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The Big Time

Fritz Leiber

Hugo 1958

Creative, original classic. How much does changing the past influences the present ­ even by reversing major events? For that matter, how much can we change the future by manipulating present events? Built around the quoted line from Tennyson, "Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world."

Themes and characters that influenced and inspired science fiction for decades­all the way up to the last Star Trek movie, "First Contact" which takes a middle ground attitude toward Leiber's "Law of the Conservation of Reality" and the more common view that changing something small in the past completely changes the future. Leiber's takes the more subtle view that time compensates for changes and moves back toward the same history despite changes in the past. Real change is a complex, multi-faceted affair.

Time travel and its influences, a perennial SF theme, gets in-depth analysis in The Big Time which gives one of the most intelligent and entertaining perspectives. Made believable in present terms and used as an analogy for cultural and personal evolution. Challenges our understanding of reality and offers tidbits of wisdom like, "Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight of the past's mistakes and the future's fears." Gives a greater sense of meaningfulness to the notion that may equally apply to the SF genre in general calling it "possibility binders­they can make all of what might be part of what is, and that is their evolutionary function."

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