The Big Time (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Fritz Leiber
- First Published: 1958
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—time travel
- Time of Work: Simultaneous past, present, and future
- Setting: The Place, a pocket of space-time existing separate from the cosmos
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: Future, Time travel, Mysteries, Entertaining or entertainers
- Locales: Mythical lands
The Plot
A short Hugo-winning novel, The Big Time benefits from employing a limited number of characters at a fixed place over a few hours of narrative time, as if adhering to the dramatic unities of place, action, and a much modified sense of time. Initially, the narrator provides exposition leading up to a mystery. He then attempts to solve the mystery and rescue the group from disaster. The story is told as if to inform or to forewarn a newcomer to the temporal context the novel describes. The events reveal a greater sense of the problems associated with altering...
[The entire page is 961 words long]
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