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A review by funkyfreshwizardry
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
4.0
This was surprisingly good. I enjoyed myself with this book more than I have with any other vintage sci-fi I’ve read thus far. It tells a very human story, couched in an inhuman setting with unique worldbuilding concepts.
The Place is a pocket of reality within the Void, a gray nothingness that comprises the bulk of the Big Time. The Little Time is all our history, our present, our future, the earthly place where all beings are born and live. Some of us can become disconnected from the Little Time and thus enter the Big Time, which is outside of all that. You can enter the Big Time to time-travel around the Little Time, but you can’t time-travel through the Big Time. Make sense? Oh, and of course, two competing factions are using this ability to fight against one-another, constantly screwing up our Little Time in pursuit of war.
We hear about all this, but the story takes place in…well, the Place. This is a pocket of rest, recuperation, and entertainment within the Big Time, where Soldiers are sent to recover so they don’t crack, literally or figuratively. Our narrator is a woman named Greta, an Entertainer responsible for fixing up, wining, and dining visitors to this Place. We get to know her and the other employees as the story unfolds. What happens within the Place forces each of the characters to face their part in this weird world head-on. Because this story is not about an ordinary day in the Place - this is about the day when some visiting Soldiers cause a whole lot of drama.
I found the characters to be distinct and easy to keep straight, despite their number. And I enjoyed how they don’t all fit into tropey boxes. Despite some of the overdramatic and quirky dialogue choices, they still feel like plausibly real people. Their choices don’t always make sense, but somehow it makes sense that they don’t make sense? They’re all from different cultures and time periods, and some are even aliens. I found their occasional incomprehensibility additive rather than confusing.
This book holds up really well for its age and still feels fresh. It lacks most of the overt “women issues” that plague sci-fi (though it does have one or two misogyny snags, inevitably). The worldbuilding mostly makes sense, and interacts with character development in clever ways. And the narrative asks some interesting, big questions about time, our place in it, and what happens if a person goes outside of it. I was hooked even though it’s a short book.
I dock one star only for some dialogue sequences being too long (I suspect some of the people who did not enjoy this book got left behind in these parts), and our POV character is noticeably bland. These shortcomings did not diminish my enjoyment much. This is the first vintage sci-fi or fantasy I’ve read that I would wholeheartedly recommend to a modern reader.
The Place is a pocket of reality within the Void, a gray nothingness that comprises the bulk of the Big Time. The Little Time is all our history, our present, our future, the earthly place where all beings are born and live. Some of us can become disconnected from the Little Time and thus enter the Big Time, which is outside of all that. You can enter the Big Time to time-travel around the Little Time, but you can’t time-travel through the Big Time. Make sense? Oh, and of course, two competing factions are using this ability to fight against one-another, constantly screwing up our Little Time in pursuit of war.
We hear about all this, but the story takes place in…well, the Place. This is a pocket of rest, recuperation, and entertainment within the Big Time, where Soldiers are sent to recover so they don’t crack, literally or figuratively. Our narrator is a woman named Greta, an Entertainer responsible for fixing up, wining, and dining visitors to this Place. We get to know her and the other employees as the story unfolds. What happens within the Place forces each of the characters to face their part in this weird world head-on. Because this story is not about an ordinary day in the Place - this is about the day when some visiting Soldiers cause a whole lot of drama.
I found the characters to be distinct and easy to keep straight, despite their number. And I enjoyed how they don’t all fit into tropey boxes. Despite some of the overdramatic and quirky dialogue choices, they still feel like plausibly real people. Their choices don’t always make sense, but somehow it makes sense that they don’t make sense? They’re all from different cultures and time periods, and some are even aliens. I found their occasional incomprehensibility additive rather than confusing.
This book holds up really well for its age and still feels fresh. It lacks most of the overt “women issues” that plague sci-fi (though it does have one or two misogyny snags, inevitably). The worldbuilding mostly makes sense, and interacts with character development in clever ways. And the narrative asks some interesting, big questions about time, our place in it, and what happens if a person goes outside of it. I was hooked even though it’s a short book.
I dock one star only for some dialogue sequences being too long (I suspect some of the people who did not enjoy this book got left behind in these parts), and our POV character is noticeably bland. These shortcomings did not diminish my enjoyment much. This is the first vintage sci-fi or fantasy I’ve read that I would wholeheartedly recommend to a modern reader.