Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Buenos Aires : Sudamericana, ©1974.
Description
BUG-EYED MONSTERS ON BROADWAYPulp SF magazine editor Keith Winton was answering a letter from a teenage fan when the first moon rocket fell back to Earth and blew him away.But where to? Greenville, New York, looked the same, but Bems (Bug-Eyed Monsters) just like the ones on the cover of Startling Stories walked the streets without attracting undue comment.And when he brought out a half-dollar coin in a drugstore, the cops wanted to shoot him on sight as an Arcturian spy.Wait a minute. Seven-foot purple moon-monsters? Earth at war with Arcturus? General Dwight D. Eisenhower in command of Venus Sector?What mad universe was this?One thing was for sure: Keith Winton had to find out fast - or he'd be good and dead, in this universe or any other.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Lyndatrue
Another fun and engrossing read from the master. Think of this as pulp fiction rewritten, with tongue firmly in cheek, and meant for a more discerning audience. I'd like more Fredric Brown in the world, please.
LibraryThing member kristenn
Very fun and breezy. Just moved right along. Sets up an interesting world and does a really nice job with the exposition. Never got any sense of a foundation for the grand romance, which made some of his decisions just seem stupid, but that was the only quibble.
LibraryThing member shireling
Good, solid science fiction!!!
LibraryThing member Lyndatrue
Yes, it's true. It's another book that I have two copies of. The paperback version has an introduction by Phil Klass, written a few months after Brown's death, and it's worth reading. On the other hand, who can resist a copy from the SFBC? It's a decent book, the cover is great, and the pages
From the introduction:
I was talking about this recently with my wife, Fruma, who had never met Fred Brown, but who has read his stories, and who loves the word games he plays in them. "Ontology," I told her, "that was his preoccupation. Ontology: the science of being or reality."
"Ontology?" she repeated slowly. "Didn't he know that ontology recapitulates philology?"
Fred Brown died in 1971. I wish I could believe that he heard what Fruma said and that God now rests him on waves of laughter."
Phillip Klass (State College, PA, March 3, 1978)
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(unlike the paperback) aren't yet yellowing.From the introduction:
I was talking about this recently with my wife, Fruma, who had never met Fred Brown, but who has read his stories, and who loves the word games he plays in them. "Ontology," I told her, "that was his preoccupation. Ontology: the science of being or reality."
"Ontology?" she repeated slowly. "Didn't he know that ontology recapitulates philology?"
Fred Brown died in 1971. I wish I could believe that he heard what Fruma said and that God now rests him on waves of laughter."
Phillip Klass (State College, PA, March 3, 1978)
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LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
The first Brown I read (afaik). Now I'm such a big fan that I even read his mysteries* when I get a chance to do so. He's very smart, clever without being at all pretentious.
*I am *not* a fan of mysteries, intrigue, or thrillers.
*I am *not* a fan of mysteries, intrigue, or thrillers.
LibraryThing member antao
And then you say "putting ideas under the noses of the people who most hate them. That's what science fiction exists for." You sure about that? I suspect most readers who expressed a preference would say that they are generally rather keen on ideas. In fact, the literary-fiction crowd often use
The events, say, in a person's life, can be viewed, not as a cradle to grave chronology, but as continuous whole that can be narrated in any order. Forwards, backwards, or hopping around like a knight on a chessboard. This view of time is explored in Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", and a 'backwards' version in Dick's "Counter-Clock World". This kind of time-travel is, I'd argue, consistent with physics; time cannot 'move' because it doesn't occupy a physical location from which it can move.
The idea of time travel was first set out by H. G. Wells (Fredric Brown makes a clever use of him in this book) but since then, like the internal combustion engine, very little of the idea has changed. We still generally think in terms of a machine or cabinet that propels the passenger backwards or forwards in time. Think for one moment however of the written word used by Mr. Wells and Mr. Brown to convey this idea. Well’s book was written in 1895 following thoughts happening inside his head. Without the written word, those thoughts would have remained trapped in 1895 unless some form of aural tradition of storytelling had taken it forward. Hence thoughts inside Mr. Wells' head have travelled from 1895 to 2017 and beyond as did the character Keith Winton (aka Karl Winston, his doppelgänger).
But Brown is not interested in time travel. As someone who is here and not there (possibly), I have noticed that there are two, possibly more universes, or realities in Portugal today. I cannot comment about other countries because, as I said, I am here, not there, yet it seems that, for many years now, the clear majority of people have been viewing the world through a screen. They awake and turn on the screen, then travel to work looking at the world through a screen, spend eight hours or so staring at another screen, sometime obeying the instructions that are displayed again and again and again, like Pavlov's dogs they salivate at each ping. Then they return home, looking at the world through a screen and doze off with a plastic tray on their knees staring wide eyed at another screen again. In this reality, there are a host of people who do not exist. Some of them are reported to have died years ago. I always understood that Adolf Hitler died in 1945, but there he is, still driving round Europe with his arm stretched out, shouting at people. And what is Henry VIII doing there? Apart from the dead people, there are many who believe that we should celebrate the fact that they do not exist. What is worse, they have award ceremonies to congratulate each other on their nonexistence. Recently I observed a new and disturbing phenomenon. These machine people from planet Screen now walk along the pavement with their eyes focused intently upon a tiny screen in their hands while jabbering away to an invisible man. I admit that my brain didn’t start to fall apart while reading “What Mad Universe”, but the massive torrent of ideas that Brown puts forward, and the startling consequences of those ideas are so interesting that I was reading it as the washing up piled up in the sink, and the house plants were dying around me. Too bad Brown was not more of a stylist. The prose is as wooden as a dead tree. But alas, the ideas are all there. Too bad Brown didn’t travel forward in time to 1957 to take full advantage of the fact that the many-worlds interpretation was not being really about the universe splitting per se, i.e., to avoid the problem of wave-function collapse that is invoked in measurement. The principle of superposition means that we can create states that are, for example, half spin up and half spin down. When we make a measurement of the spin, the wave-function collapses into only one of these states. However, these measurement processes are qualitatively different from unobserved processes, which allow the wave-function to evolve smoothly with time. This has led to a lot of discussions about the role of observers in quantum mechanics (Schrödinger's cat, etc.) The basic idea of many worlds is that there is nothing special about measurement. The wave-function only appears to collapse to the (necessarily quantum) observer, but all possible universes coexist in the same way that the states spin up and down can coexist for the electron.
There's more than one way to skin Schrodinger's cat. Dexter Palmer, 67 years later, wrote what Brown couldn’t.
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'the idea is the protagonist' as a stick with which to beat SF. The problem is that the notion of travel comes from movement through space. When we're standing still, and on no conveyance, we are not traveling relative to the world around us (of course, the planet is traveling through space). But in the case of time, when we stand still, we are indeed moving forward at the pace of life in time. So, in that context, time travel must mean more than that standing still movement - it must mean traveling faster than that to the future, or at any speed at all to the past, which does not happen at all in natural life time. One view of time is that is does not actually "pass", as we experience it, and that there is nothing uniquely real about the present. There is a 21st century and there is a 16th Century, there are elephants and there are trilobites. The past or future are not less real because we do not coexist with them, any more than distant universes, separated from us by the speed of light, are less real because we cannot perceive them. As Einstein put it: "People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion".The events, say, in a person's life, can be viewed, not as a cradle to grave chronology, but as continuous whole that can be narrated in any order. Forwards, backwards, or hopping around like a knight on a chessboard. This view of time is explored in Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", and a 'backwards' version in Dick's "Counter-Clock World". This kind of time-travel is, I'd argue, consistent with physics; time cannot 'move' because it doesn't occupy a physical location from which it can move.
The idea of time travel was first set out by H. G. Wells (Fredric Brown makes a clever use of him in this book) but since then, like the internal combustion engine, very little of the idea has changed. We still generally think in terms of a machine or cabinet that propels the passenger backwards or forwards in time. Think for one moment however of the written word used by Mr. Wells and Mr. Brown to convey this idea. Well’s book was written in 1895 following thoughts happening inside his head. Without the written word, those thoughts would have remained trapped in 1895 unless some form of aural tradition of storytelling had taken it forward. Hence thoughts inside Mr. Wells' head have travelled from 1895 to 2017 and beyond as did the character Keith Winton (aka Karl Winston, his doppelgänger).
But Brown is not interested in time travel. As someone who is here and not there (possibly), I have noticed that there are two, possibly more universes, or realities in Portugal today. I cannot comment about other countries because, as I said, I am here, not there, yet it seems that, for many years now, the clear majority of people have been viewing the world through a screen. They awake and turn on the screen, then travel to work looking at the world through a screen, spend eight hours or so staring at another screen, sometime obeying the instructions that are displayed again and again and again, like Pavlov's dogs they salivate at each ping. Then they return home, looking at the world through a screen and doze off with a plastic tray on their knees staring wide eyed at another screen again. In this reality, there are a host of people who do not exist. Some of them are reported to have died years ago. I always understood that Adolf Hitler died in 1945, but there he is, still driving round Europe with his arm stretched out, shouting at people. And what is Henry VIII doing there? Apart from the dead people, there are many who believe that we should celebrate the fact that they do not exist. What is worse, they have award ceremonies to congratulate each other on their nonexistence. Recently I observed a new and disturbing phenomenon. These machine people from planet Screen now walk along the pavement with their eyes focused intently upon a tiny screen in their hands while jabbering away to an invisible man. I admit that my brain didn’t start to fall apart while reading “What Mad Universe”, but the massive torrent of ideas that Brown puts forward, and the startling consequences of those ideas are so interesting that I was reading it as the washing up piled up in the sink, and the house plants were dying around me. Too bad Brown was not more of a stylist. The prose is as wooden as a dead tree. But alas, the ideas are all there. Too bad Brown didn’t travel forward in time to 1957 to take full advantage of the fact that the many-worlds interpretation was not being really about the universe splitting per se, i.e., to avoid the problem of wave-function collapse that is invoked in measurement. The principle of superposition means that we can create states that are, for example, half spin up and half spin down. When we make a measurement of the spin, the wave-function collapses into only one of these states. However, these measurement processes are qualitatively different from unobserved processes, which allow the wave-function to evolve smoothly with time. This has led to a lot of discussions about the role of observers in quantum mechanics (Schrödinger's cat, etc.) The basic idea of many worlds is that there is nothing special about measurement. The wave-function only appears to collapse to the (necessarily quantum) observer, but all possible universes coexist in the same way that the states spin up and down can coexist for the electron.
There's more than one way to skin Schrodinger's cat. Dexter Palmer, 67 years later, wrote what Brown couldn’t.
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LibraryThing member Unkletom
Pure sci-fi pulp from the 1940s, which is entertaining but I expected more of a spoof on pulps and less actual pulp. Enjoyable but probably not too memorable.
My thanks to the folks at the Goodreads Pulp Fiction group for introducing this and many other fine books.
My thanks to the folks at the Goodreads Pulp Fiction group for introducing this and many other fine books.
LibraryThing member jimroberts
An accident with a new technology catapults Keith Winton, the editor of a 1950's sci-fi magazine, into a parallel universe very like a sci-fi story in which Earth has colonies on Mars and Venus and is at war with Arcturus. His unfamiliarity with the society he finds himself in and his possession of
Pretty trashy, but also satirises trash SF. Not great, but a reasonably entertaining quick read.
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obsolete money denominated in dollars rather than credits raises suspicion that he is an Arcturan spy, which means that his life is very much in danger: better that a thousand innocent people be killed than that one Arcturan spy survive. Moreover, in this universe, the woman with whom he was beginning to form a romantic attachment is even more beautiful, is habitually much more provocatively dressed, and is engaged to a super-genius and super-hero. So, after various adventures he contrives to get into a situation where a use of the technology that got him here will probably win the war and maybe send him back home.Pretty trashy, but also satirises trash SF. Not great, but a reasonably entertaining quick read.
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LibraryThing member burritapal
Imagine an astronaut in hotpants.
This is a story full of anomalies and sexism. There're Model T Fords driven while scientists have perfected the space warp drive, there're no cell phones, and people still write on typewriters. Alternate universes abound.
This is a story full of anomalies and sexism. There're Model T Fords driven while scientists have perfected the space warp drive, there're no cell phones, and people still write on typewriters. Alternate universes abound.
LibraryThing member baswood
Written in 1949, but I read the 1951 published novel and if this is cheating a bit I am glad I did because this was a great read. Brown was a master of the short story form that was the backbone of the 1940's pulp fiction craze. This was one of his few novel length stories and his hero Keith WInton
When he wakes up things are different: the large estate belonging to the owner of his favourite publishing house no longer exists, he hails a passing motorist who takes him into town, credit notes are used instead of money. A shopkeeper claims to be a collector of coins willing to exchange a large amount of credit notes for one of Winton's coins, but he is reported to the police who have a shoot on sight policy, he escapes and finds his name and address in the phone book, there is space travel and planet earth is at war with the Arcturians. The first part of the novel finds Winton adapting to his new situation and then trying to figure out what has happened to him. He books in at a hotel buys a typewriter and starts working on new stories to sell to earn a living.
Brown has fun with his novel that manages to include plenty of the tropes and plotting that one might find in the short stories published by the pulp magazines. There is more however, as he includes tension and mystery as well as irony in the adventures of Keith Winton on this different planet. Pulp fiction it maybe, but I enjoyed the invention and the fast pace of this fantasy science fiction novel - 4 stars
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is a pulp fiction short story writer. He can knock out a story in a coupler of hours of hard pounding on his typewriter. He collects three or four stories and hocks them around the various magazine publishers, he is an established name in the business and so he has little difficulty in getting his stories accepted, counting on a 50-50 success rate. He writes mostly science fiction or mystery stories and so when the first rocket is sent to the moon he finds himself a good vantage point to witness the landing: the rocket will produce a tremendous flash of light which the scientists say will be visible to the naked eye. The flash of light is in fact a lightning strike caused by the rockets descent to earth and Winton is knocked unconscious. When he wakes up things are different: the large estate belonging to the owner of his favourite publishing house no longer exists, he hails a passing motorist who takes him into town, credit notes are used instead of money. A shopkeeper claims to be a collector of coins willing to exchange a large amount of credit notes for one of Winton's coins, but he is reported to the police who have a shoot on sight policy, he escapes and finds his name and address in the phone book, there is space travel and planet earth is at war with the Arcturians. The first part of the novel finds Winton adapting to his new situation and then trying to figure out what has happened to him. He books in at a hotel buys a typewriter and starts working on new stories to sell to earn a living.
Brown has fun with his novel that manages to include plenty of the tropes and plotting that one might find in the short stories published by the pulp magazines. There is more however, as he includes tension and mystery as well as irony in the adventures of Keith Winton on this different planet. Pulp fiction it maybe, but I enjoyed the invention and the fast pace of this fantasy science fiction novel - 4 stars
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Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
257 p.; 18 cm
Other editions
Universo de locos by Fredric Brown (Paper Book)