<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Fredric Brown (October 29, 1906 – March 11, 1972) wrote many sf and mystery novels and stories. His novels took different approaches than did most of the science fiction of the time. What Mad Universe (1949) sent the editor of a pulp sf magazine into the kind of future imagined by his readers; The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1951, published in the UK as Project Jupiter) featured an older protagonist and more characterization than expected; and Martians, Go Home (1955), perhaps Brown's best-known work, came up with an alternative to the two traditional space-invasion motifs—enlightenment and enslavement—with aliens who merely made pests of themselves. It also included bawdy humor and an actual sex scene, though hardly an exciting one.

His first published story, "Not Yet the End" (1941), set the tone for his work: a brief tale with a surprise ending. His best-known story collection, Angels and Spaceships (1954, published in paperback as Star Shine) included four fantasy (angels) and four science fiction (spaceships) stories, interspersed with nine single-page vignettes. The latter include "Politeness," a magnificent dirty joke reminding us that aliens will be alien, and "Answer," perhaps the most famous sf story ever, and one that has made it into the popular culture. (It's the one about the scientist who builds the biggest computer ever and asks it whether there is a God.)

Brown was also a successful mystery writer. His first novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint, won an Edgar Award, and other books, such as Night of the Jabberwock, Here Comes a Candle, and The Screaming Mimi, offer wit, suspense, and psychological insight.

Brown's sf has been reprinted by NESFA Press in two volumes: the short stories in From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown and the novels in Martians and Madness.

External Links

Fredric Brown in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Review of From These Ashes

To see specific information, such as individual novels, please click the Fredric Brown category link at the bottom of this article. To see other articles that reference Fredric Brown, please click the What Links Here tool in the toolbox at the bottom of this page.'