Fredric Brown (October 29, 1906 – March 11, 1972) is a science fiction author and mystery author who is best known for writing short stories with an humorous flair.

His first science fiction story, "Not Yet the End" was published in Captain Future in 1941. Many of the stories which followed are short, practically extended jokes rather than actual stories. Nevertheless, Brown wrote with an engaging style.

Humor carried over into his novels as well. His science fiction novel What Mad Universe (1949) plays with the clichéd conventions of the genre by throwing a pulp magazine editor into a parallel world based, not on the adventure stories he published, but rather on a child's image of those stories and the man who published them. Similarly, Martians, Go Home (1955) looks at a Martian invasion through the eyes of a science fiction author.

One of his most famous short stories, "Arena", was used as the basis for an episode of Star Trek of the same name.

Bibliography

General Fiction

• The Office (1958)

Mysteries

• The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), Edgar Award winner for best first novel
• The Dead Ringer (1948)
• A Plot for Murder (1948)
• The Bloody Moonlight (1949)
• The Screaming Mimi (1949), ISBN 0881844497
• Compliments of a Fiend (1950)
• Here Comes a Candle (1950)
• Night of the Jabberwock (1951)
• Death Has Many Doors (1951)
• The Far Cry (1951)
• We All Killed Grandma (1952)
• The Deep End (1953)
• Madball (1953)
• His Name Was Death (1954)
• The Wench Is Dead (1955)
• The Lenient Beast (1956), ISBN 0881844446
• One for the Road (1958)
• Knock Three-One-Two (1959)
• The Late Lamented (1959)
• The Murderers (1961)
• Five-Day Nightmare (1962)
• Mrs. Murphy's Underpants (1963)

Science Fiction

• What Mad Universe (1949)
• Space on My Hands (1953), ISBN 0899683320 (collection)
• The Lights in the Sky are Stars (1953), also published as Project Jupiter
• Angels & Spaceships (1954) (collection) also published as Star Shine
• Martians, Go Home (1955), which was the basis for an arguably below-par 1990 movie of the same name, starring Randy Quaid and Margaret Colin
• Rogue in Space (1957)
• The Mind Thing (1961)

A more recent collection of his short science fiction and fantasy is:

• From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown (2001), ISBN 1-886778-18-3

His science fiction novels are collected in:

• Martians and Madness (2002), ISBN 1-886778-17-5