The Big Time [Hardcover]

Fritz Leiber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1976

Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, then you've had hints of the Change War.

It's been going on for a billion years and it will last another billion or so. Up and down the timeline, the two sides--"Spiders" and "Snakes"--battle endlessly to change the future and the past. Our lives, our memories, are their battleground. And in the midst of the war is the Place, outside space and time, where Greta Forzane and the other Entertainers provide solace and r-&-r for tired time warriors.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) is best known as a fantasy writer, but his achievements and influence are also considerable in the horror and science fiction fields. One of his major SF works is the Change War series, about rival time-traveling armies locked in a bitter, age-old war for control of existence; the battles frequently alter the course of human history. The most important work of Leiber's Change War series is the Hugo Award-winning novel The Big Time, in which doctors, entertainers, and wounded soldiers find themselves treacherously trapped with an activated atomic bomb inside the Place, a room existing outside of space-time. It's not one of Leiber's strongest novels: the cutesy-girlish narrative voice is unconvincing, while the demands of describing time travel and time paradoxes inevitably strain the prose. But The Big Time is a tense, claustrophobic SF mystery, and possibly the ultimate locked-room whodunit.

In addition to the Hugo, Nebula, Derleth, Lovecraft, and World Fantasy Awards, Fritz Leiber received the Grand Master of Fantasy (Gandalf) Award, the Life Achievement Lovecraft Award, and the Grand Master Nebula Award. --Cynthia Ward --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"An extraordinary tour de force with no equal in the literature of science fiction." A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction

"I most urgently recommend this book to you . . . What the entrances, performances and exits of this little mostly human troupe accomplish is a statement about all wars, and all people." Algis Budrys
--A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Buccaneer Books (April 1, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0899685374
• ISBN-13: 978-0899685373
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #347,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strange, yet appealing, January 4, 2001

By 

Thradar (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big Time (Hardcover)

As I march my way through all the Hugo & Nebula winners I came upon this book. The only other Lieber works I've read have been the very likable Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series...a fantasy staple. The Big Time is definately an original piece of time travel fiction, yet there is actually no time travel involved in the book. The prose is light on narrative and very heavy on dialogue. I had little to work with in visualizing the surroundings (basically a large room) in which the characters interacted the entire time. Despite this, I did enjoy it for the most part; although once again I am left a little baffled by the ending (a la Babel-17 by Delany). As someone else pointed out (who I agree with) this book reads like a stage play, and could easily be turned into a strange, yet tense, psuedo-time travel suspense. It's a quick read. If you want to hit all the "classics" and can find a copy, go for it. If you're a casual sci-fi reader, I recommend you skip it.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Ordinary Time Travel Claptrap, August 11, 2000

By 

Peter A. Greene (Franklin, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big Time (Hardcover)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars time- space continium, March 6, 2000

By 

Human - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big Time (Hardcover)

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.