 I don't know where to begin with this one, really I don't. So the back time by Fritz Lieber. It won the Hugo for 1958, which was the third ever Hugo ever awarded to a novel. And it's probably the shortest Hugo award winner, it is definitely the shortest one I've read so far, but it might very well be the densest, where ideas are concerned. It's barely a novel in length in fact, more akin to a novella at something along the lines of 96 pages in some editions, 130 in others. But the framework it illustrates of a cosmic change war between two fashions, the spiders and the snakes is only a backdrop to a deeply personal story told from the perspective of Greta Forzane, an entertainer in the place, an oasis of peace and rest within the madness of this all-encompassing cosmic time conflict. Let me quote from it. I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star who also bears my first name, but I have a rough and ready charm of my own. That reference for the record I did not get. I needed, for my job is to nurse back to health and kid back to sanity, soldiers badly roughed up in the biggest war going. This war is a change war, war of time travellers. In fact our private names for being in this war is being on the big time. Our soldiers fight by going back to change the past or even ahead to change the future, in ways to help our side win the final victory a billion or more years from now. A long killing business, believe me. In the above description I gave you might begin to recall a rather recent novella that plays around with a similar war of cosmically temporal proportions, el mojta and glass tones. This is how you lose the time war. I never reviewed that one, even though I listened to the audiobook and greatly enjoyed it. I was also very very lost during the first third of that particular novella, but there is a little, there's very little place for comparison outside of this barebones framework. The lyrical nature of the recent novella is as far removed as possible from Lieber's pulpy prose, and very little romance is to be found. Lieber is a lot more interested in dialogue, crackling around the edges, producing conflict between entertainers and the soldiers, their nursing, to health. More likely mental than physical health, you know, if all things are to be laid bare. The very way that this is told adheres to the classical unities, those Aristotelian principles of action, time and place. So the cosmic theatre of war might be discussed, we're never allowed to study it from a perspective different than greatest. And entertainers are by definition kept from the front, which accounts for the unity of place. The set is the singular location I mentioned earlier, the place, defined easily enough that even an initiate in set design will have little trouble rendering it. Or at least I imagine so, although I am talking out of my house. Similarly, Lieber portrays the events in the book in real time, from start to finish. And the action of the piece is a conflict between the members of this cell of basically time warriors, time soldiers, whose chief question might as well be posed as what role should we continue to have in this endless, yet somehow worsening, war. There are good reasons to question, as in their attempt to win the war, both sides are tweaking history in merciless and monstrous ways. Here's one example. Despite its surest that's to thwart the snakes, it is all important that the West ultimately defeat the East. But what have they done to achieve this? I'll give you some beautiful examples. To stabilize power in the early Mediterranean world, they have built up Crete, the expense of Greece, making Athens a ghost city, Plato a trivial fabulist, and putting all Greek culture in a minor key. Not terrifying at all, especially to someone who finds ancient Greek culture near and dear to my interests. There are others, other examples that is. Despite this, wishing to make Rome powerful, but today they've helped Rome so much that she collapses in a blaze of German and party and invasions a few years after the death of Julius Caesar. The changing of history seems to have turned its very fabric, or rather the fabric of reality, see-through, and that troubles some of the soldiers and the entertainers alike. Others seem to be enjoying the ride well enough, so why don't we say a few words about them? Here, too, there is something almost Aristotelian about the novel. They're hardly illustrated as differing individuals so much as they are typified ones, examples of stock character. That perhaps comes part in parcel with a novel of this length, and it's not to say that characters don't come alive on the page. Only that they are representative of roles that you might be well familiar with already. The Nazi, for example, whose personal heaven is this insane, endless ride of the Valkyries, who thrives on the violence, and everything given him by this opportunity. What others view as perpetual hell, he views as viking heaven, a kind of insane, endless ride of the Valkyries like conflict, well, veterinarian in its scope. Shakespeare's contemporary is another one of these characters, speaking with all the thousand thieves that you'd expect. Of course, there's also the English poet whose high-mindedness recalls romantic notions and values who speaks against the war and of its horrible cost to humanity and seeks for an alternative. And more and more and more. It sounds promising, doesn't it? Yet there is a wall of exposition to begin with, whose dozen or so pages for some reason made it very, very difficult for me to get into this. It felt like my eyelids were made out of lead, and I must admit I was kind of impatient to move on. Then once things clicked, after those initial few chapters, I found myself freely invested in and I've read across the rest in one massive sitting, that's the kind of novel this is. You might struggle to get into it at first, but once you do, you have no trouble because it is that short, and it is gripping and the pulpy prose definitely helps. But yeah, once you break through those initial chapters, which seem simply intent and trowing one concept after another without ever taking the time to explore them in depth. Once that's done, the tension builds up at a constant pace, and if you're anything like me, you will have no trouble from that point on. You will struggle, at the end of the day, to put the big time down. This novel more than most that I have read deserves a cynic adaptation, and I believe that the author would have been more than happy to see just one such play performed on the stage. Tell me, does it sound like your cup of tea? If you enjoyed this video, please like it, share it with your friends, all those nerdy-nerdy folks who can't get enough out of books, and don't forget to leave a comment down below. Is there any book you would like me to read? Is there any Hugo Award winning novel you can't wait for me to get to? Let me know. And as always, I'm Philip Magnus, and I'll see you next time. Bye! I simply can't say bye in a normal way, can I?