Martians and Madness: The Complete SF Novels of Fredric Brown (Nesfa's Choice Series)

Fredric Brown was a master of the short story, but his trademark wit and imagination often failed him when he turned to writing novels, where he did his best work in the mystery field rather than in SF. Two of the five stories here - Martians, Go Home and What Mad Universe - are considered classics. The Mind Thing is pretty decent also. But the remaining two stories are best skipped or forgotten. (And including the two shorter stories later forcibly fused together to create Rogue in Space was surely not worth the effort.) Also, the quality of the paper used in this book is noticeably worse than in three other NESFA offerings I own. The others are printed on high-quality paper; this one is on a softer, off-white stock -- almost "pulpy."I'm giving this four stars, but it's a low four stars; really more like 3.5

Fredric Brown is a great writer. I read many of his short stories and novels many years ago and just wanted this compilation of his novels for my library. Will get around to rereading some of these tales when I have the time.

Fred Brown is the best fantasy writer in our history. Great stories. Great humor.

This collection gave me the opportunity to reread the great Fredrick Brown novels, which I had not read since my youth 25 or 35 years ago. I always loved the better known works "What Mad Universe" and "Martians, Go Home," but I was surprised at how powerful and emotive "The Lights in the Sky are Stars" is.