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The Screaming Mimi by Fredric Brown5/12/2023 This is not the case with Brown’s work and I find it personally shocking that a writer was so adept with the twist ending in the 40’s and 50’s and has since fallen off the face of the publication world. It seems like the twist ending has become the standard in the past decade or so and more often than not readers or viewers will feel cheated at the conclusion of a mystery because the twist has not been built up with care or believability. Fortunately, Brown’s personal opinion of mystery writing did not negatively affect the quality of his mystery stories. It can be argued that this difference in demand forged much of his career. Science fiction, his true love, was not in as high demand as stories starring deadly poison, bloody knives and smoking guns. Oddly enough, he is purported to have strongly disliked writing mysteries and only wrote these short stories and novels to pay the bills. He proved to be an excellent author in both of these genres, but is probably best known for his mystery work. His two areas of focus were science fiction and mystery stories. A master of short stories, ingenious plot devices and twist endings, Brown has been all but forgotten in recent years.įor most of his writing career Brown survived by publishing in pulp magazines, inexpensive fiction publications that mainly specialized in genre short fiction throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s. Why don’t more people know about Fredric Brown? I think this is one of life’s greatest mysteries.
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