Teaser

Pulp magazine editor Keith Winton is presumed dead following a horrific accident, but the truth is far stranger. For Keith is not dead, but wakes to find himself in another universe . . .

Review

When it comes to satirical comedy, there are two schools of thought. One holds that satire is intended to make the audience laugh at something. This is the school that points a finger at authority figures and says, ‘look how silly they are.’ The second school of thought is gentler, encouraging the audience to laugh with the object of the joke, which is often the audience themselves. This is the school that says, ‘hey, aren’t we all a little silly from time to time?’ This latter school of satire is the one that birthed such science fiction classics as Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or TV shows such as The Orville. It’s fans poking fun at the thing they love, acknowledging the stupidity of its excesses while still revelling in the joys it offers.

What Mad Universe? is firmly a child of this latter school of thought. Published in 1949, it’s one of the oldest science fiction novels in my collection, so the fact that it is building on an existing well of genre storytelling feels a little odd. Of course, most of the stories it pokes affectionate mockery at are short fiction from the 1930s and 1940s. Even at the time, these pulp stories didn’t have the best of reputations, with even dedicated science fiction readers quick to dismiss them as cheap also-rans – filler between more serious works of literature. If you read critical works from the time, you’ll pick up on a distinct tension surrounding these two halves of the genre’s personality.

Brown takes all the denigrated traits of these pulps and treats them seriously. His protagonist is a man who longs to establish himself as a respectable editor, in spite of fans clamouring for lowest-common-denominator space operas. That editor, Keith Winton, is soon plunged into a universe where those space operas are a fact of everyday life. A universe where scantily-clad women patrol the stars, and slavering monsters prowl the streets. Where there is a war between stars, and square-jawed heroes are humanity’s only hope of survival.

The cover boasts that What Mad Universe? is ‘hilarious,’ but I would take issue with that. Though my reading skews a little later than the forties, I’ve read a lot of stories from the period, so I get the general idea behind the jokes. One moment – a discussion on the practicality of female spacesuits – did make me chuckle, but beyond that the book is amusing at best. Though if you’ve been following this blog for long enough, you’ll know that printed comedy and I seldom get along.

Lack of belly laughs, however, doesn’t matter. Why not? Because Brown has done exactly what a good comedian should. In addition to jokes, he’s told a good story. What Made Universe? is so close in tone and delivery to the pulps it apes that it is a genuinely compelling story in its own right. The characters barely have a second dimension, the plot is predictable, and it’s served with a heaping of cheesiness, but all the elements of good science fiction are there.

There’s one final thing I want to add. This book is set, as the title suggests, in another universe. It would have been easy to make this a dream, or a timeline gone wrong, but the actual explanation is a whole lot deeper than that. Seventy-six years ago, Brown has created his own version of the many worlds theory. The idea of a universe so densely layered that anything and everything has or will happen at some point. MCU, eat your heart out.

As a parody, What Mad Universe? is almost too since for its own good, but if you take it as a capstone to the age of the pulp magazines, it’s a fitting ending to the early days of science fiction.

Book Stats

• A Standalone Novel
• First Published 1949
• 238 Pages