Fredric Brown was born on October 29, 1906 in Cincinnati, Ohio. According to his wife, Brown hated to write. So he did everything he could to avoid it—he would play his flute, challenge a friend to chess, or tease his cat. But when he did write, he produced work in a wide variety of genres: mystery, science fiction, black comedy, sometimes all in the same work. His first science fiction story, "Not Yet the End," was published in 1941, and one of his stories, "Arena," was adapted as an episode of Star Trek. The Fabulous Clipjoint, Brown's first mystery novel, won the Edgar Award for outstanding first mystery and began a series featuring Ed and Ambrose Hunter, carny‑relatives turned detectives. Brown was a newspaperman by trade, married twice with two sons, who devoted all‑too‑little of his life to fulltime writing. He died on March 11, 1972 in Tucson at age 65 from emphysema.