Fredric Brown (1906–1972)

review of
Fredric Brown's Rogue in Space
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 21, 2018


Alright, Fredric Brown #5 for me. I love imagination. This has got it aplenty. & there's even a happy romantic ending when the turtle turns out to be cursed by the magician coffee blender & gets restored to her birthright as a rock. The PREMISE:

"Call him by no name, for he had no name. He did not know the meaning of name, or of any other word. He had no language, for he had never come into contact with show more any other living being in the billions of light-years of space that he had traversed from the far rim of the galaxy, in the billions of years that it had taken him to make that journey. For all he knew or had ever known he was the only living being in the universe.

"He had not been born, for there was no other like him. He was a piece of rock a little over a mile in diameter, floating free in space. There are myriads of such small worlds but they are dead rock, inanimate matter. He was aware, and an entity. An accidental combination of atoms into molecules had made him a living being. To our present knowledge such an accident has happened only twice in infinity and eternity; the other such event took place in the primeval ooze of Earth, where carbon atoms formed sentient life that multiplied and evolved." - p 1

Yes, the idea of having a rock be sentient appeals to me. Yes, I find it funny that the main humanoid character is a man named "Crag" & that he's a misogynist:

"He sat on the cot and waited. Why did it have to be a woman who'd been assigned to help him? He hated women, all women. And this one had dared to sound amused, and condescending." - p 18

Of course, this being the future n'at, advertising has gotten to be even more intrusive:

"Vocoads blared in his ears. Eat at Stacey's, wear Trylon, visit the House of Strange Pleasures, use Cobb's dentifrice, visit Madam Blaine's, drink Hotsy, use Safe and be safe, travel Panam, buy, drink, visit, use, buy." - p 23

You can tell this isn't really the future b/c an ad uses the word "dentifrice". In the real future, all ads will serve the purpose of dumbing down the population thru vocabulary reduction. All presidents will be named Rump. All musical groups will be "bands", all forms of music will be "songs", all writing will be "stories", all lies will be "news". To quote from an interview w/ ME:

"People "are what they eat" - if one is limited by a narrow nutritional range, one is also limited by a narrow vocabulary range. CONTROL, a subject long since cliché to me but still important anyway, manifests itself by the narrow nutrition of the vocabulary of its subject body. Bombard the populace with a small vocabulary & said populace will have a limited range of interpretive tools, a large private library can become "hoarding" rather than a sign of profound research. Rebels subvert the narrowness of vocabulary with meaning-reversals (bad = good), deliberate 'mispronunciations' that become signifiers of local difference (n'at), & puns.. AND, of course, a bigger, more personal, hand-picked, mind-picked vocabulary." - http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/InterviewAPTE14.html

Crag doesn't want to display his family jewels to the enemy, woman — but, HEY!, this is the 23rd century & such prudishness is a thing of the past. That's how we know this is the 23rd century b/c it's definitely NOT a thing of the past here in the 21st:

"Crag growled. "If she's got to stay, give me something to put on. I won't be looked at that way."

"Oliver's face stiffened a bit but he said, "There are robes in that closet. But you're being ridiculous, Crag. These are not Victorian times. This is the twenty-third century."" - p 33

1837 to 1901 is called Victorian era b/c that was when Queen Victoria was alive. The speaker implying the prudishness of this time has obviously never read The Pearl. Crag is being ridiculous, tho. Even if he has a woody it's proof that he can be hired as a dowsing rod or match maker. All kinds of exciting things happen & the next thing you know Crag is the 1st other sentient being that the asteroid communicates w/. That's way more special than losing one's virginity:

""The gravity is artificial, Crag," said the voice inside his mind. "About the strength of that of your native planet. Would you prefer a lesser one, like that of the fourth planet, the one you think of as Mars?"" - p 88

In the future, all smart & sexy phones will be able to act like dimmer switches on local gravity. If you pay the $40,000 for the app version that just came out yesterday but is obsolete before you can even download it you can show off to the anonymous person you're having sex in the shower w/ by making the water stop falling at nipple level. Of course, the novelty will wear off before yr partner can even switch the orgasm toggle.. if they care to bother.

""The Luxor regrets that you did not care for the girls. Or for the bellboy, in the ordinary way. But we deem it a privilege to serve guests with extraordinary tastes. We can supply children of either sex, elderly people . . . If, as your treatment of the boy might indicate, you prefer your satisfaction through the infliction of pain, we have a choice selection of very special equipment. And people in all categories who are willing, at a price, to submit to—ah—whatever you prefer."

""Any category?" Crag asked.

""Any, Sir. The Luxor prides itself on being able to please."

"Crag said, "I like hotel managers. You might drop up yourself sometimes. And bring a corkscrew."" - p 106

This novel was published in 1957. "Luxor": "As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open-air museum", as the ruins of the temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor stand within the modern city. Immediately opposite, across the River Nile, lie the monuments, temples and tombs of the West Bank Necropolis, which includes the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor ) Readers might think that the use of "Luxor" as a hotel name that caters to kinky tastes is inspired by the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. However, that hotel wasn't built until 25 yrs after the bk. This is PROOF that SF predicts the future:

"Ground was broken for the Luxor in March 1992 and the resort officially opened at 4 AM on October 13, 1993, to a crowd of 10,000 people. When it opened, the pyramid, which cost $375 million to build, was the tallest building on the strip and contained 2,526 rooms and a 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) casino. The resort was financed by “petty cash” earned from other Circus Circus Enterprises properties and did not include any outside financial investors. The hotel's pyramid is similar in size to the Red Pyramid and Bent Pyramid of Egypt.

"A theater and two additional towers totaling 2,000 rooms were added in 1998 for $675 million.When the resort opened, it featured the Nile River Tour which was a river ride that carried guests to different parts of the pyramid and passed by pieces of ancient artwork on a river that encircled the casino. The casino also featured King Tut’s Tomb and Museum, a duplicate of King Tutankhamen’s tomb as found in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt.

"On May 7, 2007, a vehicle exploded in a Luxor Hotel parking garage due to a home-made pipe bomb which left one dead. Local authorities believe the victim, a 24-year-old employee at Nathan's Famous hot dog restaurant in the Luxor food court, was the intended target. The hotel was not evacuated, operations continued uninterrupted, and the parking structure as well as the casino were undamaged. Two men were found guilty of the bombing, and in 2010 were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

"In July 2007, owner MGM Resorts International announced plans to thoroughly renovate the Luxor, spending $300 million to remodel 80% of Luxor's public areas, removing much of the ancient Egyptian theme and replacing it with more adult-oriented and modern lounges, restaurants and clubs."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_Las_Vegas

One doesn't have to search far in SF for imaginings of harsh drugs of the future. The question is: Who'll use them 1st? The Mafia or the government? I'd put my money on the government:

"There was no future in selling nephthin because it didn't build any repeat trade; you could sell only one dose to a customer because it killed him within twenty hours. It put him into a state of ecstacy for a while that was more intense by a hundred times than any other drug could achieve, and then put him in a berserker rage in which he went out and killed as many people as he could before being killed himself. If he wasn't killed, if he was caught and restrained instead, he died just the same—but still in ecstacy, no matter what was done to him." - p 116

I believe in a healthy drug-free lifestyle of berserkerism. Far be it from me to ask the obvious question but Why not just get the planet to do it for you?:

"["]We need living quarters. That ship's too crowded and has too little privacy for five people to live in long. It's crowded, even for four. We've got to start on some adobe huts—small ones will do at first; we can build decent ones later."" - p 158

Eventually, they'll build adobe photo shops. Then comes the money shot. Amen. show less

A Plot for Murder by Fredric Brown was a fun read. Imagine being a radio script writer and having a batch of possible murder mystery plots to suggest a new radio program and then opening a newspaper to learn that one of your plots has been used to carry out a real murder. Coincidence maybe, until a second death also copies one of your plots. Bill Tracy needs to stay one stop ahead of the cops till he figure this out. An aside - I love the pulp fiction covers, they almost never have anything show more to do with the plot! Well Tracy does carry a female, but she's fully clothed and only drunk (well maybe she's dead.) Such fun. Exactly what pulp fiction should be... it was never meant to be literary, it was just a good read. None of it could be considered politically correct in this day and age, but I'm willing to say that's the norm for the period and just enjoy the story. show less

Willy Griff is a struggling actor trying to make a go of it in Hollywood. He lives in a room in a boarding house filled with similarly marginal characters and nags his agent for work. He does have a married woman he's been meeting in motel rooms, at least until her husband visits him to demand he stop. Which is when Willy comes up with the idea of killing the husband so that he and Doris can continue their relationship and have her husband's money. So a banal reason to commit an show more uninteresting crime. The plans become more complex as time passes. Willy is determined to not get caught and he knows that having been Doris's lover makes him an automatic suspect. Then a solution presents itself, it's one we've seen before, but the way Brown puts the story together makes for a highly entertaining read. What makes this noir sing is how Brown writes the characters, none of whom you'd want to meet, and for the absolute amazing jaw-dropping ending. show less

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

When I think of Fredric Brown I think of fantastical SF with quirky characters and wild happenings, so I didn't hesitate any when I saw this one up for grabs in Netgalley. Imagine my surprise when I actually acquired a mystery/thriller instead!

Though, to be honest, I didn't quite realize it at first because I was just reading it solely because I like the author and the way it began, with a heavy-drinking newspaperman who's absolutely in love with Lewis show more Carroll's better fiction and the theory that Caroll (the real man behind the pseudonym, the mathematician) hadn't written his works so much as he had proved and visited those realms in reality and he was just reporting the facts.

Our favorite drunkard begins his quest to find the Jabberwocky. :)

It starts out like a great adventure tale where the hero is super blitzed and yet tries so hard to succeed in this damnably difficult quest, driving around (mind you, this is 1950,) breaking into places, picking up weird Carroll friends, and generally freaking himself out with all the strange coincidences cropping up all over the place.

I admit that it took me a bit to get into the book, but by the midpoint, I was totally hooked and kinda freaked about the social weirdness of THIS MUCH HARD LIQUOR. :)

The second half of the novel keeps him quite as blitzed as the first, but this time he's embroiled in murders and he's apparently the prime perp. Again, I'm amazed he's survived this long even when he was just roaming the countryside looking for an imaginary beasty, and yet it gets better.

Because Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was, after all, a great mathematician, and was able to do some pretty wild stuff with his wild maths, it turns out that his number-one-fan is able to intuitively grasp the weird-ass plot against him and solve the case. (Also while drunk.) :)

What can I say? I'm pretty stoked. This novel snuck up on me and I lost my head snickity-snack. :) Vorpal blade! :) show less