You know that scene from the fourth mini-movie of Futurama where they make fun of feminists (kind of) and show the ages long epic battle between two opposing forces and when they get right down to it, it’s not clear who is who and who is right and who is wrong?
This novel plays upon that very idea. It’s a great novelistic trope that shows up from time to time in books and tv and video games. Futurama, of course, but also it’s the whole mythos of Assassin’s Creed games with their Templars versus Assassins, and it’s so very well done in the first game, being completely immersed in the history and it fades over time.
Here, it’s done with Snakes and Spiders — two long time, eternal foes. But with time travel!
This is a bizarre! novel. It’s half written in an odd colloquial dialect that cobbled together from the various time periods represented within the warring factions including Elizabethan England, Nazi Germany, future societies, the Civil War, etc etc etc. And it’s an early time travel book (outside of The Time Machine and Connecticut Yankee) but it really explores time travel as a philosophical concept, and not just as a cautionary idea.
I also happened to find it incredibly frustrating and difficult to connect with for me personally. I wanted more of it too. So it’s the Groucho Marx paradox — the portions are too small and the food is terrible. But the book is weirdly and divisively executed and its too short!
(photo: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Time-Fritz-Leiber/dp/0312890788/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=the+big+time&qid=1552147180&s=books&sr=1-4)