What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown
Like many SF fans, my introduction to Fredric Brown was in the story by credit of the Star Trek episode Arena. For many years I assumed that Fredric Brown wrote a story treatment like many writers that Gene L.Coon massively re-wrote. That is not what happened. Gene L. Coon wrote a story he thought of and someone in the office said – that sounds familiar. I have a hilarious memo I got from the Roddenberry papers at UCLA where someone lists all the things the script and the story have in common. In the end, they decided to give Brown story credit.
I am sorry that this writer’s career gets reduced to this. That was one of the reasons I wanted to read this novel. The second reason was Robert Bloch in his autobiography talked about Brown who he was in a writing group with. Bloch and Brown were the two most successful vets of the 1930s Milwaukee fictioneers. Bloch thought Brown’s unique take on the genre was to add humor. So long before Vonnegut, Sheckley, or Douglas Adams, there was Fredric Brown. So I decided I needed to know for myself if his stories were funny and as classic as Bloch said they were.
I had Martians Go Home on the shelf already, but the story for What Mad Universe which Bloch mentioned in his book as being about a multiverse-hopping pulp SF editor sounded too awesome to ignore. My library had it so I put a hold on it. What came was a battered first edition hardcover from 1949 that had not been checked out in decades. It comes with the perhaps the all-time greatest author photo on the back.
The paper and the binder were super tattered and worn down so for me personally that really added to the reading experience. What Mad Universe came out with one year left in the forties. In the February 1950 issue of F and SF Boucher (shout out to Tony!) and McComas named What Mad Universe the best SF novel of 1949, citing its "blend of humor, logic, terror, and satire."
A novella version was in Starling Stories magazine, I can not speak to the differences with this his first Science Fiction novel. He had been publishing short fiction in the genre for a decade. This was his third novel in two years, the other two were mysteries including Murder Can be Fun his first novel a mystery comedy.
“Here?
That word again. Where, what, when was here?
What mad universe was this that took for granted an alien race more horrible looking than the worst Bem that ever leered from a science fiction magazine cover.”
What Mad Universe is as out of date Science Fiction as it gets. While the aliens came from Arcturus a real star and planets like Proxima Centauri get name-dropped but the science is goofy, intentionally so at times. Keep in mind this is two decades before Apollo and the same year as Sputnik. So you will have to forgive Brown for a rocket launch unexplainably sending Keith Winton into another universe that looks like ours with major differences and some key minor ones.
For example, in this universe, his alter ego edits the same magazine but it is not considered Science Fiction but an adventure. Why because in 1904 a major change in the timeline happened…
The year nineteen hundred and three. Professor George Yardley, an American Scientist at Harvard University, had discovered the spacewarp drive.
Accidentally!
He had been working on, of all things his wife’s sewing machine, which had been broken and discarded.
Yes, this novel spends multiple hilarious pages devoted to the space warp sewing machine, so this might be a good time to ask if are you in for this novel or not. 88 pages in I think you must already be there but at this point, the lines are drawn.
His magazine writes so-called adventures because once humanity started using sewing machine parts to warp around the galaxy they got involved in a war with Arcturus. There are some interesting details about the blackouts in certain cities so Arcturus couldn’t target cities. They still took out London and Rome apparently.
Keith only starts to figure this all out when he is accused of being an Arc spy. After escaping the manhunt he figures out he is in another universe. In a neat little not he learns the History of this other universe from a Short History of the World by HG Wells, which is the same as he remembered until that sewing machine in 1904.
Once our hero makes it to New York city he tries to sell some Science Fiction stories to make some quick scratch, and WBI breaks down his door to accuse him of plagiarism. His counterpart had written the same stories. Indeed Keith ends up learning the ins and outs of this universe and has mad-cap adventures that comment on the genre and take him into space.
What Mad Universe has the same satire tongue-in-cheek love that a Galaxy Quest would perfect half a century later. What Mad Universe is a satire of the time working with the tools of the time. Fans of old-school out of date science fiction, who like exploring the future as envisioned deep in the past will have fun with this one. Like I enjoy looking at how early punk was represented by the different bands and styles that came from certain towns and scenes. I am a midwestern guy and respect Brown being straight out of Milwaukee.
Just as Die Kreuzen represented that town in punk Robert Bloch and Fredric Brown did in horror and Science fiction. I really enjoyed this hilarious midwestern SF send-up that feels completely of it's time.
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