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Title: The Big Time
Author: Fritz Leiber
Narrator: Suzanne Toren
Format: Unabridged
Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
Language: English
Release date: 04-21-08
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 107 votes
Genres: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi: Classic
Publisher's Summary:
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 and 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.
Fritz Leiber was one of the most important sci-fi and fantasy writers of the 20th century. The Big Time, which won a Hugo Award for Best Novel, is his most famous SF novel.
Members Reviews:
Big Time takes a long time
I picked this up because Orson Scott Card recommended it. It is nothing like an OSC book. This could have been a great short story but just didn’t know when to quit.
too long to get nowhere
Lots of ideas but no finishing point. The story just fades away with no satisfactory conclusion.
Unique SciFi Novel (Hugo Award Winner) hampered...
What did you love best about The Big Time?
Brilliant and unique story told through dialogue like a stage play. Captures unity of place, time, and theme. Mandatory read for a true science fiction fan
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Big Time?
When a character describes her resurrection into The Big Time.
What three words best describe Suzanne Torens performance?
Poor Male Voices.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Anytime Greta (main character) describes her death during the Nazi overthrow of Chicago in the 1950s.
Any additional comments?
Essential reading, but maybe not essential listening. But if you can handle poor male voices from a female narrator, everything else is excellent.
If "Night Hawks" were outside time and space...
It's good to visit a book I read as a kid still stand up.
There's a collection of lost souls, people cut out of the timeline to fight the Change War, for ancient, unknowable generals called the Spiders, scraping for advantage over billions of years of altering history. They are colourful characters - the bright quirky, cynical people who often set a background scene - no true heroes - both the entertainers and staff of a Recuperation Station, and some soldiers come in from the cold. And then someone comes in with an atomic bomb...
It feels a lot like a stage play - most of the characters get a chance to make a big speech, and there are a lot of minor and tensions and interpersonal feuds inside the big conflict.
I like Suzanne Toren's reading of it a great deal - she has a sassy alto that sounds like Greta's voice always did in my head (except for her version of Bruce. He sounds like a scruffy Australian and, no. Just no.)
All in all, it's a great listen if you want something bright and world-weary, with no true answers at the end. And sometimes that's what I want :-)
"There's a demon inside me that always wishes to live."
A classic novel that hasn't aged well
"The Big Time" hasn't aged well. On the plus side, the novel does create suspense, and I found myself interested in aspects of the characters.
