atmosphere of cynicism about the war's aims and causes is the revelation that one of its effects was to change history and cause an Axis victory in World War II. However devastating this development is to 20th century humanity, now doomed to live under the worldwide oppressive and genocidal rule of Nazi Germany, in the context of the overall Spider-Snake cosmic conflict, this change was incidental and of only marginal importance. The first few chapters establish the backstory, setting, amazing futuristic technology and characters. The main plot of the novel involves the discovery of a time bomb in the Recuperation Station, and the attempts to defuse the bomb and identify the saboteur, essentially a locked room mystery within a science fiction context. Reception Algis Budrys praised The Big Time (which he categorized as a play, not a novel) as evidence that Leiber was the only science fiction writer of his generation "who as a matter of course and conviction saw through the mores and circumstances which are now proving nonviable not only in commercial literature but in what we can call life as well", and a precursor to Roger Zelazny and Samuel R. Delany. In February 1968 he named the book the "Best Thing All Year". In 2012, it was selected for inclusion in the Library of America's two-volume compilation American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s. Influences Leiber's short story "Try and Change the Past", also from 1958, is set in the same universe. It features a New York man just recruited by the Snakes going AWOL and trying to change his own past, in which he was murdered by his wife, finding out that the universe resists all his efforts and is "conserving reality", and finally not having any choice but to go back to fight in the Time War. Poul Anderson develops the same basic theme of a time war between two powerful factions, who confront each other throughout time and use people of past periods as their soldiers, in the novel The Corridors of Time (1965). "The Big Time" was the primary influence for Misha Kolesoski's album Dreams of Spiders and Snakes (2016). References External links (Digital transcription of serialized version) Page scans of The Big Time as serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction'' in 1958, parts one and two, at the Internet Archive 1958 American novels 1958 science fiction novels American science fiction novels