Big time

In the world of the novel, there is a “war of change” ( The Change War ), while the novel itself describes an episode of a war between two fractions of earthlings - “spiders” ( English Spiders ) and “snakes” ( English Snakes ), which are able to use to travel in time and space, the actions of which affect the state of the past and change the future of people. As a result, the war is being fought through a change in events in the past to create the necessary “situation” for each side of the situation. Who exactly leads the factions, the causes of the war and the conditions for victory in the novel are not disclosed.

All the events of the novel take place at the “Rehabilitation Station” ( Eng. Recuperation Station ), the place where soldiers recover from military operations. In this case, the main causes of treatment are mental problems that arise as a result of changes in time. The earth, namely, it undergoes most of the operations in which the inhabitants of this station participate, lives in “little time” ( English Little Time ), and this time changes. The station itself (like other military facilities, as well as soldiers and personnel) is in a bubble of time and space in The Endless Time ( English The Big Time ), for it has its own laws. Soldiers for the war of "change" are recruited at different time intervals - past and future, throughout the universe. The heroes of the novel are Amazon , Roman legionnaire , hussar , Wehrmacht soldier, American soldier, space paratrooper, as well as a satyr from Venus and a resident of the moon . They were taken away before their probable death, and to whom they served did not matter much.

The narration is conducted on behalf of Greta, a young girl who serves at the station, she was recruited during the First World War. Her profession is "entertainer" ( Eng. Entertainer ): something in between a nurse, a psychotherapist and a prostitute. A lot of information about the course of the war is transmitted through the stories of other characters, which sometimes occupy entire sections. From these stories one can learn that as a result of changes in the past, the Nazis won the Second World War, however, on the scale of the “war of change” this event is not considered too large.

The main plot is the discovery of an atomic bomb with a clockwork at the station, attempts to defuse it and find who delivered it.

First, " Big Time " was published in two issues of Galaxy Science Fiction (March - April 1958), illustrated by Virgil Finlay ( Eng. Virgil Finlay ). In the same year, the novel won the Hugo Award for Best Romance . In 1961, Ace Books published the novel in the form of a book (along with the collection of short stories in this universe, “The Spider of Thoughts and Other Stories” ^[2] ), and in 1976 a version was published hard cover. ^[3]

Algis Budris considered the novel one of the best science fiction novels of his time ^{[4] [5]} . In 2012, the novel was included in the collection " American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s " Library of America. ^[6]

The novel is translated into Italian ^[7] , Spanish ^[8] , Dutch, German, French, Portuguese ^[9] , Russian ^[10] , Polish ^[11] and a number of other languages.

• Roman in Russian
• The text "The Big Time" in the Gutenberg project
• Audiobook "The Big Time" at librivox.org
• “The Big Time” in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Unlimited Time in Galaxy Science Fiction , part one and part two , archived on the Internet Archive
• "The Big Time" on Goodreads