Fredric Brown (October 29, 1906 – March 11, 1972) was an American science fiction and mystery writer born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Easton Press Fredric Brown books
What Mad Universe - Masterpieces of Science Fiction - 1986
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Author Fredric Brown
Brown is perhaps best known for his use of humor and for his mastery of the short short form stories of 1 to 3 pages, often with ingenious plotting devices and surprise endings. Humor and a somewhat postmodern outlook carried over into his novels as well. One of his stories, Arena, is officially credited for an adaptation as the episode of the landmark television series, Star Trek. It is similar to an episode entitled "Fun and Games" (1964) of The Outer Limits.
His science fiction novel What Mad Universe (1949) is a parody of pulp SF story conventions. Martians, Go Home (1955) is both a broad farce and a satire on human frailties as seen through the eyes of a billion jeering, invulnerable Martians who arrive not to conquer the world but to drive it crazy.
The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1952) tells the story of an aging astronaut who is trying to get his beloved space program back on track after Congress has cut off the funds for it an accurate prediction of the actual conditions for a space program, at a time when many SF writers still tended to ignore or downplay the financial side of spaceflight. Its title might have been the inspiration for the title of the final episode of the anime Gurren Lagann, "The Lights In The Sky Are Stars", as well as the second film adapting the events of the series.
Brown's first mystery novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint, won the Edgar Award for outstanding first mystery novel. It began a series starring Ed and Ambrose Hunter, and depicts how a young man gradually ripens into a detective under the tutelage of his uncle, an ex–private eye now working as a carnival concessionaire.
Many of his books make use of the threat of the supernatural or occult before the "straight" explanation at the end. For example, Night of the Jabberwock is a bizarre and humorous narrative of an extraordinary day in the life of a small-town newspaper editor.
The Screaming Mimi (which became a 1958 movie starring Anita Ekberg and Gypsy Rose Lee, and directed by Gerd Oswald, who also directed the "Fun and Games" episode of The Outer Limits) and The Far Cry are noir suspense novels reminiscent of the work of Cornell Woolrich. The Lenient Beast experiments multiple first-person viewpoints, among them a gentle, deeply religious serial killer, and examines racial tensions between whites and Latinos in the US state of Arizona. Here Comes a Candle is told in straight narrative sections alternating with a radio script, a screenplay, a sportscast, a teleplay, a stage play, and a newspaper article.
Brown wrote several short stories about Satan and his activities in Hell.
Many of his science fiction stories were shorter than 1,000 words, or even 500 words.
Influence
The depiction of aliens who are completely alien mentally as well as physically and who are completely bent on humanity's destruction is similar to that of the Arcturians in Brown's What Mad Universe.
His short story "Arena" was voted by Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the top 20 SF stories written before 1965. His 1945 short story "The Waveries" was described by Philip K. Dick as "what may be the most significant startlingly so story SF has yet produced." "Knock" is well known for its opening, which is a complete two-sentence short-short story in itself.
Ayn Rand singled out Brown for high praise in her book The Romantic Manifesto. The famous pulp writer Mickey Spillane called Brown "my favorite writer of all time". Science fiction and fantasy writer Neil Gaiman has also expressed fondness for Brown's work, having his novel Here Comes A Candle narrated by the character Rose Walker in the collection The Kindly Ones of The Sandman. Also in the Sandman graphic novels, Fredric Brown is a character in the first story of "The Sandman: Dream Country." Though his name isn't given, the Fredric Brown character makes a comment about having written "Here Comes a Candle." In this graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, Fredric Brown is an aging writer whose past accomplishments can be attributed to the muse that he has locked in his house. Calliope is her name and she is also the muse to Homer, the Greek poet.
Brown also had the honor of being one of three dedicatees of Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (the other two being Robert Cornog and Philip Jose Farmer).
In his non-fiction book Danse Macabre (1981), a survey of the horror genre since 1950, writer Stephen King includes an appendix of "roughly one hundred" influential books of the period: Fredric Brown's short-story collection Nightmares and Geezenstacks is included, and is, moreover, asterisked as being among those select works King regards as "particularly important."
Brown's short story "Naturally" was adapted into Geometria, a short film by director Guillermo del Toro.
Fredric Brown books in order
The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947)
The Dead Ringer 1948)
Murder Can Be Fun (1948)
The Bloody Moonlight (1949)
The Screaming Mimi (1949)
What Mad Universe (1949)
Compliments of a Fiend (1950)
Here Comes a Candle (1950)
Night of the Jabberwock (1950)
Death Has Many Doors (1951)
The Far Cry (E. P. Dutton 1951)
The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches (1951), novella
We All Killed Grandma (1952)
The Deep End (E. P. Dutton 1952)
The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953)
Mostly Murder (1953), collection
Madball (1953)
His Name Was Death (1954)
Martians, Go Home (1955)
The Wench Is Dead (1955)
The Lenient Beast (1956)
Rogue in Space (1957)
The Office (1958)
One for the Road (1958)
The Late Lamented (1959)
Knock Three-One-Two (1959)
The Murderers (1961)
The Mind Thing (1961)
Five-Day Nightmare (1962)
Mrs. Murphy's Underpants (1963)
The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders (1963), collection
4 Novels - omnibus of The Fabulous Clipjoint, Knock Three-One-Two, Night of the Jabberwock and The Screaming Mimi (1983)
Carnival of Crime (1985), collection
Hunter and Hunted: The Ed and Am Hunter Novels, Part One (2002)
Short stories
1938
The Moon for a Nickel
1939
The Cheese on Stilts
Blood of the Dragon
There Are Bloodstains in the Alley
Murder at 10:15
1940
Bloody Murder
The Prehistoric Clue
A Matter of Taste
Trouble in a Teacup (also published as "Teacup Trouble")
Murder Draws a Crowd
Footprints on the Ceiling
Town Wanted
The Little Green Men
Herbie Rides His Hunch
The Stranger from Trouble Valley
The Strange Sisters Strange
1941
Fugitive Impostor
The King Comes Home
Big-Top Doom
The Discontented Cows
Life and Fire
Big-League Larceny
Client Unknown
Homicide Sanitarium
Your Name in Gold
Here Comes the Hearse
Six-Gun Song
Star-Spangled Night
Wheels Across the Night
Armageddon
Little Boy Lost
Bullet for Bullet
Listen to the Mocking Bird
You'll End Up Buming
Selling Death Short
Thirty Corpses Every Thursday
Trouble Comes Double
Not Yet the End
Number Bug
1942
Clue in Blue
Death is a White Rabbit
Twenty Gets You Plenty
Etaoin Shrdlu
Little Apple Hard to Peel
Pardon My Ghoulish Laughter
Death in the Dark (a/p/a "The Black Dark")
Handbook for Homicide
The Incredible Bomber
Twice-Killed Corpse
Mad Dog!
Moon Over Murder
The Star Mouse
A Cat Walks
Who Did I Murder
Murder in Furs
Suite for Flute and Tommy Gun
Three Corpse Parlay
A Date to Die
Red is the Hue of Hell
Two Biers for Two
You'll Die Before Dawn
Get Out of Town
A Little White Lye
Nothing Sinister
The Numberless Shadows
Satan's Search Warrant
Starvation (a/p/a "Runaround")
Where There's Smoke
Boner
Legacy of Murder
The New One
The Santa Claus Murders (expanded into novel Murder Can be Fun a/p/a A Plot for Murder)
Double Murder
A Fine Night for Murder
Heil, Werewolf
I'll See You At Midnight
The Monkey Angle
Satan One-and-a-Half
The Men Who Went Nowhere
1943
A Lock of Satan's Hair
The Spherical Ghoul
The Wicked Flea
The Angelic Angleworm
Death is a Noise
The Hat Trick
Hound of Hell (a/p/a "Beware of the Dog")
The Sleuth from Mars
A Change for the Hearse
Encore for a Killer
Trial By Darkness
Cadavers Don't Make a Fifth Column
Death of a Vampire
Death's Dark Angel
The Freak Show Murders
Market for Murder
The Corpse and the Candle
Madman's Holiday
Blue Murder
The Geezenstacks
Tell 'em, Pagliaccio
Whispering Death
Daymare
Death Insurance Payment
The Motive Goes Round and Round
Paradox Lost
1944
The Djinn Murder
Murder in Miniature
The Ghost of Riley
The Devil's Woodwinds
And the Gods Laughed
Nothing Sirius
The Yehudi Principle
Arena
The Jabberwocky Murders (incorporated into novel Night of the Jabberwock)
The Ghost Breakers
The Gibbering Night (incorporated into novel Night of the Jabberwock)
Murder While You Wait
The Bucket of Gems Case (a/p/a "Mr Smith Kicks the Bucket")
To Slay a Man About a Dog (a/p/a "Shaggy Dog Murders")
A Matter of Death
1945
Pi in the Sky
The Night the World Ended
The Waveries
No Sanctuary
Compliments of a Fiend (expanded into novel The Bloody Moonlight)
Ten Tickets to Hades (a/p/a "Murder in Ten Easy Lessons")
Murder-on-the-Hudson
1946
Dead Man's Indemnity (expanded into novel The Fabulous Clipjoint)
Placet is a Crazy Place
Song of the Dead
Obit for Obie (expanded into novel The Deep End)
Whistler's Murder
1947
A Voice Behind Him
Don't Look Behind You
Miss Darkness
1948
I'll Cut Your Throat Again, Kathleen
The Dead Ringer (expanded into novel The Dead Ringer)
Four Letter Word (a/p/a "The Greatest Poem Ever Written")
The Four Blind Men
What Mad Universe (expanded into novel What Mad Universe)
The Laughing Butcher
If Looks Could Kill (a/p/a "The Joke")
Cry Silence
Red-Hot and Hunted
Knock
1949
This Way Out
All Good Bems
Mouse First published in June 1949 in Thrilling Wonder Stories A man called Bill Wheeler sees a flying saucer land in Central Park in New York, in which only a dead mouse is found A series of assassinations of world leaders follow, and he begins to suspect that the alien has taken possession of his pet Siamese cat, Beautiful
Murder and Matilda
Come and Go Mad
Last Curtain (a/p/a "Cream of the Jest")
Crisis, 1999
Each Night He Died (a/p/a "Cain")
Letter to a Phoenix
The Cat from Siam
The Sinister Mr Dexter (a/p/a "House of Fear")
Deadly Weekend (expanded into novel The Screaming Mimi)
The Bloody Moonlight (condensed from novel The Bloody Moonlight)
Gateway to Darkness (a/p/a "Small World," incorporated into novel Rogue in Space)
1950
The Last Train
Death and Nine Lives
The Blind Lead
The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches
The Nose of Don Aristide
Vengeance Unlimited (a/p/a "Vengeance Fleet")
From These Ashes (a/p/a "Entity Trap")
The Undying Ones (a/p/a "Obedience")
Walk in the Shadows
The Frownzly Florgels
Gateway to Glory (incorporated into novel Rogue in Space)
The Last Martian
Honeymoon in Hell
Mitkey Rides Again
Night of the Jabberwock
Device of the Turtle (a/p/a "Six-Legged Swengali"; with Mack Reynolds)
1951
Dark Interlude (with Mack Reynolds)
Man of Distinction
The Switcheroo
The Weapon - published in the anthology The War Book (edited by James Sallis, 1969)
Cartoonist (a/p/a "Garrigan's Bems"; with Mack Reynolds)
Something Green
The Dome
A Word from Our Sponsor
The Gamblers (with Mack Reynolds)
The Hatchetman (with Mack Reynolds)
1952
Me and Flapjack and the Martians (with Mack Reynolds)
1953
Witness in the Dark
The Pickled Punks (expanded into novel Madball)
The Wench is Dead (expanded into novel The Wench is Dead)
The Little Lamb
Rustle of Wings
Hall of Mirrors
1954
Experiment
Sentry
Two Timer
Keep Out
Martians, Go Home (expanded into novel Martians, Go Home)
Naturally
Voodoo
Answer
Daisies
Pattern
Politeness
Preposterous
Reconciliation
Search
Sentence
Solipsist
1955
Blood
Millennium
Premiere of Murder
The Perfect Crime (a/p/a "Fatal Error")
The Letter (a/p/a "Dead Letter")
The First Time Machine
Too Far
Imagine
1956
Line of Duty (expanded into novel The Lenient Beast)
1957
Murder Set to Music
Expedition
Happy Ending (with Mack Reynolds)
1958
The Amy Waggoner Murder Case (expanded into novel One for the Road)
Jaycee
Unfortunately
Who Was That Blonde I Saw You Kill Last Night? (expanded into novel His Name was Death)
1959
The Late Lamented (expanded into novel The Late Lamented)
Nasty
Rope Trick
Night of the Psycho (expanded into novel Knock Three-One-Two)
1960
Abominable
Bear Possibility
The Mind Thing (never completed serialization later published as novel The Mind Thing)
Recessional
The Power (a/p/a "Rebound")
Earthmen Bearing Gifts
Granny's Birthday
The House
1961
Great Lost Discoveries I - Invisibility
Great Lost Discoveries II - Invulnerability
Great Lost Discoveries III - Immortality
The Hobbyist
Nightmare in Blue
Nightmare in Gray
Nightmare in Red
Nightmare in Time (a/p/a "The End")
Nightmare in Yellow
Of Time and Eustace Weaver ("The Short Happy Lives of E Weaver I-II-III")
Bright Beard
Cat Burglar
Death on the Mountain
Fish Story
Horse Race
Nightmare in Green
Nightmare in White
The Ring of Hans Carvel
Second Chance
Three Little Owls
Before She Kills
1962
Aelurophobe
Puppet Show
Fatal Facsimile
1963
Double Standard
Instant Novellas (a/p/a "20 Stories in 60 Lines")
It Didn't Happen
Tale of the Flesh Monger (a/p/a "Ten Percenter")
The Missing Actor
1964
Why, Benny, Why
1965
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (with Carl Onspaugh)
Collections of short stories
Space on My Hands (1951)
Angels and Spaceships (1954)
Honeymoon in Hell (1958)
Nightmares and Geezenstacks (1961)
Daymares (1968)
Paradox Lost, and Twelve Other Great Science Fiction Stories (1973)
The Best of Fredric Brown (1976)
From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown (2001)
Martians and Madness: The Complete SF Novels of Fredric Brown (2002)
Source and additional information: Fredric Brown