"The Big Time" by Fritz Leiber is a science fiction novel published in 1958. Two mysterious factions wage an epic temporal conflict across all of history, recruiting soldiers from different eras and worlds to fight in the Change War. Inside a rest station outside normal spacetime, entertainers and wounded fighters gather between battles. When a critical device vanishes and an atomic bomb is armed, the staff and soldiers must confront questions of loyalty, survival, and whether their cosmic war serves any meaningful purpose. (This is an automatically generated summary.)