What Mad Universe?!?

Because everything must have Star Wars content now, this new episode of WMU?!? does its due diligence with a dive into the planetary romance stories of Eric John Stark by Leigh Brackett, the woman who co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back and likely inspired George Lucas in the first place. Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon What Mad Universe?!? on...

Take a trip across the universe with Gully Foyle, a one-man space odyssey on a mad quest for revenge, as we look at Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination! Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon What Mad Universe?!? on Twitter Adam's Twitter Phil's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Eng...

Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon What Mad Universe?!? on Twitter Adam's Twitter Phil's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross Theme song by Jack Feerick

No, the laws of reality have not come crashing down! The world has not been thrown into chaos! You ARE getting an episode of What Mad Universe?!? for the second consecutive week! That's just to get us back on schedule after the week-long break. There was a lot to talk about this time out, with the subject of this episode, famed occult figure Aleister Crowley and his stories of the supernatural det...

This episode looks at a favourite book of Adam's, Gilbert K. Chesterton's The Napoleon Of Notting Hill, a prescient commentary on globalization, imperialism and finding the sublime in the ridiculous. Other Keywords: Globalization, Cheat the Prophet, C. S. Lewis, 1984, Community, Think Globally Fight Locally, Medieval, Mad king, Nicaragua, cynic, fanatic, cyberpunk, LARP, cosplay Support us on Patr...

Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon Adam's Twitter Phil's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross Theme song by Jack Feerick This podcast is powered by Pinecast .

This chapter deals with Samuel R. "Chip" Delaney's Nova, the New Wave of SF, mythic symbolism, and the artistic process realized as space opera. Heavy, man. Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon Adam's Twitter Phil's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross Theme s...

This episode looks at that famed grand-master of classic science fiction...Adolf Hitler? Actually, it's Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, about an alternate universe in which the rise of the Nazis was entirely confined to the fevered pages of a pulp sci-fi novel. Good thing the genre fans of THIS universe would never embrace anything so reactionary, racist and authoritarian, right? Support us on Pa...

In the 70s, high-rise buildings were old hat in the US but still a novelty in the UK. As the urban landscape changed, British, and global, society changed with it. But into what? Could architecture, born out of the human mind, influence that mind in turn? Could a building...haunt us? J. G. Ballard asked that question in his seminal novel High-Rise, and on this episode we're joined by our friend Za...

The writings of H. P. Lovecraft are probably the most hashed-over territory imaginable within the spheres of genre fiction we discuss here at What Mad Universe?!?, but the writers who influenced him are, in some ways, more interesting to us. We already did a show, "All The Gods Save One!" about Lord Dunsany. Now we turn to The Yellow King, the creation of Robert W. Chambers, though owing a debt to...

We never like to go for the obvious stuff here on What Mad Universe?!?, so even though the latest episode is about J. R. R. Tolkien, we're focusing on one of his obscure stories, Farmer Giles of Ham. It's a story he told to his children which got revamped into something more sophisticated via his academic obsessions, and as such it contains his career in miniature. Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross The...

Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon Adam's Twitter Phil's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross Theme song by Jack Feerick

As the 19th Century wound to a close, there was something in the air...or at least, people thought there soon would be. The idea of heavier-than-air flight and the potential military applications haunted SF decades before they became a reality; George Griffith's turn-of-the-century novel Angel of the Revolution imagined this technology falling into the hands of the good (?) guys and becoming the b...

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Of One Blood, by Pauline Hopkins, is a turn-of-the-century novel with all the fantastical genre trappings you could ask for: reincarnation, psychic projections, and a Biblical lost kingdom still thriving in the present. But this book is special: it's written by a black woman and deals specifically with the African-American experience. Jess Nevins joins us once again to look at this interesting sig...

Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon Adam's Twitter Phil's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross Theme song by Jack Feerick

Get your titanium spurs on and saddle-up your starships, buckaroos, 'cuz it's time to take our first dip into the wild wild world of space westerns! Seems like every generation has its own version of "cosmic cowboys", but there was a time when the genre was an outright cliche. We look at a book from this era, H. Beam Piper and J. Joseph McGuire's A PLANET FOR TEXANS, aka LONE STAR PLANET, which it...

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Since countries other than the US and the UK produce genre fiction too, this week we veer in a new direction to take a look at a famous work of Japanese Sci-Fi, "10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights", by Ryu Mitsuse. Could this book be a seminal influence on Japanese animation? To help us decide we've got guest star Ing--co-host of my other podcast, Destroy All Clickbait --who knows way more a...

Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon Adam's Twitter Phil's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Special Thanks: Alex Ross Theme song by Jack Feerick

All is revealed as we press on into the second half of our look at Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus Trilogy. Know, O patient listener, that you have passed the threshold into the inner chamber of wisdom, and now we will present to you the REAL truth of what it all means. Or at least we'll take a look at the impact the book has had on pop culture, as well as some of the political a...

This is a big one, man. I mean it's for real, this is like the one that explains EVERYTHING, like how it's all connected, you picking up what I'm putting down? World governments, secret technologies, the lost continent of Atlantis, drug culture, the significance of the number 5, the whole big master plan to immanentize the eschaton--it's all here, man. It's all connected, and it all makes sense, y...

Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Phil's Patreon Adam's Patreon Adam's Twitter Phil's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Theme song by Jack Feerick Special thanks to Alex Ross

Terrorists have seized the building! The police are clueless! People are in danger! Only one man can save the day! That man is...Joe Leland. It's explosive action and political turmoil in this episode of WHAT MAD UNIVERSE?!? as we take a look at NOTHING LASTS FOREVER, the book that was adapted (loosely) into the movie DIE HARD. What, you didn't think 80s action movies were literary? Theme song by...

There's an energy coming from the underground...it's the strange and wonderful power known as Vril, as documented in the book Vril: A Story of the Coming Race by the infamous Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer-Lytton's left huge mark on pop culture, and in this episode we sit down with guest Jess Nevins to see whether his reputation doesn't deserve a bit of rehabilitation... Support us on Patreon and li...