My Read-Through of the Hugos: 1958

I’ve almost completed my read-through of the top science fiction books of all time and was casting about for something else to do. I decided that reading through the list of Hugo award winners and nominees wasn’t a bad way to spend my time.

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber (Winner/My Winner [default])- Grade: A-
Leiber’s idea here is super awesome. Two factions are sending time traveling armies throughout, er, time to battle it out every-when. That’s the bare bones of the idea, and I have to say I thought it was completely awesome. “You don’t know about the Change War, but it’s influencing your lives all the time and maybe you’ve had hints of it without realizing” (chapter 1). So this Change War is going on all around you and I. We may not know it, but perhaps that firefighter who saved a child in a burning building was really one of the Spiders coming back through time to ensure the child survived–or perhaps the arsonist was a Snake sent back to ensure the child didn’t live. Nevertheless, in the here and now, all we know is what we know. It’s a startlingly all-inclusive concept that doesn’t happen often even in speculative fiction. It makes everything new in a way that can influence how you look at happenings. It’s like the “glitch in the Matrix”–whenever I have deja vu I always think about it. But a great concept does not a classic make. Leiber has a strong plot to go along with the concept, though some of the characters fall a bit flat and the dialogue is stilted at times. I truly wish there were many, many more books following this idea, because it made time travel relevant and interesting.

Links

J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!

My Read-Through of the Hugos- Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.

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SDG.