I Bought a Random Pulp From the 50's and it Contained one of the Weirdest Stories I've Ever Read!

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00][music] [music] [music] Hello fellow lovers of the liinal and the weird and welcome to another video by Liinal spaces. I recently judged a pulp by its cover.

[00:00:25]this copy of Fantastic Adventures from July of 1950 and it turned out to be a great choice.

[00:00:34]This front cover is by Robert Gibson Jones and it is for the story You're All Alone which was written by Fritz Lieber and it is one of the wackiest, most fun science fiction stories I have read in a long time. In fact, I probably had this much fun the last time I read Fritz Liber when I read The Green Millennium. These two novels are uh really enjoyable, really weird, and really wacky in the same way. This story opens on a typical day for Car McKay, C A RR, and Carr works at an employment agency. So, he spends his day helping the unemployed find jobs. And he is in his office prepared for another day of doing this when he notices a young blonde woman who he calls the frightened woman because she seems very frightened sitting in a chair just outside his office door. And inside his office there are three or four desks and different employees that work there. And he eventually goes and speaks with her and she doesn't make any sense. She keeps saying stuff like, "Please just treat me like I'm one of your normal clients. Uh, they're after me. Act like you don't see them." Really paranoid talk. So he eventually sits down at his desk and she sits across from him in the client's position and this large beautiful but uh masculine blonde woman [snorts] uh starts comes into the outer part of the office and starts watching them through the window. [snorts] And this really seems to raise the fear of the young woman who he's talking to. Also during this time, his coworker walks over and says, "Hey, I've got that double date planned. Uh, I want you to meet this this young woman named Jane. She's coming in in just a bit and I want you I want to introduce you to her and then you'll see what I'm talking about and be very excited about this date because she's absolutely beautiful." And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And brushes him off because he's trying to deal with this client in front of him. So they keep acting like client and employment officer, but she takes out a piece of paper and writes him a note and lays it on his desk. And then she gets up and she turns and walks out of the office, but the large blonde woman is blocking the door. And as she walks, she she can see that she's shaking with fear, but she ignores the large blonde woman. And the large blonde woman smacks her across the face and she does not react at all.

[00:03:33]She just keeps walking as if she couldn't even see the blonde woman. And this really shocks Carr. He's completely confused by all of this. Nobody talks to this large blonde woman. She waits a bit and watches car and then she turns and leaves the uh office.

[00:03:54]and he's very confused. Doesn't really know what's going on. And eventually he gets up and he walks over [snorts] and he's watching the blonde woman. And then he comes back over and his coworker walks up by himself, but he starts talking to Carr and introducing him to this woman. And he says, "Uh, Carr, this is the lady I've been telling you about. Her name is Jane." And [snorts] he is motioning to where Jane should be standing, but there is literally no one there.

[00:04:35]And Carr responds to him and [snorts] says, "Dude, what are you doing?" And he ignores him and he starts replying as if Carr were replying to him and saying different things than Carr is saying, like planning a date. So he says, "Yeah, when do you have time free?

[00:04:57]We're thinking this Saturday." And Carr says, "Dude, what are you doing? What are you talking about?" And he says, "Oh, you're free. That's good." And this conversation goes on seemingly without Carr there. He's like off to the other side and it's really just his coworker kind of talking to himself. First off, this happens insanely fast in the story.

[00:05:21]This is all the first chapter. Second off, this is the kind of wackiness that keeps me coming back again and again to Fritz Liber. He is brilliant at this stuff. Uh this is I think the most dickian of his novels that I've read. It really reminded me of Philip K. Dick about uh individuality and whether or not the reality around us is real. And like I said, this wackiness just continues on and on. And I was so there for it. If I have one complaint about this nolla, uh, it is that I think it seems more obvious for the reader what's going on than it does to the main character. And that was a little strange for me because I felt like the main character was smart enough that he would have picked up what was going on a lot sooner than he did. But that's a weird complaint because number one, this book was written in the uh uh early to mid40s.

[00:06:27]So I don't know if that's how people would have taken it at that point because number two, we have had many books that question reality between 1940s and now. So it's become a trope that we're kind of used to. So I don't know if that would have been obvious at the time. Do I recommend this? Yes. Yes.

[00:06:50]Yes. A thousand times yes. All right, let's talk a little bit about the writing of it. First off, of course, this is written by Fritz Lieber, who was a huge figure in the science fiction and the fantasy genres. Of course, I think he's most famous for his sword and sorcery stories. And I know Tim's going to comment this, so I'm just going to say it. His Sword and Sorcery stories are on my TBR and they will be coming up eventually. Maybe I'll I'll ask Tim to read them along with me. Maybe that's what we can do after Lord of the Rings.

[00:07:22]Tim and I have been reading a lot of fantasy together. We did uh the Elrich saga and now we're doing the Lord of the Rings. So maybe maybe it's uh Fritz Liber time after that. But he was a huge figure in the science fiction and fantasy scene. And his name is pronounced Lieber. I know that uh when I first read his name, I called him Liieber for years, but Richard Remple from Vintage SF did find interviews where Fritz Liber pronounces his own name and he pronounces it liber. So I've said Liber ever since. So Fritz Liber's first novel was a novel called Conjure Wife, which you can see here, which I have done on the channel. And this is I would say oh I should have mentioned this. Thber is also huge in the horror genre. Um, this was uh his first novel was kind of a horror novel about a man who finds out his wife is using witchcraft to help promote his career and keep him safe. and he is a anthropologist and a professor and very much dislikes this idea that his wife believes in witchcraft. So he forces her to stop performing all of her witchcraft and suddenly things start going very wrong for him. Great novel. I will link my full review of that in the description. But this was originally published in Unknown Worlds. And here's a copy of Unknown World magazine that has Conjure Wife in it, the first time that it was ever published. I'm very happy to have this first edition magazine. It is not the coolest cover, and unfortunately, this is how Unknown did all their covers, so it's not a pulp that really gets people excited, but it is cool to have it either way. Right after that, he came out with Gather Darkness, which came out in astounding magazine. Both of these came out in 1943, but this was his first and this was his second. Now, the interesting thing is is that he wrote this novel directly after these first two, Gather Darkness and Conjure Wife, and his goal was to have it published in Unknown Worlds, just like he did Conjure Wife.

[00:09:46]So he sent it to them and it got tied up in that magazine publication but was never published because Unknown Worlds ceased to exist pretty soon after. So this story didn't get published even though it was written in like 43 44 until 1950 in the pulp that I read it in.

[00:10:11]>> [snorts] >> So, in many ways, this is truly his third novel. Now, uh I don't quite know the story about this. I don't know if this is an a bridged version. I know that there is a novel version of this nolla that is called the sinful ones, but everything I've read online points to the fact that this is the better version that the shorter word count actually makes this read a lot smoother and a lot more fun than the expanded edition. So, I don't know if he abridged it for this or if he later expanded it when it was finally published in 19 uh 53 as the sinful ones. But yeah, [snorts] this is basically Fritz Liber's third novel and more importantly the first of his wacky sci-fi novels. He did his Sword and Sorcery first. He started with Sword and Sorcery, then he did these two horror novels, and then he jumped into sci-fi, and we get stuff like You're All Alone, and we get stuff like The Green Millennium. And this, for me, is the era of the best of his sci-fi. Really incredible. So, yes, absolutely uh read this story. It's wonderful. Okay, from here on out, we're going to head into spoilers, which is not going to be long.

[00:11:46]and honestly doesn't really spoil much, but I'm still going to list it as spoilers cuz there's just two parts that I want to talk about. So, from here on out, a couple of very minor spoilers that won't really affect your reading.

[00:12:05]So, the first thing I want to talk about is I want to go back to this amazing cover art. This is from this story but this particular thing doesn't happen in this story. [snorts] Um there are two parts to this story. One that I think is uh very much a dream in which they are small puppets instead of people and they're being controlled by a group that owns a dog. So, when they're small, this dog would seem huge, but the dog never grabs Jane and uh and bites her like he's doing on this cover. That being said, the dog is still scary in this book. The second part I want to talk about, and I guess this is a big spoiler, but I believe that this is obvious to modern readers after the first chapter. This idea of fate or destiny tells us exactly where we're supposed to be in our lives at all times, that everything is predetermined. And I love that Fritz Lieber doesn't go into what is controlling fate, what is destiny. He just comes up with this concept that uh everybody's supposed to be at certain places and make certain choices always within their lives that everything's already mapped out. And this idea of people being able to wake up from this or make a decision that goes against destiny and suddenly ending up on a path where they're not where they're supposed to be, but everybody around them continues to act like they're in the place they're supposed to be is one of the most haunting sci-fi concepts that I have ever read. truly terrifying in its scope. I really think Fritz Liers hit it out of the park with this one. When I do a reread of this, which I'd like to do in the future sometime, I am going to read The Sinful Ones instead and see [snorts] if uh expanding this makes it any better. But uh if you would like a really good 40,000word good time nolla, check out You're All Alone. Plus, look at this pulp. I mean, this is an incredible pulp. Uh, the pulpiest of pulps. All right, that is all I have for this one.

[00:14:35]Uh, later in the week, I will be talking about The Hobbit. I'm very excited about that. And we [music] will see you on the next one.

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