Fritz Leiber

While the Change War rages on up and down the timeline, weary warriors periodically retreat to the Place for R&R, in a new edition of the classic, Hugo Award-winning novel. Reprint.

The Big Time

A war rages beyond space and time in this Hugo Award–winning “extraordinary tour de force” from the acclaimed Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy (A Reader’s Guide to Science Fiction). Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) may be best known as a fantasy writer, but he published widely and successfully in the horror and science fiction fields. One of his major SF creations is the Change War, a series of stories and short novels about rival time-traveling forces locked in a bitter, ages-long struggle for control of the human universe where battles alter history and then change it again until there is no certainty about what might once have happened. The most notable work of the 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. Leiber creates a tense, claustrophobic SF mystery, and a brilliant, unique 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.

Kelsey Lynn

(4/63) In my Hugo Read-Through
       The Big Time by Fritz Leiber won the fourth Hugo Award for novel in 1958. It’s my fourth stop on my read-through and so far, my least favorite.
         This book... frustrated me to no end, I was extremely disappointed and the back is hilariously wrong at it's description.

         For those who haven't read my reviews, I'm very rambling and don't always have a clear path in my thoughts, however it's my honest rant style opinion of the book, so hopefully someone will appreciate it.

         If you want my quick response, without the rambles that make no sense, it's this: This book was just about people in a room, therefore the author should have taken more care in his characters, they were all vacant and unrealistic, completely unbelievable and ultimately completely forgettable, he had too many and developed none of them. It was a frustrating read, and made me grumpy.

        Ok now my rant; 

  "A superior adventure-mystery about the strangely assorted crew of men and women, snatched out of their lives by emissaries from the far future, who fight and scheme to change the structure of time and history." -P. Schuyler Miller, Analog.

         This is the description on the back of the 1961 Ace publication of this book. I don't know P.Schuyler Miller, and I sure as heck don't know what book he read, cause it wasn't this one. If by a a superior adventure-mystery he means a bunch of characters sitting in a room getting grumpy at each other, and the mystery is solved at the end by the author introducing a machine that wasn't mentioned once throughout the whole book, therefore making the main characters "aha!" moment completely unconnectable too, then yes, this is a SUPERIOR Adventure-Mystery.
         There is no adventure in this book, there is barely any mystery, and not one that you can try and deduce in anyway. There are barely characters.

        This book winning a Hugo surprises me, and honestly worries me about my future read. I thought I was in the clear when I liked They'd Rather be Right the book that's notorious for being the "Worst" Hugo winner. How can people possibly read both of these and say that one was bad?
         Technically this is well written, as in the way it was written, and it was a quick easy read, but by no means (to me, and my opinion of books) is this a good book. Fritz Leiber sets up this interesting Change-War, a war that is fought by editing and changing historical events in the past, present and future. A broken and endless war, cause if both sides can manipulate time it'll just go on forever. Time Travel is tricky business, and honestly a book about time-travel is difficult to do well. What surprises me, is that the time-travel isn't what messed this book up. 
         This book is told completely through a group arguing in a room. No joke, a bunch of characters in a room, just arguing. So I turned on my "character-based drama" brain, and prepped myself for not a lot of excitement but something more character focused. The thing is the characters in this... were awfully developed and written. The story is told from the point of view of I believe she's 23, but a 20+ year old girl, which it's painfully obvious Leiber never was, authors can write from the perspective of another gender, but he cannot, at all. She was vacant, emotionless, ditzy, ignorant and dull. She had no opinions, sided with whoever was talking, and added absolutely nothing to the story. Also casually talked about her Nazi lover abusing her, very casually. So then there is him Erich, the hot-headed ex-nazi, whose entire purpose was just to put a wrench in things. There were two ETs, a Alien from the Moon (from thousands of years in the past) and a Satyr from thousands of years in the future, however these characters were obviously here to try and make the author look like he thought of some original characters from other time periods, to drill in the idea that this war spans our entire time line, however they had like 5 lines of dialogue each. 
         The main character is an entertainer, and her and her band of fellow entertainers are meant to, well entertain, soldiers on break from battles. Her fellow entertainers are from different time periods, which can only be deduced from either her thinking it, pointing out their clothes, or the authors attempts at their dialogue being different. Then there are the soldiers that are visiting, a group of three I believe, and then the unexpected soldiers, another group of three.
 
        I'm generalizing this to make a point. He puts so many characters in this room, in this short book, that none of them except maybe two get more than 5 lines of dialogue. They are all underdeveloped and honestly completely forgettable. 
 He tried to do some cool characters from across time, but was lazy about it. Also was obviously not creative enough to have a personality that wasn't straight out of the 50s, every guy was dismissive of women, and them talking and them doing things, and thought all they wanted was to ensnare men, regardless of the time period the man came from he saw women this way. Also every woman as soon as she was left to her own devises wanted to make babies.
I usually don't care about this, and would write it off to when this book was written. But the two Hugo's prior to this didn't treat women this way.
 The one strong female, Kaby was forgotten almost as soon as she arrived; she had some dialogue then reappeared at the end. 

         To top it off, the characters thoughts and interactions didn't make any sense. The character Lili (a recent addition to the entertainers) meets Bruce (a poet and soldier) who was from her same time period and she had had a crush on and within an hour was calling him her Fiancé, and they both were trying to run off together. The whole book was just those two being selfish and making choices for everyone else and then, in the end, they aren't even together anymore! This all happens in like a 2hr span! It's insane! Completely unbelievable. Then there's Erich who when no one agreed with him tried to nuke the place.

I don't know. It was frustrating. It left an annoying taste in my mouth.
In Conclusion
I really, really, really did not like this book. From beginning to end, I was frustrated and waiting for the book to happen. I’m ultimately surprised this won an award, and am not terribly excited to read his other winner. I think I’d be more interested in reading his horror, as he is sometimes affiliated with Lovecraft, one of my favorite authors.

The Big Time

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