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The Big Time Paperback – March 7, 2001

by Fritz Leiber (Author)
3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 264 ratings
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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.

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  1. Print length
    128 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    March 7, 2001
  4. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.31 x 8.5 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0274901919
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0312890780
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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

About the Author

Fritz Leiber, who died in 1992, was one of the most important SF and fantasy writers of the century. The Big Time is his most famous SF novel. "[His] awards for fantasy included the 1975 Grand Master of Fantasy Award, the 1976 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the 1981 Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, 6 Hugos, 4 Nebulas, and about 20 other awards.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0312890788
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orb Books; First Edition (March 7, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0274901919
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312890780
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.31 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 264 ratings

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  1. PDS 4 Books

    PDS 4 Books

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  2. David Groce

    David Groce

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    David Groce writes and speaks with passion and imagination that springs from a lifetime of adventure, hard work, and a life well lived. As a firm Christian, truth begins with God’s word and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that calls us all to love God and love others and to give our very best in all we do.

    David and his wife are the parents of two and treasure their time together living, laughing, and loving. From their daily routine, to their avid church involvement, and even to their far-flung adventures, the Groces know how to make the most of every moment.

    David is a practicing Attorney and Counselor at law, serving the varied needs of small business owners, including sales, mergers and acquisitions, estate planning, real estate law, tax planning, and tax preparation. Small-business owners embody the rugged individualism and determination that makes the American Dream come true, and David loves contributing to their success.

    Outside of family, church, and work, David occasionally finds himself afield hunting, fishing, motorcycling, and exploring the glory of the Great Outdoors.

    Countless teachers, instructors, and professors have poured into David’s life and helped him earn his Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude from Oklahoma Baptist University, Master of Taxation and Juris Doctor from Baylor University, and a Second Degree Black Belt in American Karate. He feels he was blessed beyond measure by their skills and their wisdom, which he carries with him wherever he goes—along with a flashlight and pocket knife.

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Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars
3.6 out of 5
264 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Elliot
5.0 out of 5 stars The Change War
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2011
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Fritz Leiber wrote a number of short science fiction stories about the "Change War," but this was his only novel on that theme. It won the Hugo Award for Best SF novel of 1958.

In the Change War stories, two enemies, called "The Spiders" and "The Snakes," are engaged in a vast war, which has been going on for a billion years and may go on for another billion, with battles throughout the universe. The battles are fought, in part, by going back (or forward) in time, to change the outcome of a historic event and therefore warp the path of history so as to lead to the eventual victory of one side or the other. Soldiers recruited for the fight can be Roman gladiators, 15th century Hussars, Nazi soldiers, or even extraterrestials.

Although the scope of the Change War takes in all of space and time, Leiber daringly wrote this as a very short novel (probably only about 100 pages or so in printed text) and set it in a single room over the course of only a few hours, with characters entering and exiting as if in a play. Despite the short length and limited physical and temporal scope of the novel, the plot takes any number of twists and turns, and the story deals with complex themes of fate, loyalty, war and peace, and existentialism. No one knows what the "Spiders" and "Snakes" really are, or what the war is actually about; history has been changed so many times by the warring factions that no one can be sure what reality is any more. Thus, the book is both an exciting piece of science fiction and a genuinely profound meditation on the human condition. Leiber's penchant for word play is also evident, and the story is full of literary and historical allusions. A short read, but very rewarding.
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Adman
4.0 out of 5 stars I wish all 52 year old SF novels were as fresh as this one
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2009
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Go back to 1957 and try to understand a SF writer.

You are obliged by publishers to have these ridiculous book covers, usually girls in mini skirts blowing humanoid aliens to smithereens, the exact opposite of that cool Amazon cover you 're looking at.

WW II is only 12 years in the past, and somewhere in the same country you live in, Ginsberg's Howl is going through an obscenity trial.

If this is your background, which it is, The Big Time should be considered a hell of a novel. OK, Asimov's End of Eternity with a similar (but not that similar) concept came out 2 years earlier. And yes, it does read like a play. So what? Fritz Leiber gives us, in less than 150 pages, a fine cocktail of claustrophobia, ethics, philosophy, mystery and weird characters that has stood the test of time extremely well. In fact, one wonders how a "Big Change" (term in the novel for changes in history after time travel operations) that would liberate Leiber from the 1957's world and make him write, say, 50 years later, would benefit this little book. As it is, 4 stars and a special place in the pantheon of time travel novels.
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Mec
3.0 out of 5 stars Didn't pull me in
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2012
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Start with the title. The title is cool: a colloquial expression suffused with fresh meaning in an SF context. Unhappily, the body of the novel didn't deliver.

This is a war novel. The main battle scenes are all off-stage. They don't grab me. Better is Starship Troopers which starts in media res in a combat drop. Similarly, the protagonist doesn't live through the crucial moments of her life, resurrection into the Big Time: she recapitulates them.

I also didn't buy the future army's organization into fighters and entertainers.

The actual crisis in the novella is appealing, and the gimmick is worthwhile. There's one scene with the alien overlords that really stands out.

The resolution, though, left me lukewarm.

Also, the Project Gutenberg version has illustrations, but the Kindle version doesn't.

A lot of people liked this story enough to earn it a Hugo. Not for me, though.
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Karl Janssen
2.0 out of 5 stars There is such a thing as too weird
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2015
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A war is underway to determine the fate of the universe. Both sides use time travel to change the course of historical events to suit their own ends. These opposing powers, known only as the Spiders and Snakes, exist outside of our known time-space continuum, and thus are able to move freely throughout space and time as we know it. They recruit soldiers and agents by plucking people out of their mortal existences in regular time and offering them a sort of conditional immortality as spatial-temporal nomads if they fight in this universal conflict known as the Change War. Outside of our universe exists an isolated pocket of space-time that serves as a recuperation station (kind of like a USO center) for the Spider soldiers. A motley crew of characters end up together at this facility, including a Nazi commandant, a Roman legionnaire, a Civil War soldier, an ancient Greek amazon, a prehistoric moon creature, and a Venusian satyr. Though they’ve all come to this way station for rest and relaxation, they soon find themselves faced with a predicament possibly even more perilous than the war that rages outside.

Fritz Leiber’s novel The Big Time was originally published in the March and April 1958 issues of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine. It won the Hugo Award that year for best novel. I have an interest in time travel literature, particularly from the pulp fiction era. Given the acclaim this book has received, I approached it with optimistic enthusiasm but was sorely disappointed. The Big Time hasn’t aged well, and it serves as an example of what’s wrong with a lot of old-school sci-fi.

The novel is narrated by Greta Forzane, an “entertainer” at the station, whose duties seem similar to those of a dance-hall girl in an old Western saloon. She tells the story with a slang-peppered rapid-fire delivery that recalls the style of vintage hard-boiled detective novels. Each of the various visitors to the station speaks with the peculiar accent of his original time and place, though all are up on the latest hipster slang. No matter where or when they’re from, however, each eventually breaks into a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy that reads as if it were lifted from a Virginia Woolf novel. All this unnecessary verbosity soon becomes quite annoying and tedious. It seems like Leiber may have been going for an effect similar to beat poetry, but it ends up sounding like a schizophrenic Robin Williams comedy routine. In addition, though the scientific concepts he envisions in this novel are quite interesting, Leiber doesn’t do himself any favors with the terms he uses to describe them. Spiders and Snakes? Really? That’s the best you could come up with? The players in the war are divided into different categories with inappropriate supernatural names—demons, zombies, ghosts—none of which are ever satisfactorily explained. Change War, Change Winds, Change World—it all sounds rather kitschy and infantile.

At about the halfway point, the novel turns into a mystery story, and not a very good one. The resolution of the puzzle hinges on a pseudo-scientific concept that was previously concealed from the reader, so it feels like a cheat. The whole novel is kind of like that. Leiber just makes up new rules as he goes along. Every time you think you know how things work in this fictional universe, he introduces some new device or Change phenomenon that alters the possibilities. That’s not creative; that’s just annoying, and kind of lazy. The idea of the Change War, fought by forces from beyond time and space, is a good one, but Leiber himself doesn’t take his own brainchild seriously enough, and the result is one messy, silly, and frustrating book.
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Andres Pedraza
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent classic sci-fi
Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2020
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Probably the first Leiber story I ever read, a good 40 years ago. It holds up perfectly over time. Well worth revisiting. The ideas were far ahead if its time, and the entire genre owes Fritz a huge debt.
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Top reviews from other countries

Mick Kelly, author
3.0 out of 5 stars Revisiting a classic SF book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2016
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I first read this book when I was a teenager -some time ago! I was inspired to re-read it by reading Iain Banks' 'Transition' which is about a similar subject - what happens when different groups in possession of time-travelling ability decide to change the past?

Written in 1958, Fritz Leiber's book certainly stands the test of time (no pun intended), but also shows the marks of having been written in the 1950s. The action takes place in a bubble outside of the real world, where time-travelling soldiers come to recuperate. It is part brothel, part saloon, part philosophical cafe - a kind of non-stop party, where the heroine is one of the hostesses.

It covers interesting and provoking moral dilemmas about the cruelty and tragedy of war and the seeming necessity for it. I suppose the book is really about World War II, but the addition of the ability to change history adds a new dimension as the soldiers destroy or promote civilisations that were dear to them, and destroy their own history.

A good book and worth a read. I have given it 3 stars rather than 4 because science fiction of this vintage is sometimes hard to read in our current age as the gadgets and technology look as up-to-date as a black and white Flash Gordon film. But it's a good book and will reward you for reading it.

Now - back to 'Transition'.
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A.C. Temple
5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative and timeless
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2020
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I thoroughly enjoyed this short story. It has hardly dated at all. The ideas are clever and the language was a joy to read.
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S. Naomi Scott
4.0 out of 5 stars One hell of a read, deserving of four and half stars.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 5, 2019
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There's a war taking place, between the forces of the Spiders and the Snakes, that is changing history around us and stretching the fabric of reality to breaking point. This is the Change War, and this short novel tells the story of one small part of that war and how it affects the participants involved.

The narrative takes place in The Place, a bubble of reality drifting through the Void outside the cosmos. This is where Soldiers come to recuperate and heal, where they're tended to by Entertainers whose main role is take the soldiers' minds off the horrors they may have encountered in their many battles. The story itself is told to us by Greta, one of the Entertainers, and begins with the arrival of three battle-weary Soldiers, comprising a German officer from WWII, a British tommy from WWI and a legate from the Roman Legions.

The first few chapters are primarily about setting the scene and introducing us to the weirdness of the Change War and its technology. Once the background has been given a new set of travellers arrives with a dormant atomic bomb and the story really takes off. There's a stirring speech about bringing peace to the many corners of the Change War, accusations of treason and mutiny, growing conflict between groups of Soldiers and Entertainers, and a developing love interest between Soldier Bruce (the tommy above) and Entertainer Lili (aka the new girl). Just as things look like they're spiralling completely out of control and as sides are being chosen, the McGuffin that tethers The Place to reality (known as the Major Maintainer) is stolen and everyone has to come to terms with the realisation they'll never be able to leave again. And that's when the German officer, Erich, decides to arm the aforementioned atomic bomb, starting a thirty-minute countdown in which the thief has the choice of returning the Maintainer or dying with everyone else.

Essentially, this is a very well-paced and well-written locked room story with science fiction trimmings. Leiber peppers the early chapters with small, subtle clues related to the mystery of the stolen Maintainer, most of them so subtle you don't realise they're clues until the novel is all but finished. To distract the reader from figuring out the solution for themselves, he throws in one conflict after another, having the characters swapping and changing allegiances every other chapter. Through Greta's narrative he asks us to consider every angle of not just the principle mystery, but also the irrationality of the Change War and by extension every other, smaller war. In this, Leiber is a master storyteller, entertaining us with what should in essence be a simple whodunnit while giving us plenty of literary meat to chew on while we enjoy the performance.

When it was first serialised in Galaxy Science Fiction back in 1958 The Big Time won itself a Hugo for Best Novel, only the fourth ever book to earn that distinction, and in my opinion it really did deserve it. Even compared to the many, many genre books that have come after it, it's still one hell of a read, and deserves the four and a half stars I'm giving it.
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Richard Alibon
3.0 out of 5 stars Clever Idea Spoiled by Poor Plot Development
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 14, 2016
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It's with some temerity that I criticise Fritz Leiber, but while the concept was very clever, the plot development was so slow it couldn't maintain my interest.
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