Try and Change the Past by Fritz Leiber Episode #370

Fritz Leiber | May 6, 2025

Try and Change the Past by Fritz Leiber Episode #370
Fritz Leiber

TRY AND CHANGE THE PAST

Episode #370 · Written by Fritz Leiber · Narrated by Scott Miller

A freshly resurrected recruit thinks he can cheat destiny by slipping back into his own past to “fix” the night everything went wrong. But when he meddles with the timeline, he discovers just how fiercely the universe defends reality itself.

In Try and Change the Past, Fritz Leiber takes time-travel storytelling and flips it on its head. The narrator, a soldier in the vast and secretive Change War, recounts the cautionary tale of a freshly resurrected recruit who decides to bend the rules. Given access to the time-traveling Dispatching Room, the recruit seizes the chance to slip back into his personal past—the messy, humiliating night of his death. All he wants is a better outcome and a better life. But tampering with the timeline is nothing like the stories suggest. The continuum resists. Patterns hold. And reality snaps back in ways both startling and darkly ironic.

Leiber brings enormous imagination and sly humor to the story, weaving together cosmic stakes and intimate personal failure. As the recruit tries again and again to dodge his fate, each attempt reveals more about his character and the strange principles governing the Change War. The Law of the Conservation of Reality hangs over the story like a cosmic referee. Even the most improbable events can—and will—occur if that’s what it takes to preserve the timeline’s integrity. The result is a highly engaging blend of clever science-fiction speculation and psychological drama.

The tale also fits into Leiber’s broader “Change War” cycle, a universe where two factions battle across history, altering events like pieces on a board. Yet here, Leiber narrows the focus to a single man, a single night, and a single devastating lesson: it’s one thing to fight for the fate of worlds, and another to try rewriting yourself. The contrast produces a story that’s suspenseful, insightful, and surprisingly emotional.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was one of speculative fiction’s most versatile and influential voices. Over a career spanning five decades, he mastered multiple genres—science fiction, fantasy, horror—often blending them with literary finesse. His sword-and-sorcery characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser helped define modern fantasy adventure. His psychological horror stories influenced generations of dark-fiction writers. And his science-fiction works, including the Change War series, expanded the possibilities of time travel and cosmic conflict.

Winner of numerous Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, Leiber stood out for his elegant prose, sharp wit, and ability to combine large ideas with deeply personal storytelling. Even when writing about wars fought across centuries and galaxies, his stories returned again and again to the human condition—flawed, hopeful, and endlessly complicated. This story is a perfect example of why his work remains essential reading for fans of classic sci-fi.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Try and Change the Past by Fritz Leiber — a thrilling vintage science fiction tale of temporal missteps as one man learns the limits of rewriting his own fate.