| Description: |
|
Product Description
The true forms or identities of the Spiders and the Snakes, how those nicknames were chosen, or whether they are in any way descriptive are all, likewise, unknown. New soldiers, entertainers, and medical staff are recruited by existing Change War participants from various places and times: Cretan Amazons, Roman legionnaires, eight-tentacled Lunans (natives of Earth's moon before it was rendered uninhabitable through warfare 1 Ga ago), Hussars, Wehrmacht Landsers, Venusian satyrs (recruited from Venus 1 Ga in the future), American GIs, Space Commandos, and soldiers from the armies of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Stalin may find themselves fighting side-by-side or on opposing sides. Likewise, medical staff and entertainers are inducted into the temporal war to provide medical treatment, rest, and relaxation for injured and weary combatants. Within the context of the story, the Universe as we know it runs on the Little Time and the Change War combatants and their facilities (places such as Field Hospitals, Express Rooms, Recuperation Stations, and Entertainment Spots), located within artificially-created bubbles of spacetime outside of the Universe, run on the Big Time, described metaphorically by the narrator as a train traveling through the Little Time's countryside. Combat operations occur when Soldiers venture into a time and place in the Little Time on orders from their superiors. The action of the story occurs in a human-staffed Spider rest and relaxation base. Adding to the atmosphere of cynicism about the war's aims and causes is the revelation that one of its effects was to change history and cause an Axis victory in World War II. However devastating to 20th Century humanity, doomed to live under the world-wide oppressive and genocidal rule of Nazi Germany, in the context of the overall Spider-Snake cosmic conflict, this change was incidental and of only marginal importance.
|
