From the Bookshelf of Pulp Fiction…

What Mad Universe

Fredric Brown

Start date: July 1, 2018

Finish date: July 31, 2018

Discussion: Group Reads

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* October 2025 - Laura
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last updated Oct 01, 2025 11:50AM

September 2025 - This Sweet Sickness
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What Members Thought

Sep 06, 2008 Stephen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: comfort-food, humor-and-satire, pulpy, alternative-history, science-fiction, 1930-1953

Fredric Brown was a true ubermensch of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and his short stories are still among the best ever written in the genre. I mean that. Best...Ever...Written.

What Mad Universe is one of only a handful of SF novels that he wrote, a tear-inducing shame given how bursting with amazing it is. What's so unique about this tale is that it's both classic pulp SF in its own right, while at the same time acting as an examination/critique of pulp SF stereotypes.

Double your ple ...more

82 likes · Like · see review

Apr 21, 2012 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015

It all started with a BIG BANG !

Caught in the center of the explosion is Keith Winton, the editor of one of those fantastic pulp magazines that flourished in the 1930's and 1940'sAmerica. His own magazine is called "Surprising Stories" and specializes in planetary romance with lurid covers of scantily dressed young women chased by a BEM. (*)

bem

(*) Bug-Eyed Monster
image copyright : Fastner & Larson

From his post-Depression New York life, Keith Winton is thrown into a parallel universe where said ...more

28 likes · Like · see review

Jul 09, 2018 Franky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 2018-book-challenge

“…it seemed suddenly to Keith, a one-dimensional world. There was only a forward and backward in it as long as each of them—he and the unknown—groped their way along the building fronts. Like ants crawling along string they must meet and pass unless one of them turned.”

Purple monsters, mistouts, parallel universes, computer brains named Mekky: What kind of mad universe is this?

Brown’s What Mad Universe harkens back to the classic 50s sci-fi films, which oftentimes pitted humans against creatur ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Jul 16, 2018 Melki rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

A fun, unintentionally campy tale about a man trapped in an alternate universe. I love that Brown's vision of the future had Earthlings casually traveling to other planets, yet they still had to line up to use a phone booth. I definitely want to read more of this guy's stuff! ...more

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Jan 19, 2023 Tim Schneider rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Keith Winton is an editor of pulp science fiction magazines. Things are going well...the job is good. His boss likes him. He's making headway in romancing a lovely editor of romance magazines. And then a freak accident from a failed rocket launch thrusts him in to a different reality...one that, upon further review, bares a striking resemblance to one of the space opera's from the stories he edits. Now Keith Winton has to try to survive in a world where he can be shot on sight for being an alien ...more

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Oct 22, 2016 Tom Britz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

This book was a pleasure to read. Imagine the 1940' -50's science fiction field, with all of its bug-eyed monsters and super science with the near naked women gracing all the covers along with the all American buffed hero, then imagine that due to a near by rocket crash with an experimental device on board, that you are thrust into a world where that is your reality. That is what happened to our hero, Keith Winton.

Keith awakens in this new reality wondering where his boss's estate went, where t This book was a pleasure to read. Imagine the 1940' -50's science fiction field, with all of its bug-eyed monsters and super science with the near naked women gracing all the covers along with the all American buffed hero, then imagine that due to a near by rocket crash with an experimental device on board, that you are thrust into a world where that is your reality. That is what happened to our hero, Keith Winton.

Keith awakens in this new reality wondering where his boss's estate went, where the chair he had been sitting disappeared to, not only that but there was a large maple tree whose shade he had been enjoying. Looking at his watch it was roughly the same time he remembered, so how in hell did he get here? He decides to get a ride into town and begin his search again. This is where the hilarity and the deadly seriousness of his predicament becomes noticeable.

His boss's estate isn't registered in the phone book and no one seems to know of him. Sitting down at the drugstore's soda counter and trying to puzzle through this mess, he puts a quarter down to pay for his coffee. When the druggist picks up the quarter and exclaims how great the condition is and wants to buy it from him, Keith begins to think everyone is crazy. The druggist gives him two thousand credits for the quarter. These credits look like dollars, except where the money Keith is used to where it states dollars it now states credits. Everything else is the same, down to the Secretary of The Treasury's signature.

Keith, is truly puzzled and begins to ask questions, like what year is it, is this Greenville, N.Y.? The druggist is now looking at him strangely. Keith asked him if the rocket that he had been sitting out to watch land on the moon and send back a large flash of light, was supposed to land tonight. The druggist says the moon rocket lands every night, in fact some of the passengers should be coming in soon. Keith gets up and goes to the magazine rack and picks up a copy of the magazine that he edits and sure enough the cover is vaguely the same but with some important differences.

Keith throws down a fifty cent piece to pay for the magazine and tells the druggist to keep the change. The druggist starts to shake like he has a tremor. Just then a huge blue monster with lots of sharp gleaming teeth walks in. The druggist yells at the monster to kill Keith, he is an Arcturan spy!

These happenings are all withing the first few chapters of this fun and engaging book. The madness continues for the remainder of the book. Keith is thrown into some serious life threatening mis-deeds out of his unfamiliarity of his situation. I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it to anyone that has a funny bone and a liking for science fiction. ...more

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