The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
"The Big Time" is a short novel that won a Hugo Award, exploring themes of time travel and the consequences of altering history. The narrative focuses on a small group of characters stationed at a Recuperation Station during an ongoing conflict known as the Change War. The protagonist, Greta Forsane, along with fellow characters Sid, Doc, Maud, Lilli, and Beau, play roles that involve caring for soldiers from various historical periods who have been resurrected to participate in the war. The plot thickens when several soldiers, including a Nazi, a Roman, and a Briton, are scheduled to arrive at the station.
As the story unfolds, a surprise distress call introduces additional characters, including a Cretian warrior maiden and a tentacled creature from the distant past, who bring with them a tactical atomic bomb. The tension escalates when the Major Maintainer, a crucial piece of technology for time manipulation, is stolen, trapping the characters in a void. The narrative shifts to a detective-like quest to recover the Maintainer, leading to revelations about the characters' motivations and the nature of the conflict. Ultimately, the story concludes with a poignant reflection on the shared struggles of both sides in the war. "The Big Time" combines elements of science fiction and mystery, inviting readers to contemplate the intricacies of time and human actions.
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The Big Time
First published: 1961 (serial form, Galaxy Science Fiction, 1958)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—time travel
Time of work: Simultaneous past, present, and future
Locale: The Place, a pocket of space-time existing separate from the cosmos
The Plot
A short Hugo-winning novel, The Big Time benefits from employing a limited number of characters at a fixed place over a few hours of narrative time, as if adhering to the dramatic unities of place, action, and a much modified sense of time. Initially, the narrator provides exposition leading up to a mystery. He then attempts to solve the mystery and rescue the group from disaster. The story is told as if to inform or to forewarn a newcomer to the temporal context the novel describes. The events reveal a greater sense of the problems associated with altering history.
Greta Forsane, an entertainer, tells of an experience at the Recuperation Station that reveals to her much about herself. The station is also manned by Sid, the officer in charge; Doc, a drunken veteran; Maud, an older party girl; Lilli, a recent addition; and Beau, second in command. They work for the Spiders, their side in the Change War. Their duties include healing wounded soldiers, operating the machinery that allows pickup and delivery of soldiers, and entertaining soldiers while they rest and recuperate. According to a previous plan, they pick up three soldiers on a scheduled arrival: Eric, a Nazi; Mark, a Roman; and Bruce, a Briton from the early 1900’s. All characters are people who were resurrected from different times and places and brought into The Big Time. The arriving soldiers were engaged in a conflict in Saint Petersburg in 1883, attempting to kidnap an infant Albert Einstein back from their opponents, the Snakes.
Bruce, a recent recruit who is frustrated by the unsettling effects of changing the past, rants about being issued two left-handed gloves, a problem that an infatuated Lilli rectifies by using a surgical inverter. A surprise distress call adds Kaby, a mannish Cretian warrior maiden; Illi, a tentacled Lunan from the distant past; and Sevensee, a satyr from the distant future. They carry a tactical atomic bomb in a locked box, intending to use it against their adversaries in Romanized Egypt. After Bruce delivers a rebellious speech urging the assemblage to quit the war, the primary space-time mechanism, the Major Maintainer, is mysteriously stolen and the group is trapped in a void.
The novel then turns toward detective fiction, as they all search for the machine and the culprit who has hidden it. The question becomes urgent when Eric triggers a thirty-minute clock on the atomic bomb. A Minor Maintainer, which allows environmental changes within the station, is fought over, grabbed by Kaby, and used to coerce revelation. Lilli has used the surgical inverter to camouflage the Major Maintainer as an odd sculpture in the art gallery in a bid to follow Bruce’s plea to stop the madness of the Change War. Bruce stops the bomb once it is returned to The Big Time. The novel ends with a return to previous conditions and a greater awareness of the similarity of the Spiders and Snakes.