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The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
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Moff
11/29/09

In reply to The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
Just a quick note:

Does Fritz Leiber not LOOK FUCKING AWESOME? Like, doesn't that portrait make you think: "That dude is gonna science-fiction the fuck outta me"?
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Grey_Area
11/29/09

@Moff: He really does. I am all a-tingle!
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Grey_Area
11/29/09

In reply to The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
Loving your Hugo posts, Moffie.
Have you ever read Leiber's 1968 A Spectre is Haunting Texas? Been out of print for too long but very worth hunting down. It too draws on his theatrical background. A Shakespearean actor from an orbital habitat foments a Marxist revolution in a North America now ruled by Texas. He was riffing on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society taken to comic extremes, but his picture of all-powerful anti-intellectual Good Ol' Boys seems eerily prescient.
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Edited by Grey_Area at 11/29/09 5:18 PM Grey_Area was starred Grey_Area was unstarred

Moff
11/29/09

@Grey_Area: Oooh, I am intrigued. A few weeks ago, I finally picked up a copy of the first Fafhrd & GM book, too, which I am excited to get to, should I ever have free time again before my eyes begin to fail.
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Grey_Area
11/29/09

@Moff: Should your eyes fail, just use sonar like I do.
EEEEEK EEEEK EEEEEK!
I use this method to read in dimly lit bars where of course I do all my literary criticism.
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Edited by Grey_Area at 11/29/09 9:29 PM Grey_Area was starred Grey_Area was unstarred

fyngyrz
11/29/09

In reply to The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
I also really liked the "conservation of reality" idea. The opposite of what most timeline change presumes. Very nice. Quite aside from enjoying SF works as full experiences, I always count it a win when I run into something very clever or insightful in very compact form.
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RyanF
11/29/09

In reply to The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
I can't say that I enjoyed this one. In fact, I think it's among my least favorite of the Hugos I've read (but at least not as bad as _They'd Rather Be Right_!). I just don't get the point. Locking people from various times and planets in a single room together and letting them have at each other for 150 pages is such a great idea. You'd expect an interesting discussion of the nature of history or humanity, and some in-depth character studies. Instead we get the politics of an off-stage "time war" in the vaguest and most jargon-heavy of terms.

If we're going to spend the novel on the Change War, I'd rather see it in action than read allusions to it. If we're not going to see it, I'd like to see a focus on character and dialog among a really odd mix of people. Instead, we get the worst of both worlds.

I enjoyed your review though, Moff. I just didn't see the Change War (as presented here) as all that interesting, and I didn't see the point of the book's strange format. I think Leiber actually crippled himself with his own rules here.
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Moff
11/29/09

@RyanF: Yeah, the story Leiber gives us isn't what you'd expect from the elements it's made up of -- I mean, it would not make a particularly great movie, I think. But the story will stick with me, for whatever reason, and I liked the end, when it gets into ideas of the Demons as possibility-binders, etc. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, though.
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KeithZG
11/29/09

In reply to The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
I don't know at what point you decided "let us blog about books that made a big impression on KeithZG during his childhood", but good choice ;)

I dunno, there's definitely good science fiction out there nowadays, but really, reminding me of "The Big Time" reminds me of when science fiction still had the guts to be Science Fiction rather than "Fiction, and we'll throw in Something to do with Science too". The fact that the next installment of this series is about something by James Blish just rubs it in, really.

I'd say more, but it'd be too "you kids! get off my lawn!" to be respectable . . . especially since I'm still in my 20s! What can I say, I read too much Asimov and Brunner in my childhood. Thinking of, dear gods, how powerful would a miniseries or a made-for-tv movie of The Wrong End of Time be today? Especially after so much of Brunner's dystopian predictions ended up true . . . I get shivers just thinking of it.

...or in other words, keep doing what you're doing ;)
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Austin Grossman
11/28/09

In reply to The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
I haven't thought about that the Change War in forever! Is it me or is Leiber kind of a forgotten man of SF/F literature? Because of his sexual politics, maybe? I suppose Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road was a tribute.
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Dr Emilio Lizardo
11/28/09

In reply to The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
Without rules, SF becomes fantasy. And not in a good way. Without rules, every resolution can be a deus ex machina. Since we are dealing with new worlds, it is important that we have rules that are explained so we can understand the importance of events. Every good SF book has rules. In the best books, they aren't just laid out for all to see, they are made apparent by the background. The rules may be physical or sociological but they must be consistent. Without rules, Niven's "Known Space" with technology controlled for the people's own good has much less impact. As you pointed out, the rules serve as a framework for whole series of stories. Again, in Niven's universe all crimes are capital crimes because organ transplants are easy and in demand. Asimov's robot stories were an excellent example of this. Asimov seemed to delight in finding loopholes to write new stories about.
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Edited by Dr Emilio Lizardo at 11/28/09 8:32 PM Dr Emilio Lizardo was starred

Guang
11/28/09

In reply to The Big Time Is a Mystery Morpheus Would Approve Of
I have this book filed under first of a series, but not sure if I've read it or not. Wikipedia has no further info - was this a trilogy or something like that?
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Dr Emilio Lizardo
11/28/09

@Guang: Check Lieber's bibliography on his Wikipedia page. It lists several Change War books and stories. Probably easiest to Ctrl-f and search for "Change."
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klondykekid
11/28/09

@Dr Emilio Lizardo: Besides The Big Time, the 7 short stories are collected in a volume called Changewar. There's a bit of autobiography (about 114 pages called "Not Much Disorder and Not so Early Sex") in another collection called The Ghost Light. These were all Ace books between 1982 and 1984.
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