Science Fiction & Fantasy Award Winning Book Group discussion

Welcome to the discussion of the The Big Time by Fritz Leiber, 1958 winner of the Hugo Award!

For everyone who's staying inside, it's available completely free to download on Gutenberg.

This is a spoiler thread, so drop in and let us know what you think when you've read it.

If Fritz Leiber was a woman he certainly hid it well! He was pretty active in fandom, and friends with lots of other SF writers.

I like this strong opinion though! You've got me intrigued now to see how I feel about the narration and sexual politics. :D

Allen wrote: " An anonymous omniscient who doesn't put itself into the picture or the story isn't purely a story, it's just a discourse."

So, I'm reading it now and I'm not sure what you meant by this? The narration is standard first person. The main character, Greta, isn't omiscient (unless I've totally lost the plot!).

Anyway, I am quite enjoying it, but at nearly a third of the way through, it isn't clear where this is going? Wandering around is a good way to put it. There's not much happening yet, but a lot of chat and histrionics.

It's a strange mix of New Wave and Golden Age. I have mixed feelings about the playing with language. On the one hand I find Greta's voice quite aggravating, Sid's Elizabethan English is kinda fun, and I absolutely loved Kaby giving her account of the battle entirely in iambic pentameter.

Downloaded this Wed night and read 12% in about ten minutes. This might be a novella nowadays?

I grew up reading Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Some of the first fantasy that I ever read. This . . . is not that! Weird so far.

Yes, it's very short and very weird. And yet, I still felt like it took quite a while for anything to happen.

At the 25% mark and nothing much has happened yet. Not sure about the style as there have been a couple of instances where I wasn't sure which character was speaking.

The most interesting part so far was Greta talking about the Change winds. While demons are supposed to be free from the effects of the Time War they worry that a mood change might be an after effect rather than a simple mood change. Also how can they be sure that they remain the same person if their past has been altered? Are their memories still real.

I can't help but compare this to This Is How You Lose the Time War which I just read last month. Red v Blue and Spiders v Snakes.

Nothing much happens until 50% at least, I'd say.

Honestly, I'm not sure that the SF time travel aspect has been really thought out - part of the reason why it feels more New Wavey to me - at one point the characters can remember multiple different timelines and pasts and futures, and yet there is a 'now' which is constantly changing because they're changing before and after.

Reminds me of that popular Dr Who quote: 'It's wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.'

At about the 60% mark and I'm not enjoying this. The characters feel flat, nothing much has happened and the writing often feels like a word salad. The maintainer has just disappeared (the big one, not the small one) and evidently the Ghostgirls have perished, although it is possible that two of them took off with the maintainer. Huh. I'll probably finish this weekend.

I feel like it was a good concept, frustratingly executed. Especially in length; it either needed some heavy editing to make it a good short story or a lot more thought to make it a worthwhile novel.

This is one of those times where I look at the four and five star reviews and think 'I wish I had read that book 'cause we sure can't be talking about the same book'. Usually even when I don't like a book I can see what other people appreciate about it but I see very little here. The characters were flat, the plot was simplistic at best and the writing was often confusing. I thought some of the thoughts about time travel were interesting but when we got to the end and Illy's little diatribe/explanation about what was going on I was just ready to walk away.

Yeah, I have to agree, this isn't a great book.

The plot would've been much better if it had centered the 'disappearing maintainer' mystery better. It should've vanished sooner, and there should've been better clues laid so that the reader could play along: red herrings, unearthed secrets, all the stuff that makes mystery stories into fun puzzles.

Flat characters: I think I mostly found them unbelievable. Like, when they find out that there's a nuclear bomb and everyone immediately has hysterics - but these people are military or military-adjacent, so it seems odd for them to respond so stupidly.

I found the girls quite unbelievable too because Leiber was telling not showing. Greta keeps going on about how the girls are a sort of cross between pyschologists, therapists, entertainers, nurses caterers, mothers... etc... but we never see any of them acting like professionals. All their actions are party-girl and drama-queen stuff. They're just hookers. The only entertainment on offer seems to be getting drunk around a piano!

I know it's a cliche to complain about sexist representation in Golden Age SF, but I gotta say this was pretty typical of the time.

The time war stuff had so much potential to be interesting. I felt the same way as when I reached Illy's explanation. I felt like: 'This is the idea that you should've been exploring through the whole story. Not tacking on the end!'.

Hi, first time in this group and pretty much first time reading a science fiction book. And boy was it a disappointment haha. I have to agree with most of what it is said here, but I want to point out what I thought was the worst (never a good sign if you have to highlight the bad aspects of something):

Practically nothing changes from begining to end of the story. Some relations are shaken, but nothing interesting.

(I don't know if this is something typical of old SF) Why is the author telling us all throughout the story about everything involved in the war, the other life beings, etc, and the most complex piece of machinery is an atomic bomb. If you take out the non-humans, this story could have taken place in a bunker in WWII. I kind of wanted some actual science fiction and got nothing.

And last, as someone said before, the writing is horrible. Not only because sometimes you don't know who is talking, but when you do know, you can find whole paragraphs without a single period and 10-word sentences with 3 or 4 explanations. Not sure if the word is explanation, I mean when there is a hyphen and a sentence is put inside another.

Anyways, I like being out of my comfort zone, so I will be joining the July book as well.

Hi César, welcome to the group!

César wrote: "Practically nothing changes from begining to end of the story. Some relations are shaken, but nothing interesting."

Yes, you're right. Some character development, but nothing really very interesting because they're not well-written enough. Some information about the time war at the end, but not enough to justify the entire book. A resolution for the 'missing maintainer mystery', but not really enough tension in the mystery to make the resolution satisfying. It felt like the book couldn't decide which mark it was aiming for and ended up missing them all.

César wrote: "If you take out the non-humans, this story could have taken place in a bunker in WWII."
Haha! I hadn't thought of that but it's very true!

César wrote: "Not sure if the word is explanation
Think it might just be phrase?

César wrote: Hi, first time in this group and pretty much first time reading a science fiction book.

Wow, this is not one that I would recommend as someone's first SF book. I did enjoy your thoughts and I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of this month's book. Hopefully it is a little more enjoyable for you!

Nick wrote: I know it's a cliche to complain about sexist representation in Golden Age SF . . .

I'm too lazy to go back and find the actual passage(s), but Greta mentioned once or twice that her boyfriend had that look on his face that he gets when he wants to hit her but she loves him anyway. And one of the soldiers was accused of arguing like a woman. As you say it's expected but sometimes it's worse than others. It was around the time when Greta was describing her job that I had the premonition that I probably wasn't going to like this one.