The Collection (2 page)
This eBook was
created from a number of different sources:
scans of magazines, paperbacks, hardbacks
converted .pdf files
unformatted .rtf files
basic formatted .doc files
As
such, I took a little more liberties than usual with
the reformatting, editing of the spelling and the occasional “layout &
design” question. I absolutely believe it to be an imperative to preserve the
author's original text (i.e. words, spelling etc.); to help preserve the sense
and atmosphere of the time-period in which these works were written.
On occasion, I did encounter some spellings inconsistent
with Brown's usual style and some that were both distracting and very
questionable as to whether they were the author's or misspellings/errors of
some proofreader overlooked during the original publication of the stories
contained within this eBook. As a result, I made some corrections to the
original text. Please note, these adjusments were kept to a bare minimum.
I also re-formatted each story to be the best possible
reading experience on your eReader. No other adjustments of the author’s original
work have been made.
I present this eBook in two parts. Part One is a collection
of Fredric Brown’s science fiction stories, and Part Two is his crime stories.
I based my classification of these stories in part, of William F Nolan’s
in-depth look at Fredric Brown’s work, published in 1984.
To give you a sense of who Fredric Brown was and the scope
of his talent, I include Robert Bloch’s very well written and
informative”essay” as an introduction; unedited and in its entirety.
For those interested in the source material from which
these stories were culled, please take a look at the “Source Material” I
included at the end of this eBook.
Finally, it is my sincerest desire for you to have an
enjotable reading experience of some of the best classic science fiction and
crime stories written.
Flyboy707
September, 2011
I hope they don't misspell his name.
At the height of his acclaim, with more than two dozen books
and over three hundred short stories to his credit, certain careless critics
and reviewers were still referring to "Frederic" or even
"Frederick" Brown.
While their comments were generally (and deservedly) laudatory,
he resented the spelling errors. He was a stickler for accuracy, and he took
justifiable pride in his correct byline—Fredric Brown.
To his friends, of course, he was always "Fred."
I first met him in Milwaukee, during the early forties. Born
in Cincinnati in 1907, a graduate of Hanover College in Indiana, he'd knocked
about—and been knocked about—in a variety of occupations, ranging from office
boy to carnival worker.
At the time we became acquainted he was a proofreader for
the
Milwaukee Journal
and had settled down in a modest home on
Twenty-Seventh Street with his first wife, Helen, and two bright young sons. The
household also included a Siamese cat named Ming Tah, a wooden flutelike
instrument called a recorder, a chess set, and a typewriter.
Fred played with the cat, played on the recorder, and played
at chess. But the typewriter was not there for fun and games.
Fred wrote short stories. He wrote them in his spare time
because he needed job security to support a family. And he sold them to the
pulp magazines because they offered the best available market for a beginner's
work. He turned out detective stories, mysteries, fantasy, and science
fiction. Nostalgia buffs pay high prices today for magazines featuring his name
on the cover, but at the time he was merely one of hundreds of contributors
competing for the cent a word or two cents a word offered by publishers of
pulps.
Diminutive in stature, fine-boned, with delicate features
partially obscured by horn-rimmed glasses and a wispy mustache, Fred had a
vaguely professorial appearance. His voice was soft, his grooming immaculate. But
woe betide the casual acquaintance who ventured to compete with him in an
all-night session of poker-playing or alcoholic libation! Nor was there any
hope for an opponent who dared to engage him in a duel of verbal wit—words
were his natural weapons, and his pun mightier than the sword. When not
speculating upon the idiosyncrasies of idiom—why, for example, do people prefer
a shampoo to the real poo?—he spent his time searching for excruciating story
titles. I recall him once paying ten dollars for the right to use one suggested
by a friend for a mystery yarn; the resultant story was called
I Love You
Cruelly.
The shameless wretch responsible for this offering was, like
Fred, a member of Allied Authors, a writers
'
group which met
regularly at the Milwaukee Press Club. To many of his associates the poker
games and bar facilities constituted the major attractions, but despite Fred's
prowess in these areas, he was deadly serious about plot discussions and story
techniques. He acquired a New York agent, and on his own he kept abreast of
writing markets, word-rates, and contracts.
There was no mistaking his ambition, nor his qualifications.
Impelled by lifelong intellectual curiosity, he was an omnivorous and
discerning reader; his interests embraced music, the theater, and the
developments of science. Wordplay was more than a pastime, for he was a
grammatical purist. The
mot juste
and the
double entendre
were
grist for his mill, but he was equally fascinated by the peculiarities of
ordinary speech and could reproduce it in his work with reportorial accuracy.
Like most of us who found an outlet for our wares in the pulps of that period,
Fred wrote his share of undistinguished stories featuring the cardboard
characterization and stilted dialogue which seemed to satisfy editorial
demands. From time to time, however, he broke new ground. And finally he
tackled a novel.
The Fabulous Clipjoint
was published in 1941. It drew
raves from the critics and won the coveted Edgar Allan Poe Award from the
Mystery Writers of America. His second mystery novel,
The Dead Ringer,
was
equally successful and established him as a leading figure in the field. In
1948 his innovative
What Mad Universe
appeared in
Startling Stories.
Expanded
for hardcover publication a year later, it brought Fred deserved fame as a
science-fiction writer.
Meanwhile his personal circumstances underwent a drastic
change. There was an amicable divorce; he married for a second time a year or
so later. And, encouraged by the reception of his books, he began to turn out
mystery novels at an accelerated rate. But he didn't forsake his proofreading
job—a true child of the Depression came to learn the value of security and
seniority, and Fred was not about to abandon a steady income for the uncertainty
of a free-lance writer
'
s career.
During this period we spent a great deal of time together,
in professional discussion of his projected novels and private explorations of
his more intimate decisions. One day he came to me all aglow; he
'
d
just received a phone call from a prominent editorial figure in New York who
headed up one of the leading pulp-magazine chains. Would Fred consider taking
over a portion of the editing assignment for seventy-five hundred a year?
Granted, the figure doesn
'
t sound impressive
today. But if you'll hop into the nearest available time machine and transport
yourself back a quarter of a century, you
'
ll discover that
seventy-five hundred dollars was a respectable annual income; roughly the
equivalent of twenty thousand dollars today. It was far more than Fred was
earning, or hoped to earn, at his newspaper job—and if he could augment the sum
by writing novels on the side, it would exceed his wildest expectations. Fred
talked it over with me, and with other friends; he talked it over with his
wife, Beth. Then he quit his job and went to New York, where he learned there'd
been a slight misunderstanding during his telephone conversation.
The stipend quoted by the editorial director had not been seventy-five
hundred a year; it was seventy-five dollars a week.
A dark cloud settled over Fred
'
s life.
Fortunately, he soon discovered the silver lining.
In a few short years, the imposing chain of pulp magazines
he'd hoped to head up had disappeared forever. And in their place was a
mushrooming market of paperbacks, competing for the privilege of reprinting
hardcover mysteries and science fiction. Foreign editions began to command
more-respectable earnings, television was purchasing stories for adaptation,
and the new men
'
s magazines, led by
Playboy,
paid higher and
higher rates for short stories.
Through fortuitous circumstance, Fredric Brown found himself
in the right place at the right time. Critically, commercially, and above all
creatively, he was a success.
A series of outstanding and unusual mysteries issued from
his typewriter—now clattering away in Taos, New Mexico. Fred had acquired a car
and learned to drive; wanderlust, plus the realization that he suffered from
respiratory problems, led him to the desert area.
Full-time writing taxed even Fred's ingenuity. He was becoming
increasingly renowned for story-twists and surprise endings, both in mysteries
and science fiction, and such innovations didn't come easily. When he was stuck
for an idea, he took to the road for a few days—not as a driver, but as a
passenger on a bus. Destinations were unimportant; he'd discovered that the
sheer monotony of the trip itself stimulated him in devising plots. Some of his
best work came to him via Greyhound express.
And not all of that work was dependent upon gimmickry or
outwitting the reader. As a mature writer he drew heavily upon his variegated
personal experience to bring the stamp of authenticity to his subject matter.
And he wasn't content to rest on his laurels as a latter-day O. Henry; he took
the risk of innovation.
Innovation, in the science fiction of the fifties, was
generally considered synonymous with advanced extrapolation of orthodox
scientific theory, or the extension of contemporary social phenomena. Thus it
was that stories involving antigravity and anti-matter were hailed as daring
concepts, and fictional constructs of future society governed by advertising
agencies or insurance companies seemed to be the ultimate in speculative
expertise.
Characteristically, Fred chose to turn his back to the
trend. Quirky individualist that he was, he wrote
The Lights in the Sky Are
Stars.
It was one of his best—and bravest—books.
Today an entire generation of younger writers has emerged to
tell it like it is, or at least like they
think
it is. Their speculative
fiction is peopled with angry young anti-Establishment figures, drug-users, and
ambisextrous characters who freely express philosophical profundity in
four-letter words. One does not necessarily question the sincerity or
dedication of such writers. But the cold truth is that they are not quite as
courageous as they profess to be. Today they are merely setting down in print
the speech and attitudes which had already surfaced amongst young militants and
street people a full decade ago. Rather than formulating a future based on
their own imaginative abilities, their work is merely an echo of a past
reality.
The Lights in the Sky Are Stars
doesn
'
t
fall into this category. It didn't deal with kinky sex, and its characters
spoke in ordinary dialogue rather than verbalized
graffiti.
Nevertheless,
it was a daring work.
Appearing at the zenith of the Eisenhower administration, at
a time when science-fiction writers as well as their readership idealized and
idolized the launching of the Space Program and the brave young men who
pioneered it, Fred's book deliberately dumped on dreams and offered, instead, a
raw reality.
In an era when virtually all science-fiction heroes were
young —and the few
"
middle-aged
"
exceptions
were presented as grizzled veterans of thirty-five or thereabouts—Fred
'
s
protagonist was a man well over fifty. On top of that, he was physically handicapped,
and yet (a horror unthinkable to youthful science-fiction readers of the time)
he was sexually active. Moreover, the plot of Fred's novel dealt not with the
gung-ho glories of space projects, but with the machinations of politicians and
the military-industrial complex bent on subverting such efforts to their own
ends.
This was heresy with a vengeance. It was also, I submit, far
more
"
realistic
"
than any tale of a hippie
transplanted
virgo intacto
to a future society bearing a suspicious
resemblance to present-day New York City during a garbage strike.
Oddly enough, the book was well-received. It won no awards,
nor did it score a breakthrough to the best-seller lists, but today this novel
deserves recognition for what its author achieved by way of honest statement.
Yes, Fred was an innovator. Along about this time he ventured
another experiment. Safely ensconced as a leading mystery-writer, with assured
contacts and contracts in the field, and rapidly rising in the science-fiction
field, he decided to write a mainstream novel. And in the face of his
reputation for unusual plot angles, colorful characters and off-beat humor, he
would write a "straight" book; really telling it like it is at a time
before the phrase had even been invented.
