Rules. Rules are what I keep coming back to as I think about this book, which won the Hugo in 1958. Is it fair to say that rules are more essential to science fiction than they are to other genres?

I mean, they're essential to any story, outside of outlandish, arty, experimental stuff (and even then, really). But you don't see romance fans or western fans or plain old regular fiction fans getting up in arms over whether the Millennium Falcon can do such-and-such, or whether zombies could really beat Galactus. You don't find Time Lords restricted to twelve regenerations in other genres, or pets you can't feed after midnight, or concerns about "canon." And I suppose that makes sense — rules are what science fact is about, too, and surely some of the same pleasure centers light up whether you're recalling the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition or how a real quark works.

Anyway, rules are what The Big Time lives and dies by. They're as crucial to its success as they are to its failure to have become something larger.

The book's first overarching success comes from circumventing the rules. (And isn't their circumventableness, like, the best part of rules? Nearly every one of Asimov's robot stories is predicated on that notion, anyway.) Leiber, the son of thespians, wrote The Big Time less as a novel per se and more as a play shaped like a novel. Almost all the action takes place in one room that you instinctively recognize as being about the size of a stage, and characters' entrances, exits, and movements across it are noticeably and elegantly choreographed. Plus, two of them speak in blank verse.

And (as io9 commenter Braak serendipitously pointed out this week) plays are subject to less rigorous standards of verisimilitude than, say, novels. So Leiber can get away with things — like skimpy character development — that he might not otherwise.

Most notably, for example, he has a couple who fall in love within minutes of meeting (technically, there's kind of a stalker-y thing going on there, but still, the romance is mutual and quick), and then the male half of it deciding rather abruptly to stage a revolution. It's all very sudden, and it should be jarring, but you automatically visualize it happening in front of you, as if you were in the audience, and you buy it.

Even the subject matter fits the theatrical style, involving as it does a small group of people wrestling with enormous, timeless questions. And they're literally timeless questions here: The cast are soldiers and support personnel fighting in the Change War, a conflict between two factions from the far future, the Spiders and the Snakes. The Spiders and Snakes muster their forces by pulling average people, from as far as a million years in the past and a million years in the future, out of their lives just before they die, bringing them into what's called the Change World, the zone beyond normal time and space. Then they send the recruits to different eras and places to conduct military actions, to change history.

There are, as you can imagine, a lot of rules about how it all works. The best is the law of the Conservation of Reality, which states that "when the past is changed, the future changes barely enough to adjust." It just feels true. Others get a little more complicated, and chief among Leiber's achievements is that he explains them clearly enough in a book that's only about 120 pages long, and has room left over to work them first into a mystery (that's the other genre of literature that thrives on rules) with a satisfying solution and second into a story that reaches a fairly profound conclusion.

He doesn't sacrifice the human element for artifice, either. Like the previous Hugo winner, The Big Time tells its story in the first person from the eyes of an entertainer — although rather than an actor, Greta Forzane is an escort whose job is to comfort and pleasure soldiers. I'm not sure you ever really get to know her — she's guarded, even inside her own head — but you do believe she's real, no qualification.

Given all of this (I mean, time travelers fighting an interplanetary war — and speaking in blank verse! — right?), the book seems like obvious fodder for the pop-culture machine. It's not, though, despite moments when the notion of warriors locked in an invisible struggle to determine the fate of humanity, governed by forces beyond their ken, may remind you of, like, Neo and Morpheus and Trinity or some other epic tale. It did me, anyway.

No, though there are sizable aspects to it, The Big Time is really a pretty small book. (And I mean that in a good way.) And frankly, Leiber's system of time travel probably is too complex to translate to the mainstream. But that's OK. This is still a haunting, multilayered, finely crafted work.

"Blogging the Hugos" appears every other weekend. In the next installment: A Case of Conscience, by James Blish, from 1959.

Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found here.

When Amazon.com's SF audiobooks imprint Audible Frontiers launched earlier this year, we were interested in the potential of something new to entertain us on our morning commutes. With the line now in its third month, we checked in with Audible's director of content, Steve Feldberg, to see whether it looks like there's a future in this whole "books in your ear" thing.

The Audible Frontiers imprint has been around for a couple of months now. What has the audience reaction been like so far?
We’ve gotten a good deal of positive response, and much of it centers on how Audible has really focused on expanding the number of SF&F books available in audio. In fact, that’s probably our biggest accomplishment so far – just increasing the selection.

Specifically, we’ve enjoyed great reviews for our productions of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series; Robert J. Sawyer’s novels, including the Hugo-winning Hominids (as well as the other books in his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy); Mike Resnick’s Starship series; Hugo-winning novellas by Connie Willis, Harry Turtledove, Joe Haldeman, Allen Steele, as well as Resnick; and sci-fi classics like Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal and Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time.

What was the basis for the creation of the imprint in the first place - Is Audible planning to create sub-stores for each literary genre, or is there something special about SF that demanded its own space (If you'll excuse the pun)?
There were two key factors. We’ve seen consistent growth in SF&F – yet we also heard from customers that they wished the selection were better. So it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out that we needed to improve the breadth and depth of our catalog.

Audible Frontiers is the biggest part of the strategy, but we have two other current initiatives that are highly relevant. First is our long-standing partnership with Harlequin, under which we produce 4-6 titles per month. These have consistently included fantasy titles by Maria V. Snyder, Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Armintrout, Gena Showalter, and other great authors. Second is our relatively new partnership with HarperCollins to produce some of their great SF&F titles. The first wave includes the Acorna’s Children series by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough; Star Strike by Ian Douglas; Hunter's Run by George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham; and Matt Ruff’s Bad Monkeys... The only minor distinction is that we don’t brand any of our co-produced titles as “Audible Frontiers”. The key point is that we’re looking at all aspects of SF & Fantasy – contemporary sci-fi, classic sci-fi, epic fantasy, paranormal fantasy, you name it.

How did Orson Scott Card come to be involved with the site?
Scott is, of course, a big best selling author and an icon in the field, and a special favorite among Audible listeners. But what was most important to us is that he’s an avid audiobook fan – and he really gets the value of the audiobook experience. So when we were looking for an author whose opinion would be most valued by Audible SF&F listeners, he was a natural choice. It all turned out to be pretty simple; we reached out, Scott agreed, and we were off to the races. What’s been most gratifying is that Scott takes the time to craft a detailed review of each “Selects” title and record it in audio. That really brings his reviews to life for our listeners.

What's planned for the future of the imprint? More original works? More guest columnists? Any surprises coming up?
We have dozens more titles coming this year under the Audible Frontiers imprint. For me, the most exciting current project is that we’re bringing Fritz Leiber’s entire, classic swords-and-sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to audio for the first time. But even better than that – Neil Gaiman has recorded exclusive introductions to each of the seven books. Gaiman is a huge Leiber fan, which truly comes out in his introductions. The Guest Editor program will continue to be a monthly feature. Robert J. Sawyer is our Editor for July, S.M. Stirling is on board for August, and we’ll go from there!

Past that, over the next few months we’ll be offering great contemporary SF&F like David Drake’s complete RCN/Daniel Leary series; Kay Kenyon’s critically-acclaimed The Entire and the Rose novels; Allen Steele’s Coyote trilogy; Sharon Shinn’s Twelve Houses series, E.E. Knight’s complete Vampire Earth series; and lots more. Plus, we’ll be bringing into audio for the first time classic award winners by Clifford D. Simak (CITY and WAY STATION); Roger Zelazny (LORD OF LIGHT); and John Varley (TITAN, WIZARD, DEMON and more). And we’ve got a few surprises that we can’t quite reveal yet!

Image courtesy Employee Lounge

[Audible Frontiers]