Influences
Leiber's short story "Try and change the past", also from 1958, is set in the same universe. It features a New York man just recruited by the Snakes going AWOL and trying to change his personal past in which he was murdered by his wife, finding out that the universe resists all his efforts and "conserving reality" in various improbable ways, and finally not having any choice but going back to fight in the Time War.
During 1965, Poul Anderson developed the same theme, a time war fought between two powerful factions who confront each other throughout time and use people of past periods as their soldiers, in the story "The Corridors of Time".
Read more about this topic: The Big Time
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)
“Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on in everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.”
—Hope Edelman (20th century)