Behold the Man
Nebula winner and the New Wave's most notorious provocation: time-travel paradox as theology, handled with a seriousness that outlasted the scandal.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is The Big Time about?
The Change War rages up and down history between the Spiders and the Snakes, each side resurrecting the dead as soldiers and rewriting the past out from under the present. The Big Time never leaves the Place: a rest-and-recreation station outside time, staffed by entertainer Greta Forzane, where a handful of soldiers and comforters are locked in with an activated atomic bomb and a missing inverter. A time-war epic staged as a single-set theatrical thriller — Leiber's stagecraft inheritance in its purest form, complete with monologues to the audience.
Why it matters
Hugo winner (1958). The Change War concept — history as contested, editable territory — feeds every time-war story since, This Is How You Lose the Time War included.
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