The Big Time

Author: Fritz Leiber

This short novel introduced an endless war between two time travelling races known, for reasons that no one can now remember, as the Snakes and the Spiders. They fight their war by changing the outcome of historic events, which is why Leiber called it the Change War. The foot soldiers in this war, human or alien, can be plucked from any moment in history. In a bubble outside time, a small group of these soldiers are gathered, not really knowing who is on the same side or who is on the other side, not really knowing which side might be good and which bad, or if it even matters any more. Having been disconnected from their own time, they have no real stake in history anyway, so when we learn that a recent skirmish has changed the outcome of the Second World War the horror for all those now caught under totalitarianism is seen to be of little concern in the grand scheme of things. Why it's on the list: The Big Time won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Later, Poul Anderson would create his own time war series, and other writers like John Brunner would write about time police, but it was here that the whole idea was set in motion.