Cover art by Ed Emshweiler

The ability to travel in time is the foundation of many a science-fiction tale. Fritz Leiber here posits the ability to live outside of the normal flow of time familiar to us. In a bubble of separate reality known simply as "the Place," a crew of technicians and Entertainers provides R&R to soldiers in a trans-temporal war between two factions that both seek to reshape reality for their own ends.

These factions, known as "Snakes" and "Spiders," are never identified — nor are the realities they seek to establish. Leiber's novel gives us only a portrayal of the stresses the staff of the Place and the soldiers they support endure because of the war and their isolation. It is an isolation hard to imagine, for all have been plucked (read: copied) out of their timelines and exist as "Doublegangers" bereft of past or future. Their existence seems timeless, but it can end for anyone at any moment should the Change Winds come for them: instantly aging to a desiccated corpse, crumbling into dust, swept away and forgotten. So it resembles an Earthly war, where death is always imminent. It resembles an Earthly war in its goal as well: soldiers striving for aims they may not understand, but are committed to achieving — and away from the battles, letting their impulses run wild.

As well as from the Change Winds, the jeopardy in the tale comes from the clashing desires of the beings who come to the Place from various missions. Drawn from all times and places, a more eclectic bunch would be hard to imagine. Let me just say there's a nuke involved. At the very end of the tale, one of them provides what must suffice as a rationale for the entire Change War. You'll have to read the book to find that out.

The writing is good, and held my attention. However, I found the story disappointing because it doesn't really go anywhere; by the end, nothing substantial has changed.

A word about the cover: the woman wearing the axe at her belt — Kabysia Labrys, a warrior from Crete — is using the Minor Maintainer, a device that controls environmental conditions in the Place, to ramp up the gravity in the sector where the men are. The device is not sending out paralyzing rays, as the cover would suggest. Why is she doing that? It's another thing you'll have to read the book to find out.

Cover art by Ed Emshweiler

This collection of six tales is, in the tradition of Ace Double Novels, attached to the back of The Big Time in such a way that it is upside down with respect to the novel. (In computer printer terms, it can be said to have been flipped on its short edge.)

Three of the stories, those that occupy the center of the Table of Contents, have to do with the Change War that is the theme of The Big Time. Those stories are "Damnation Morning," "The Oldest Soldier," and "Try and Change the Past." Of these, "The Oldest Soldier" is the best. It vividly conveys the menace and foreboding that residents of the normal world would feel at the merest glimpse of combatants from that temporal conflict.

Of the other three, the longest is also the most gripping. It deals with the pitfalls of imposing tranquility on a population. Set apparently in California, it shows us the perfectly ordered community of Civil Service Knolls. There every house is well maintained, every lawn is tidily manicured, every street is kept free of trash. There are no bars, no massage parlors, no adult bookstores. The story describes it as "a sylvan monument to sane, civilized, progressive attitudes."

Reading the opening pages of the tale, I was reminded of "Another Pleasant Valley Sunday" (a song by the Monkees) and of the community shown in the Star Trek episode "Return of the Archons" where Landru imposes order and tranquility. But Civil Service Knolls is soon upset by the arrival of a lone prankster. Mayhem and widespread collapse result.

"The Number of the Beast" is not up to Leiber's usual quality; it is an exercise in numerology, basically. And "The Mind Spider" has Earth's only telepathic family suddenly beset by a powerful telepathic being imprisoned near the South Pole — a situation similar to that of "The Vault of the Beast" by van Vogt, who did it better.

If you pick up a copy of The Big Time and it happens to have this collection on the flip side, don't feel disappointed; none of the stories is horrible. They range from mediocre to good.

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This page was last modified on 20 September 2022.