What Mad Universe

"Fredric Brown was a fascinating writer who had a very successful career in mystery – and crime -writing, and as a science fiction writer. He had written some classic sci fi stories, and he was somebody who was selling stories during the 1940s to the pulp magazines, but who was all too aware of what these magazines’ shortcomings were, let’s say. What Mad Universe is a comic novel that deals with a pulp magazine editor who, through some bizarre accident of radiation – accidents of radiation could account for anything that happened in science fiction back then – ends up in one of the pulp universes that he edits stories for. And he finds that he is, in fact, living inside a science fiction pulp novel. As a result, the novel itself is a hilarious takedown of all the clichés that were common in science fiction at that time. It’s a loving satire. I chose it partly because I think it may have had some influence on a later novel by Philip K. Dick, Eye in the Sky , in which another radiation accident throws a set of characters into each other’s interior minds. So the idea that the science fiction pulp universe is something that maybe exists out there has echoed through the decades. There’s even a William Gibson story called ‘ The Gernsback Continuum ,’ which is based on the idea that maybe those great pulp cover illustrations and pulp stories could exist somewhere. It was unusual for the 1940s. To be honest, I don’t know how well received it was – because on the one hand, it’s a love letter to pulp science fiction; but on the other hand, readers at the time may have felt that they were being satirised and demeaned in some way. I’ve never really looked into that. But, as I say, the idea echoes, mostly in short stories after that; there are a number of writers who would do parodies of science fiction. Harry Harrison wrote the novels Bill, the Galactic Hero , and Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers . Those were clear parodies. But what Brown did, which was and still is unusual in novels, was to put characters inside the science fiction universe – not just writing a parody of classic science fiction. Right! Editors were the powers in science fiction back then. It’s an unusual genre in that the Hugo Award, the most famous science fiction award, is named after an editor . No other genre names its awards after editors! John W. Campbell was the most influential editor back then. They were the gatekeepers, the controllers of science fiction. I think Brown was a little frustrated in dealing with them, so wanted to give them a taste of their own medicine."