Join us as we discuss the Hugo Award winner for 1958: Fritz Lieber's The Big Time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Time_(novel)

You can find the whole book at The Internet Archive.

Host: Christine D. Baker, a historian who lives in Vancouver, BC. You can find her at @klaxoncomms.com‬ on Bluesky or follow what she's reading at her website: https://klaxoncomms.com/reading/

This month's guest is Nora Spurling of Leaf It To Us, where they take plants out of the background and talk about that fascinating group that's so essential to us as humans. In addition, Nora is also fantastic at literary analysis and a big speculative fiction fan!

From about 2:53-18:41, Christine is recapping the book, which has A LOT of spoilers. The rest of the episode isn't spoiler free, but that section goes through the plot in detail.

Some things mentioned in the episode:

• Nora mentioned Lieber's short stories related to The Big Time: The Mind Spider and Other Stories
• Robert Graves, poet and translator of ancient Greek
• Keftians, which Christine calls a fairly niche historical reference
• Robert Heinlein
• John W. Campbell
• Jungian ideas of gender, mentioned by Nora
• Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses during World War II by Meghan K. Winchell (2015)
• I think that I (Christine) was wrong, they probably did distribute condoms during WWII: https://hekint.org/2017/01/22/put-a-helmet-on-your-privates-because-theyre-going-to-see-some-action-the-history-of-condoms-in-the-military/
• Hugo Girl Podcast on The Big Time
• Judith Merril

I did eventually go back and find Dave.

Transcript.