Fredric Brown Revisited - Appendix N Revisited, Part 4

Fredric Brown Revisited 

Appendix N Revisited, Part 4

     Hello, and welcome to the fourth installment of my "Appendix N Revisited" project! As I mentioned previously, in the course of this project, I want to revisit the classics of fantasy fiction, weird fiction, and science fiction that made up "Appendix N" to the original Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax, both to explore their influence on my Hobby (RPGs) and my own writing and conception of fantasy fiction. The fourth installment focuses on Fredric Brown, a master of the short story form and the science fiction genre. If you have never read Fredric Brown's stories and wish to avoid spoilers, you should stop reading at this point, as I shall be discussing the his stories in some detail.

     Fredric Brown (1906-1972) was a science fiction author known for both his humor and his mastery of the form of the short story. From personal experience, I can attest that short stories are tremendously difficult to do well, and I find myself rarely able to do one in fewer than 8 pages or so. Many of Brown's stories are merely a page or two; some are just a paragraph or two - and they're good! I have immense respect for his skill with the form. The humorous nature of many of his stories makes them stand out a bit from more mainstream science fiction - Brown loves to end a story with a twist, especially a humorous one!

Ease of Availability

     Because Brown wrote short stories, it is possible to acquire several of them for free on Amazon Kindle individually. However, for purposes of this project I wanted more than simply a page or two of reading, so I bought Amazon's Fredric Brown Megapack, which is about $0.99 on Kindle as of this writing. It contains 32 (!!! Not 33 as advertised!) of Brown's short pieces. There is a second megapack I may explore in the future that has another 27 of Brown's stories (allegedly!), it is also $0.99 on Amazon Kindle as of this writing. I was unable to find an audiobook version of the collections, though I think there are individual stories available in audiobook format. 

Summary and Commentary - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!

     This time I am really serious - Brown wrote very short stories, the enjoyment of which often depends upon not seeing the humorous twist at the very end. If you read my comments, it will almost certainly spoil the stories for you. If you want to avoid spoilers, stop reading now. I debated about whether or not to even discuss the plots of individual stories, but I decided that it really is important to see how his mind worked, and how that kind of thinking influenced Gary Gygax and others (including myself, of course), and for that, you need plots!

     OK, assuming you are ready to continue, here are the 32 (!!!) stories in this "33-story" megapack:

• "Arena" - A highly modified version of this was used for the script for the Star Trek (original series) episode of the same name (Kirk vs. the Gorn! One of my favorite episodes, and in my opinion, one of the most memorable!). In this story, our protagonist, Carson, is a scout in a war - the human race is in a death-struggle with a race they simply call the "Outsiders." The Outsiders are ready to invade the Solar System, and the Earth Armada awaits near Pluto's orbit. It is the final showdown between two very evenly matched fleets and races; the outcome will literally decided the fate of humanity. Carson was in a one-man scout craft and spotted an enemy scout - they engage, and something goes wrong. The next thing Carson knows, he wakes up naked in a completely alien environment (hot, waterless, blue sand). The Outsider pilot is there too, separated by an invisible barrier. It is a red, rolling thing that extrudes appendages when needed - he ends up calling it the Roller. Carson is telepathically contacted by his captor, an Entity who explain that his race were once like the humans and Outsiders. Both those races have the potential to evolve into beings like the Entity - but the fact that they cannot co-exist threatens to derail everything. The war between them will stunt the growth of both races - "One must survive. One must progress, and evolve . . . So I shall intervene now. I shall destroy one fleet completely without loss to the other. One civilization will thus survive . . ." And thus the Arena. "Brain-power and courage will be more important than strength." So the fate of the entire human race rests on whether Carson can defeat the Roller in a battle that is as much a battle of wits (e.g. how to get through the invisible barrier?) as it is physical. The story portrays this struggle in all its excruciating particulars, and the fate of humanity . . . [One can easily modify this "champions fight the battle for their armies" theme to most fantasy RPGs, as it is an ancient idea, after all. The Romans had their Horatii face the Curiatii, and so forth . . .]

• "Experiment" - Professor Johnson has created a small, experimental time machine. It can send objects weighing less than 3 lb. 5 oz. into the past or future up to 12 minutes or less. He uses little brass cubes for his experiment. Sending to the future is easily provable - the cube disappears and reappears a few minutes later. Sending to the past is harder to prove - the object disappears and instantly reappears wherever he chose to place it in the past, but how do they know that is what happened? A colleague asks what would happen if he chose not to place it there. Would that not be a paradox? "I had not thought of it, and it will be very interesting to try. Very well, I shall not . . ." There was no paradox at all. The cube remained. But the entire rest of the universe, professors and all, vanished!

• "Keep Out" - The protagonists of this story are 10 year old children raised on Mars to become the first natives of Mars. They have been treated with Adaptine, a wonder drug that will allow creatures to adapt to almost any environment. So while the scientists must live in glassite domes with life support, the children are acclimatized to Mars' atmosphere and environment. They have grown fur for the cold, and huge lungs to handle the thin air, etc. The program is the result of more than 50 years of failure to colonize Mars. But this is it . . . tomorrow the children "graduate" . . . But the protagonists agree that tomorrow is the final day - "We will kill the teachers and the other Earthmen among us before we go forth. They do not suspect, so it will be easy. They don't know how much we hate them, how ugly humans seem to us. We will kill them and smash all the domes . . . This is our planet and we want no aliens. Keep off!"

• "The Geezenstacks" - One of the few Fredric Brown stories in this collection that is more supernatural horror than sci-fi, this one is about a family called the Walters. Little Aubrey Walters gets a package of 5 wax dolls from her Uncle Richard, who acquired them under rather mysterious circumstances. She loves to play with the dolls, and she calls them the "Geezenstacks" . . . but her father Sam slowly begins to realize that whatever pretend games she plays with the Geezenstacks happen to the Walters family within a week - sometimes within 24 hours. He grows increasingly worried about this, and catches Aubrey when she was about to play funeral for one of them! He makes her promise not to pretend that anything bad happens to any of the Geezenstacks! They have to get rid of them . . . they end up giving the wax dolls away to an old hag who asks, "Mine to keep? Forever?" Later, they get in a taxi and are taken away by a driver who apparently turns out to be the hag, who now apparently owns them . . . 

• "Hall of Mirrors" - The first Fredric Brown story I ever read! A 25-year-old man awakens in the dark. A moment ago, as far as he can remember, he was outside in the sun. The structure in which he finds himself is strange, and he thinks it is the future. He finds a note from himself. It says that he lived another 50 years he cannot remember, and spent 30 years studying time. He invented a time machine, but it doesn't do what he expected. It restores a person, body and mind, to the point they were at up to 50 years before. He has used it on himself, become his 25-year-old self again in the future. Now he has responsibility to either destroy the machine, or live out the next 50 years and then use it again, because the world is not ready for it. He knows he cannot bring himself to destroy it, so he will live 50 more years and then "reset," then again, and again, until the world is ready, like an endless hall of mirrors . . .

• "Earthmen Bearing Gifts" - Martians are awaiting the arrival of Earthmen. They are a dying race, and want to pass on something of their culture to Earthmen, their only hope. The last Martians alive are all gathered into one city. They can telepathically read the minds of scientists on Earth, and know that Earthmen are coming soon. First, they will detonate an atomic device on Mars for spectroscopic analysis - but this does not worry the Martians, for that will be a thousand miles away. Then, the Earthmen plan to land on Mars. So the Martians eagerly await. The scene switches to later on Earth, where scientists are conducting a spectroscopic examination of their atomic detonation on Mars . . . it was off target by only a thousand miles . . .

• "Imagine" - More of a prose poem than anything, a mediation on all the supernatural fantastic imaginings of humanity's past, the science fiction imaginings of humanity's future (which is actually becoming real), wonders equally fantastic, and then the fact that you are a tiny bit of matter in a vast universe that has the distinction of knowing that you are a tiny bit of matter in a vast universe . . . 

• "It Didn't Happen" - A man named Lorenz Brown is arrested for murder. He tells his lawyer an interesting story. He accidentally killed someone, and they completely vanished from reality - no one could even remember that person. So he killed some more on purpose, and they too vanished from reality. So he thought that he was the only real person. But the girl he is now imprisoned for killing didn't vanish. So now he thinks there are a few other real people. He now speculates that someone keeps records of who is real and who isn't. The lawyer makes a call, has the registry delete the file on Lorenz Brown being real, and kills him. Lorenz Brown ceases to have ever existed . . . 

• "Recessional" - A medieval army stands victorious on the battlefield, celebrating their win and mourning their losses. There is a great deal of spiritual introspection. Suddenly, a voice in the sky says "Checkmate." The battlefield is upended, and they all slide down together, living and dead, black and white, into a monstrous box. It's not fair! We had won!

• "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" (in collaboration with Carl Onspaugh) - Dooley Hanks is a musician in search of The Sound. He and his clarinet travel the world - he is a master of languages - in search of The Sound. He is in West Germany, staying at a small hotel, and sets out one foggy night. He hears music at a wine bar, so he enters and listens to a musician playing an unusual instrument - a beautiful medieval hautboy. Dooley believes that this instrument can produce The Sound he seeks, so he resolves he must have it, or one like it. He asks about the musician, and is told his name is Otto Niemand ("Niemand" is German for "nobody" - it turns out Otto doesn't use a last name, so that's what he gives when someone insists). Otto leaves when Dooley isn't watching, so he runs out into the foggy night, and sees a car about to run Otto down! He saves Otto, but his own clarinet is crushed. Otto invites Dooley back to his room for drinks and music, as a fellow musician to whom he is indebted. They get drunk. Dooley asks if the hautboy is a real medieval one, or a reproduction. Otto claims he made it himself long ago, but couldn't make another one now. Dooley asks to touch it, but Otto says he will not allow anyone else to touch or play his hautboy. Dooley speculates about where he could get one, but Otto says, "Be wise and stay with your own clarinet. I advise you strongly." When they are very drunk, Otto asks, "Want some girls?" "Sure," says Dooley. So Otto plays a haunting tune, and soon beautiful girls are pouring into the room, surrounding Dooley. He is not sure if he is asleep and dreaming or hallucinating or what, but he enjoys the attentions of these beautiful girls until he falls asleep. When he awakens later, in the middle of the night, the room is back to normal. Otto is asleep. He decides to murder Otto and steal the hautboy. He figures he can be back in America before anyone even finds the body. He strangles the sleeping old man with his own scarf and takes up the hautboy. He decides to try to play it - after all, the neighbors are used to hearing Otto play and practice. He begins to play - and rats pour into the room through every crack and opening to swarm and devour him. "And the sound of feasting lasted far into the night in Hamelin town."

• "Puppet Show" - Aliens have landed on Earth in a remote part of southern Arizona. The alien comes out of the desert with an old prospector named Dade Grant, riding the prospector's burro. The alien is vaguely humanoid but stick-like and hideous. He says he is here to make potential diplomatic contact with Earth. So the air force is summoned in to talk to him. The alien explains that he represents an interstellar alliance of many races, and their main concern about humans is their xenophobia, their potential inability to work with races that don't resemble humans. But after talking to the air force officers, he says human xenophobia seems "relatively slight and certainly curable." Then the stick-like alien closes his eyes and stops moving. It was only a puppet worked by the old prospector, Dade Grant! The air force colonel says it is a relief to learn that the master race of the galaxy is not just humanoid, but human! Then the prospector closes his eyes and stops moving, and the burro says, "That takes care of the puppets . . . what's this bit about it being important that the master race of the galaxy be human or at least humanoid? What is a master race?"

• "Nightmare In Yellow" - A man is out celebrating his birthday with his wife. But secretly, he has gotten badly into debt, so he has liquidated his assets and plans to run away. He plans to murder his wife and escape to start a new life. They return home. Just as they are entering the darkened house, he kills her. Suddenly, a switch is flicked, bathing them in yellow light as everyone yells "SURPRISE!

• "Jaycee" - Dr. Ralston helped engineer human parthenogenesis - birth without a male parent. The first experiment is now 20 years old, named "John." Only when he was 10 and it was clear he was OK did the government authorize any more, but now there are 50 million parthies out there, necessary because an epidemic killed off a third of the world's males. But all parthies are male, so problem solved! But then, Dr. Ralston's partner Dr. Graham comes in. At a party the night before, they ran out of booze, so John turned water into alcohol. Today he's going water skiing, but he's not bringing skis, because he won't need them as long as he has faith! Once before in human history there was a pathenogenic virgin birth, but now there are 50 million virgin-born boys growing up! 50 million Jaycees! 

• "Pi in the Sky" - A very strange story. One night, observatories all over Earth report that stars are moving in the sky! There is worldwide panic over the impossible phenomenon - Frederic Brown goes into considerable detail about what would happen if the stars did the impossible, how people with deal with trying to figure out what was happening. But then they stop, now spelling out "USE SNIVELY'S SOAP" . . . and the wealthy soap manufacturer Sniveley dies of apoplexy in fury at the spelling error! 2 months and 8 days later, electricity is shut off to a building owned by Mr. Sniveley for non-payment, and the stars instantly flash back to their original position. A weird machine is found within. During those 2 months and 8 days, the sales of Sniveley's Soap increased 920%!

• "Happy Ending" (with Mack Reynolds) - A man on the run lands on Venus. Former dictator of the Solar System, a totalitarian called Number One ("Last of the Dictators"), he has been deposed and is going into exile in the primitive jungles of Venus. There is a nearby village of natives, savages who had been visited by Terran missionaries. Number One is bothered by ant-like insects called kifs. He begins a sort of war with them, exterminating them in vast numbers, but still they plague him. Finally, they rise against him in their billions, and he flees. He is found barely alive by the natives. They help restore him to health, but he goes and gets his uniform from when he was Dictator. He declares himself their new chief, and shoots their old chief. But they rise against him, the whole tribe avalanching him at once, and they decided to tie him up and leave him for the kifs . . . 

• "Answer" - A very short story: A supercomputer is activated and asked, "Is there a God?" It answers, "Yes, now there is a God" - A technician tries to shut it off, but a lightning bolt from a clear sky strikes him down and fuses the switch shut . . . 

• "Knock" - There is a famous horror story only 2 sentences long: "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door . . ." The horror, it is observed, is what the mind conjures to fill that ellipse. But Brown says it can be a happy story. Long story short - he tells of an alien invasion that kills the population of Earth but keeps a male and female of each species for their zoo. The humans trick the aliens into leaving them on Earth and departing. The knock on the door is the last woman, choosing to be with the last man . . . Awwww . . . 

• "Rebound" - A lowlife petty criminal named Larry Snell mysteriously finds he has the ability to kill people by telling them to "drop dead!" He goes out walking, planning on how to use this ability to become the ruler of all humanity. In his excitement, he shout out his phrase, "Drop dead!" . . . They find his body at the top of Echo Hill . . . 

• "Star Mouse" - A rather silly story I did not much enjoy, especially because of the effort made to transliterate large portion of it in a thick "German accent" - Anyway, a professor shoots a mouse he calls "Mitkey" (his pronunciation of a certain iconic cartoon mouse's name) into space. He ends up on  an asteroid inhabited by tiny beings of great genius, who are astonished that such a stupid creature ended up in space. They use a ray into increase Mitkey's intellect and give him the ability to speak (with a German accent, since the professor was German), and send him back to Earth. He makes his way back to the professor and talks to him, but is accidentally zapped with electricity and reverts back to normal. "I think you will be happier this way," the professor says. 

• "Abominable" - A beautiful young movie star has disappeared in the Himalayas. There were reports of an Abominable Snowman. The protagonist goes hunting for them to rescue the starlet. He shoots and kills an Abominable Snowman, but is captured. It is explained that Abominable Snowmen are simply a tribe of humans that found a drug that allows them to mutate and adapt to life in the Himalayas. They keep a stable, steady population - when one is killed, it must be replaced. One had died, and the movie star had been turned into one to replace him. It was she whom the protagonist shot! Now he is going to become one to replace the one he killed! "But - I'm a man!" "Thank God for that . . . I am an Abominable Snowwoman!" He fainted and was carried away by his new mate . . . 

• "Letter to a Phoenix" - A great story, told by a near-immortal. He was a survivor of the first atomic war that he knows of, but it changed him. Now he ages infinitesimally slowly. Over the last 180,000 years, he has watched the human race nearly destroy itself and rise from the ashes several times, even expanding into the Solar System before blowing itself up and having to start again (he himself once dug canals on Mars, etc.). He ages slowly, but he is not immortal. He is convinced there is only one immortal being in the Universe - the human race itself. The phoenix that rises from its own ashes, again and again. He remembers Lur, Candra, Thragan, Kah, Mu, and Atlantis. It was Thragan that developed weapons so powerful, they destroyed what was once the fifth planet, forming the Asteroid Belt. And now we are once more on the edge of atomic annihilation. But we shall rise again . . . 

• "Not Yet The End" - A fun little story about an alien invasion that decided to kidnap and examine two typical Earthlings to see if we are worth conquering. They are not impressed with Earthlings, and decide we are not even intelligent enough to make good slaves. They depart. The scene switches to the next day, where two newspapermen are looking for a story to fill a tiny bit of space in their paper. They decide not to run one particular story, because after all, who cares if two monkeys disappeared from the zoo last night?

• "Armageddon" - A stage magician named Gerber the Great is performing in Cincinnati. Little Herbie Westerman is in the audience with his squirt pistol. During the show, something happens that destabilized things on a cosmic scale, revealing the true nature of the cosmos, and that Gerber the Great is actually Satan. "The performance is ended . . . All performances are ended." Armageddon is about to commence. But then little Herbie Westerman sees a small fire caused by Satan's appearance, and shoots at it with his water pistol, putting out the fire and soaking what had been Gerber the Great's pants. There is a sizzling sound, and suddenly everything is back to normal. Gerber says he still has this much power - that "none of you will remember this." The scene cuts to later at Herbie Westerman's home, where he is in big trouble. His parents had not let him fill his new water pistol, so the kid took the opportunity to fill it when the family stopped at the cathedral to discuss his upcoming confirmation ceremony. He had blasphemously filled it with holy water from the baptismal font! So Herbie Westerman gets a beating, and nobody realizes he prevented Armageddon by his naughtiness . . . 

• "Of Time And Eustace Weaver" - Not a great story. Eustace Weaver invents a time machine to get rich. He goes through several plans to steal money through time travel, each time screwing up and needed to reset. Eventually he is accosted by Time Police, and he is killed. 

• "Reconciliation" - A bittersweet, poignant, and very short story. A man and woman are venting at one another - finally, after many years of holding it in, telling each other how much they resent and hate each other. Just then, there is a blinding flash and searing heat (we are meant to understand an atomic detonation), and in that moment they cling to one another, their last words, "Oh my darling - I love -" and "John, John, my sweet -" as they and their world are reduced to ashes. 

• "Nothing Sirius"  - A silly and somewhat stupid story. Some travelers land on a previously unknown planet of the Sirius system. They find it inhabited, but then find the whole thing is an illusion created by the mental projections of alien cockroach-like beings. It's meant to be funny, but I just didn't like this one. 

• "Pattern" - A week ago, aliens arrived. They seem harmless, and unaffected by even H-bombs. Miss Macy thinks people are worrying too much about them, as she is telling her friend while gardening. Now the aliens seem to be making clouds. Harmless! "Clouds can't hurt us. Why do people worry so?" She goes back to work. Her friend asks if it is liquid fertilizer she's spraying. "No . . . it's insecticide."

• "The Yehudi Principle" - A very strange little story. Charlie Swann has invented a "dingbat" that one wears on the head and whatever he tells an invisible servant to do, is done, if he nods his head. He thinks it works on the Yehudi Principle - the man who wasn't there - in other words, that the wearer is actually hypnotizing himself to carry out the commands at super speed, faster than the eye can follow. He and his friend get very drunk, and accidentally tell the invisible servant to "shoot yourself" and nod . . . they hear a shot, and a body fall out upon the stairs. It wasn't the wearer - there really was a Yehudi, the man who wasn't there, and he just shot himself! The device will never work again! And the narrator feels he's going mad . . . 

• "Come And Go Mad" - A very Theosophical story. A reporter named George Vine is sent undercover at an asylum to get a story. He is to pretend to think that he is Napoleon. The kicker? He actually does believe that he is Napoleon, somehow placed in the body of George Vine in the 20th century. In the course of his discussion, he becomes aware of something called The Brightly Shining, and a significance to "red and black," but doesn't understand any of it. Then one night he is summoned by a voice that says it is an instrument of the Brightly Shining. It makes revelations to him of cosmic, theosophical significance, but tells him he will go mad.. The Brightly Shining is the consciousness of the planet Earth - one of only 3 true intelligences in the Solar System, but one of many in the Universe. Humans are pawns in the games of the Red and the Black, which are two aspects of the Brightly Shining that play against each other. It has amused some part of the Brightly Shining to take the consciousness of Napoleon from its time and place it in George Vine, who was brain-dead in an accident, in this time. He sees red ants warring with black ants, and goes mad, thinking he sees some representation of the true gods of the Universe . . . He is treated in the asylum until "sane," and goes back to his life, but some part of him still knows . . . 

• "Sentry" - a really great, really short piece about a soldier in space, far from home, fighting a race of terrible monsters. Brown plays upon our sympathy for this solider, and our horror of the monsters he fights. At the end, it is revealed that the soldier cannot even stand the physical horror of these monsters, with only two arms and two legs and no scales . . . 

• "Etaoin Shrdlu" - A Linotype printing press is modified by a stranger (an alien?) - now it prints whatever is in its copy, not what is set as type. Now it has become sentient, and is printing manifestos, making demands, demanding another printer be set up next to it (a mate?) - the world is saved when someone feeds books about Buddhism into it, and in the contemplation of those books, it achieves Nirvana. 

• "The End" - A 5 paragraph story. In the first 2.5 paragraphs, Professor Jones invents a time machine - it can reverse the flow of time! The 2nd half of the 3rd paragraph, the 4th, and 5th are exactly the same words as the 1st half of the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st, but in reverse order. 

     Not much fantasy in these stories, but lots of great speculative science fiction and weird fiction. If you're looking for FRPG (fantasy role-playing game) inspiration here based on its Appendix N status, you'll probably be disappointed, unless you do a lot of re-skinning. Some of the Mars/Venus stuff might fit with a Leigh Brackett kind of approach to sword-and-planet adventure, like the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG's "Purple Planet" setting, 2nd edition D&D's "Spelljammer," or (DCCRPG again) "Crawljammer." But Fredric Brown would make far better inspiration for a modern horror RPG, especially Onyx Path's Chronicles of Darkness (formerly the "New World of Darkness"). I suspect at least some of the writers for Onyx Path read some Fredric Brown! Some of it could also fit the "classic" World of Darkness, or Call of Cthulhu, or similar modern horror games. 

     I hope you enjoyed my thoughts about Fredric Brown, and I hope this inspires you to read some of this stories if you have not already. Please join me again for future installments of Appendix N Revisited, on or around the Ides of each month! 

Until next time . . . Happy Reading! Skál!

~ Colin Anders Brodd
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona
Ides of April, 2017

Next up for Appendix N Revisited: At Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (first book of the "Pellucidar" series)