Rating: 
Summary: Beyond Ordinary Time Travel Claptrap
Review: A book that deals with time travel in a way beyond anything I've seen before or since. Leiber sees time travel ability as a step in the development of the species, and puts that little philosophical gem into this tight little piece. Not quite a novel (it really does read like a stage play) this actually ends up as a bit of a whodunnit.Characters put the next stage of human development in the context of ordinary human foibles and frailties, and as always Leiber is able to slip in some big ideas without adding slack to the plot. Lord knows there are lots of authors who could have ladeled on a hundred more pages of lard. Yes, if your idea of a time travel story is one more adventure of Biff Beefwhacker battling it out with ancient giant ratbeasts, then this will disappoint. If you think the time travel episodes of Star Trek make perfect sense, this will probably hurt your head. But if you want a tightly written, thoughtful, taut, tense, small scale adventure with large scale ideas underneath, this is your book.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond Ordinary Time Travel Claptrap
Review: A book that deals with time travel in a way beyond anything I've seen before or since. Leiber sees time travel ability as a step in the development of the species, and puts that little philosophical gem into this tight little piece. Not quite a novel (it really does read like a stage play) this actually ends up as a bit of a whodunnit. Characters put the next stage of human development in the context of ordinary human foibles and frailties, and as always Leiber is able to slip in some big ideas without adding slack to the plot. Lord knows there are lots of authors who could have ladeled on a hundred more pages of lard. Yes, if your idea of a time travel story is one more adventure of Biff Beefwhacker battling it out with ancient giant ratbeasts, then this will disappoint. If you think the time travel episodes of Star Trek make perfect sense, this will probably hurt your head. But if you want a tightly written, thoughtful, taut, tense, small scale adventure with large scale ideas underneath, this is your book.
Rating: 
Summary: Strange, yet appealing
Review: As I march my way through all the Hugo & Nebula winners I came upon this book. The only other Lieber works I've read have been the very likable Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series...a fantasy staple. The Big Time is definately an original piece of time travel fiction, yet there is actually no time travel involved in the book. The prose is light on narrative and very heavy on dialogue. I had little to work with in visualizing the surroundings (basically a large room) in which the characters interacted the entire time. Despite this, I did enjoy it for the most part; although once again I am left a little baffled by the ending (a la Babel-17 by Delany). As someone else pointed out (who I agree with) this book reads like a stage play, and could easily be turned into a strange, yet tense, psuedo-time travel suspense. It's a quick read. If you want to hit all the "classics" and can find a copy, go for it. If you're a casual sci-fi reader, I recommend you skip it.
Rating:
Summary: Strange, yet appealing
Review: As I march my way through all the Hugo & Nebula winners I came upon this book. The only other Lieber works I've read have been the very likable Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series...a fantasy staple. The Big Time is definately an original piece of time travel fiction, yet there is actually no time travel involved in the book. The prose is light on narrative and very heavy on dialogue. I had little to work with in visualizing the surroundings (basically a large room) in which the characters interacted the entire time. Despite this, I did enjoy it for the most part; although once again I am left a little baffled by the ending (a la Babel-17 by Delany). As someone else pointed out (who I agree with) this book reads like a stage play, and could easily be turned into a strange, yet tense, psuedo-time travel suspense. It's a quick read. If you want to hit all the "classics" and can find a copy, go for it. If you're a casual sci-fi reader, I recommend you skip it.
Rating: 
Summary: I couldn't finish it
Review: I have one big criteria for my fiction: I have to care about the characters, at least one of them. I didn't and so I couldn't finish the book even though I'm a big fan of the "time travel" problem.
Rating:
Summary: full of surprises
Review: I read recently in an interview with Robert Zemeckis that the modern moviegoer does not like surprises. That is why the preivews today cover all of the major plot points, show all of the best special effects, and tell all of the best jokes. This book is full of unexpected plot twists, so if you are one of those who do not like surprises, skip it. But if you want to read one of the best sf novels ever written, buy it.
Rating:
Summary: time- space continium
Review: It looks like every respectful science fiction writer at one point or another wrote a book on time travel. This one is by far the most original one I have read. The novel is short(about 135 pages) and it is written like a play. There is a war going on between the Spiders and Snakes and they use humans to fight it. So they take all these dead people from different time periods, ressurrect them and send them to war. Why it is fought, for what reasons, the answers are there. But to understand them, people look at themselves and the way the human society is developing. The book is very slow paced, however it is short, so the reader should not have any problems getting through it.
Rating:
Summary: A Stage in the Middle of the Void
Review: Spiders and Snakes and A-Bombs to bake! Fritz once again proves that he could handle almost any medium, any subject with this wild tale of a time war between these two S&S organizations (and the SS is deliberate). A war that stretches from 100 million years in our past to at least as far in the future - but all the action of this tale takes place in a very confined space known simply as The Place, isolated from the Change Winds that continually blow in from the Void. A Place where time-warriors go for some rest and recuperation from the stresses of fighting and a continually changing past and future, staffed by some rather odd individuals. There's Sid, nominally in charge, a 16th century Englishman, and Greta, who died both in 1929 and in 1955 in Hitler's Greater Chicago. Then there's Maud, everybody's idea of a grandmother, Doc, who normally staggers about in extreme inebriation, and Lilli, nurse and good-time girl from WWI. Now throw in Erich, recruited from Hitler's army, Bruce, an early 20th century Englishman, a octopoid Lunarian from 100 million years ago, a satyr from far in the future, thrown into the Place at the end of their mission, and a couple of Ghost Girls just to liven up the party. Add one A-bomb, courtesy of rescuing a failed attack mission, and a gadget that cuts off the Place from everything - not just normal time, but even Change time and the physical universe. This is the stage setting - and it does read very much like a play (Fritz was no stranger to the theater). And from these materials Leiber constructs a fascinating set characters sharply illuminated by stress, both from the Change War and internally, as the A-bomb is triggered to go off in half an hour. Each of the characters manages to present a different perspective on life, love, war and peace, and the purpose of intelligent entities, a discourse that gets wrapped up in something of a locked room mystery story, and is enfolded by very appropriate quotes from some of the great poets and philosophers of the world. The society of these Change War denizens is sharply evoked as almost a side-discourse to the main story, a society that is rich and complex, and invites comparison to Asimov's The End of Eternity's rather sterile and compartmentalized one. There is more meat packed into the slim bones of this work than many works four times its size manage to enfold. A riveting tale, with suspense, drama, mystery, and an overarching structure that will make you think twice (and then perhaps again): "Familiar with infinite universe sheaths and open-ended postulate systems?" -a Heinlein quote used for the last chapter. Then everything is possible, and everything has already happened. And you are caught in the middle. This book (which clocks in at just about 35,000 words - only a novella under today's standards) won the Hugo Award for best novel of 1958, and it deserved it. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Rating: 
Summary: "Big" Doesn't Mean A "Good" Time
Review: The Big Time suggested such a wonderful, creative idea that it was hard to resist. However, in practice the book was tedious, the characters were not well developed and some of the curiosities Leiber aroused were never fully addressed. As odd as it sounds, the feeling of the book is very much like the setting in Cabaret - a group of people waiting to see how a war is going work out. Even down to the German phrases that are muttered. Was Leiber a fan of musicals? The concept probably makes this worth the read but its a hard book to get through. The 130 pages seem double their length upon reflection.
Rating:
Summary: "Big" Doesn't Mean A "Good" Time
Review: The Big Time suggested such a wonderful, creative idea that it was hard to resist. However, in practice the book was tedious, the characters were not well developed and some of the curiosities Leiber aroused were never fully addressed. As odd as it sounds, the feeling of the book is very much like the setting in Cabaret - a group of people waiting to see how a war is going work out. Even down to the German phrases that are muttered. Was Leiber a fan of musicals? The concept probably makes this worth the read but its a hard book to get through. The 130 pages seem double their length upon reflection.
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