Twelve Times Zero

by Howard Browne

Twelve Times Zero This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING!

Genres: Science Fiction

76 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2010

About the author

Howard Browne (April 15, 1908–October 28, 1999) was a science fiction editor and mystery writer. He also wrote for several television series and films. Some of his work appeared over the pseudonyms John Evans, Alexander Blade, Lawrence Chandler, Ivar Jorgensen, and Lee Francis.

Beginning in 1942, Browne worked as managing editor for Ziff-Davis publications on Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, both under Raymond A. Palmer's editorship. When Palmer left the magazines in 1949, Browne took over in January 1950. Browne ended the publication of Richard Shaver's Shaver Mystery and oversaw the change in Amazing from a pulp magazine to a digest. He left the magazines in 1956 to move to Hollywood.

In Hollywood, Browne wrote for television shows including Maverick, Ben Casey, and The Virginian. His last credit was for the film Capone (1975), starring Ben Gazzara.

Reviews

[Ace McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extended short story. Nice blend of honest, hard working, cigar smoking, 100% 1940 era cop, (who seems to have that unexplained magnetism for the "good girls "), and alien intrusion science fiction. Cop figures it all out, eventually gets a ride in a space ship, and all players stay true to there characters till the end.

Note: was looking for other Browne novels and found this one free on kindle.

This is a generous four stars.

[Karim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kirk is an apt name for the character given how reminiscent of Star Trek this whole thing was. Another naïve interpretation of a utopia that has pretty much all the flaws of our society, only dressed nicer. I don't know how Browne managed to do it, but he somehow managed to transform campy 50's sci-fi special effects into text form in his exposition.

[Rod Little · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit dated, but the real problem is the ending that fizzles to nowhere. It's pulp fiction, so you shouldn't expect a lot, but most pulp is at least fun to read. This one had a good opening hook, but then faded. A better ending would have saved it.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ending caught me by surprise!