# Frederic Brown Ebooks **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 19, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266 "2012-04-19T13:23:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/1 "2012-04-19T13:23:46Z")
I was turned on to Frederic Brown mysteries in the “favorite mystery writers” thread, and found a link to _The Fabulous Clipjoint._ Alas, the others in the series _Dead Ringer, Bloody Moonlight_, etc are not to be found on Gutenberg. Has anyone found his novels on line? He also wrote science fiction. His short story _Arena_ was used for a Star Trek episode of the same name. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2012, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/2 "2012-04-19T13:43:44Z")
Brown was the master of the short short story; his “Nightmare in Yellow” is one of the nicest little twist stories ever. There’s also “Rebound” and “Knock.” If you wrote stories under 1000 words, you were always competing with him. His [Martian’s Go Home](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0671721208/ref=dp_image_text_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books) (love the cover of this edition) was a classic of humorous SF. It was made into a terrible movie. **What Mad Universe** is also very good and highly influential. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2012, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/3 "2012-04-19T13:55:58Z")
Fredric Brown was a master of the elliptic. I remember buying a copy of his short story collection _Nightmares and Geezenstacks_ in the 60s and becoming an instant fan. His writing is still in copyright though so I doubt much of it would be available freely on the net. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2012, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/4 "2012-04-19T14:05:06Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > His writing is still in copyright though so I doubt much of it would be available freely on the net. A first edition of one of the mysteries is going for $300.00 on Ebay. Most are $30.00 ☹ ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/5 "2012-04-19T14:26:41Z")
I mentioned him in the “favorite novels” thread. He’s long been a favorite of mine. > **[Let's talk about our favorite mystery novels](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=648587)** > > My personal favorites are the Lord Peter Wimsey and Philip Marlowe novels. I love Sherlock Holmes too though techically most of those are short stories rather than novels. Most contemporary mystery stuff does nothing for me I am afraid but I am open... **thudlow Boink** observed that two of his others I mentioned, **The Screaming Mimi** and **The Night of the Jabberwock** were abailable as inexpensive e-books on Amazon. Not free, but still not bad. Fredric (note the spelling – the OP got it wrong, as most people do) Brown wrote excellent , deceptively simple short stories and short novels, with incredibly clever twists. I recommend al of them. He tried to get his stuff turned into movies in Hollywood, and succeeded with a couple of his mysteries, but I don’t think anything of his has been adapted well. _The Screaming Mimi_ was turned into a movie with Gypsy Rose Lee (!), but I understand it was substantially altered. So was the version called “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage”. I’d love to see it played straight – today, you could, whereas 1950s restrictions limited what they could do. The Star Trek episode “Arena” was nominally based on his story, but it’s a case where they were already writing the script when someone noted the similarity and bought the rights. It’s not really an adaptation of his story – in Brown’s story the combatant’s couldn’t even tough (there was a force field between them), had much more limited resources in an artuificial environmrent, and the ending is completely different. I’d love to make a film of it myself. As noted, _Martians, go Home_ was turned into an abysmal movie. Here’s his iMDB page: > **[Fredric Brown | Writer](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0113582/)** > > Known for: Star Trek, The Hobbyist, Tales of Tomorrow I have a lot of his mysteries and SF/Fantasy novels, but they’re all hard to come by. Until about 20 years ago or so you could count on at least one of his books still being bin print, but now I no longer see them even in used bookstores. This new accessibility via e-books is a good thing. Brown actually was a Carnie for a while, and Carnivals feature in several of his stories – _The Freak Show Murders, The Pickled Punks_ (which was expanded into the novel _Madball_), and his first, Edgar-winning novel _The Fabulous Clipjoint_. he eventually wrote a series of novels with his hero and his uncle from that book, Ed and Am Hunter, the first few of which were set in carnivals. Robert A. Heinlein was an admirer, and I have no doubt that the Carnival scenes from _Stranger in a Strange Land_ were inspired by Brown’s carnival stories – Fredric Brown is one of the three writers Heinlein acknowledged on the dedication page of that novel. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2012, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/6 "2012-04-19T15:01:15Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > in Brown’s story the combatant’s couldn’t even tough Typos happen to us all. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2012, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/7 "2012-04-19T15:08:03Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Typos happen to us all. 🙂 Yeah, it’s tough. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/8 "2012-04-19T15:29:56Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > (snip)The Star Trek episode “Arena” was nominally based on his story, but it’s a case where they were already writing the script when someone noted the similarity and bought the rights. It’s not really an adaptation of his story – in Brown’s story the combatant’s couldn’t even tough (there was a force field between them), had much more limited resources in an artuificial environmrent, and the ending is completely different. (snip) Well yes, but who could have predicted that the captain would be able to fashion a rudimentary lathe? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/9 "2012-04-20T04:05:54Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Typos happen to us all. 🙂 " See “The Angelic Angleworm.” ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/10 "2012-04-20T04:32:54Z")
[NESFA](http://www.store.nesfa.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?) has two compilations, one of his SF short stories and one of his SF novels. I don’t have the novel compilation, but I do have the short stories, and the anthology has given me many hours of good reading. They’re a little under 30 bucks each, which is actually pretty reasonable for what you get. These are dead tree hardbacks, I don’t know if you can get them in ebook versions. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/11 "2012-04-20T11:40:11Z")
Thanks, Lynn. The sci fi is good, and I especially want to rest of the Fabulous Clip Joimt series. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/12 "2012-04-20T11:55:58Z")
I’m not sure if the Fabulous Clip Joint qualifies as SF. But as I said, the SF short story compilation is very, very good. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/13 "2012-04-20T12:10:53Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > [NESFA](http://www.store.nesfa.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?) has two compilations, one of his SF short stories and one of his SF novels. I don’t have the novel compilation, but I do have the short stories, and the anthology has given me many hours of good reading. They’re a little under 30 bucks each, which is actually pretty reasonable for what you get. These are dead tree hardbacks, I don’t know if you can get them in ebook versions. I was fortunate enough to get these when the SF Book Club was offering them for considerably less than $30 each. There is also an [omnibus volume](http://www.amazon.com/Hunter-Hunted-Frederic-Mystery-Library/dp/0971818509/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334923562&sr=1-8) of the first four Ed and Am novels (including _Clipjoint_), but it’s neither cheap (also $30), complete (supposedly there’s a second volume coming of the rest of the series), nor available in electronic format. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/14 "2012-04-20T12:44:15Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I’m not sure if the Fabulous Clip Joint qualifies as SF. But as I said, the SF short story compilation is very, very good. It’s not. Brown wrote excellent mysteries as well as SF and Fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/15 "2012-04-20T12:55:54Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > It’s not. Brown wrote excellent mysteries as well as SF and Fantasy. Yeah. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/16 "2012-04-20T23:17:39Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I mentioned him in the “favorite novels” thread. He’s long been a favorite of mine. > > [Let's talk about our favorite mystery novels - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=648587) > > **thudlow Boink** observed that two of his others I mentioned, **The Screaming Mimi** and **The Night of the Jabberwock** were abailable as inexpensive e-books on Amazon. Not free, but still not bad. > . I really liked “Jabberwock” (didn’t like “Mimi” quite so much). I also liked the omnibus of his mystery/thriller stories (“The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches” and “Murder in 10 Easy Lessons” stuck with me). ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2012, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/17 "2012-04-21T00:43:03Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > I really liked “Jabberwock” (didn’t like “Mimi” quite so much). I also liked the omnibus of his mystery/thriller stories (“The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches” and > “Murder in 10 Easy Lessons” stuck with me). **Where did you find them without paying a million dollars on Ebay?!?!** Sorry. Ahem. Gee, Andy, where did you find them? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/18 "2012-04-21T22:27:25Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > **Where did you find them without paying a million dollars on Ebay?!?!** > Sorry. > > Ahem. > > Gee, Andy, where did you find them? I found “Jabberwock” on a library shelf (at the small town library in my college town) back in the 1980s. I found “Mimi” in paperback at a bookstore for a reasonable price the last time I was put into print (in the 1990s). “The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches” and “Murder in 10 Easy Steps” were collected in an omnibus of Brown’s mysteries/thrillers called “Carnival of Crime” which I found in the Howard County Maryland Library in 1990 (it’s not on the shelf there now) - you might be able to get it through interlibrary loan. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2012, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/19 "2012-04-21T23:56:14Z")
Thanks, Andy! ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2012, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frederic-brown-ebooks/619266/20 "2012-04-22T20:34:49Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Thanks, Andy! No problem