What Mad Universe
Fredric Brown
 Keith Winton is a journalist for a science-fiction review. With his glamorous co-worker girlfriend, Betty, he visits his friends one day in their elegant estate in the Catskills, unfortunately on the same day as an experimental rocket is to be launched. Betty has to go back to New York. Keith is alone in his friends' garden, deep in thought, when, suddenly, the engine of the rocket (whose launch has been a failure) crashes and explodes on his friends' residence, taking him to a strange but deceptively similar parallel universe. Wild-eyed, Keith is astonished to see how credits have replaced dollars; is amazed when he encounters some scantily-clad pin-up girls who are, at the same time, astronauts; is driven to stupor when he encounters his first Arcturian. But it is when he tries to get back to his usual world when he finally understands his problem, if not the solution.