones of this work than many works four times its size manage to enfold. A riveting tale, with suspense, drama, mystery, and an overarching structure that will make you think twice (and then perhaps again): "Familiar with infinite universe sheaths and open-ended postulate systems?" -a Heinlein quote used for the last chapter. Then everything is possible, and everything has already happened. And you are caught in the middle. This book (which clocks in at just about 35,000 words - only a novella under today's standards) won the Hugo Award for best novel of 1958, and it deserved it.--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

A book that deals with time travel in a way beyond anything I've seen before or since. Leiber sees time travel ability as a step in the development of the species, and puts that little philosophical gem into this tight little piece. Not quite a novel (it really does read like a stage play) this actually ends up as a bit of a whodunnit.Characters put the next stage of human development in the context of ordinary human foibles and frailties, and as always Leiber is able to slip in some big ideas without adding slack to the plot. Lord knows there are lots of authors who could have ladeled on a hundred more pages of lard.Yes, if your idea of a time travel story is one more adventure of Biff Beefwhacker battling it out with ancient giant ratbeasts, then this will disappoint. If you think the time travel episodes of Star Trek make perfect sense, this will probably hurt your head. But if you want a tightly written, thoughtful, taut, tense, small scale adventure with large scale ideas underneath, this is your book.

It looks like every respectful science fiction writer at one point or another wrote a book on time travel. This one is by far the most original one I have read. The novel is short(about 135 pages) and it is written like a play. There is a war going on between the Spiders and Snakes and they use humans to fight it. So they take all these dead people from different time periods, ressurrect them and send them to war. Why it is fought, for what reasons, the answers are there. But to understand them, people look at themselves and the way the human society is developing. The book is very slow paced, however it is short, so the reader should not have any problems getting through it.

This book took me completely by surprise. Fritz Leiber kept me consumed in this book by writing some very original dialogue for his characters. For example, Greta Forzane, the lead character and narrator of the story, has such a delightful way of speaking that she kept me riveted throughout the entire book. It is also one of those novels that leads the reader to the most logical conclusion; then gives an even better ending then you could hope for. Fritz Leiber's "The Big Time" will remain one of my all time favorite novels.

I first came across The Big Time as an inclusion in the compilation book Ship Of Shadows, a hard to get library copy. That was in early 1998, and I was delighted to be able to purchase the recently republished story by itself.Like all of Fritz Leiber's work the writing is supremely articulate and the story telling carefully, and craftily constructed, holding the reader from start to finish.The main character twenty-nine and party girl Greta Forzane, takes us through events sited in an R & R centre for battling time travellers who find themselves becalmed on The Big Time along with a counting down Atomic bomb. A book which will need careful reading to get the whole picture, but well worth it; and for that great Gertrude Steinism: 'you can't time travel through the time you time travel in when you time travel.'For the price I would have liked to to get a dust cover. But whatever, writng this good is worth the shortfall in packaging.