Tom Brown

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I have 282 stories published in 25 collections on the site.
My stories have been read 475997 times and 19 of my stories have been cherry picked.
444 of my 3,071 comments have been voted Great Feedback with a total of 445 votes

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Tom Brown

Born South-African, I went to a dual medium primary school and Afrikaans high school, NG Church mostly and sunday school Methodist. At school achieved top positions in science and mathematics olympiads, after as well completing two years of engineering studies with very good results but I did not graduate, I had to stop due to mental health problems.

Graduating under WK Bartoszek at Unisa, MSc (1997) and Pretoria University, Niko Sauer PhD (2006), formal interests were to be in abstract analysis and broadly in applied mathematics. All of my qualifications were with honours.

I had permanent teaching positions at Unisa and at Wits, however since not having been academically active, and as such absent from formal academic research for very long now, years. Advanced study and research was in Markov operators and stochastic processes; vector valued Laplace transforms applied to semigroups and families of evolution equations (Empathies).
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Unfortunately I have had a history of medical treatment for psychiatric illness with diagnosis of a bipolar mood disorder.

It was very fortunate in that my condition responded very well to medicine it helps if you cooperate and comply, if not, you don't have much of a chance. Also I am totally abstinent from alcohol and other mood altering substances for great many years, it did not accord with my constitution at all. As a chain smoker I also managed to kick the habit, more than a decade smoke-free now, by the Grace of God.

I have always been able to function completely normal and independently in society my isolation was not because of my own doing it was due to circumstances, and has just been getting stricter I seem to have almost no contact outside, save only for AbcTales. My saving grace.

I am  totally isolated and financially barely getting by. 

Although I am still studying mathematics and applications, more popular accessible kind of work, while interested and looking forward to hopefully be active in research or industry again.

God is in the details of the details. God is in the timing of the timing.
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Apart from studies in the natural sciences I am interested in languages and literature in general as well as religion. In high school I majored in German also, and Biology, in the meanwhile I have taught myself French, well enough to read (with a bit of difficulty).

Lately I have been writing more popular general interest essays and also trying for a bit of balance with mathematics and while keeping things understandable for most people.

Thus not involved at all with any social media, and having time for writing, leisure, watching movies, reading fiction, classics mostly, poetry and  music. I miss my friends, and would really love getting outdoors and in nature more.
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Favourite authors are Jules Verne, HG Wells and Jack London, Shakespeare and poets William Blake and Dylan Thomas. I like adventure, science fiction and fantasy movies my all time greatest are the Narnia stories and the Lord of the Rings.

The meal best enjoyed is a breakfast of bacon eggs on toast fried chips with fresh orange juice, and for supper an ox-tail stew. I like eating out romantic. For recreation nature hikes, camping and fishing, listening to good music and reading, classics mostly, and good movies. I love dogs my best one was a Maltese poodle Freddy.

I love rain and lightning thunderstorms and rainbows. As well as writing and publishing here on AbcTales.
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These are my stories!

Keep your feet on the ground and reach for the Stars!

 

 

My stories

Future-Time Travel

For example, predict the Lotto numbers and seal it unseen in a safe box and open the safe only after the draw. If the prediction was correct it could...

Counting Distinct Colourings

Counting distinct colourings of physical objects with symmetries Combinatorics is the art of counting without counting it is the ability to do very...

Racheltjie de Beer

Scattered in the bushveld there are dozens of termite heaps hundreds of mounds of colonies of termites living off the scarce vegetation. Aardvark (...
1 likes

Favourite Quotations of Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) was a German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for...

River of Time

To your own self be true, the truth shall set you free A lie which is half a truth is ever the wicked of lies Be vigilant! A lie begets a lie Truths...
1 likes

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444 of my comments have received 445 Great Feedback votes

2 Votes

?logic

Posted on Mon, 23 Mar 2026

"He’d been married three times which meant that there were three poor women in the town who, at some point, had agreed to sleep with him."

Not quite true, from what friends tell me!

Good story Terence. Unexpected ending, twist hey,...

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Posted in Penny’s Pass the Story - Part Four

2 Votes

Lovit!

Posted on Sun, 24 Aug 2025

Lovit! " and I can't sleep right so I had a pillow fight" she knows what she's talking about!

- Tom

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Posted in Oh it's the middle night

2 Votes

Sorry Di I honestly did not mean

Posted on Sun, 06 Feb 2022

Sorry Di I honestly did not mean to criticise your work at all and I don't recall that I ever have. It is a great poem. But please keep in mind any good teacher knows one often learns more from your mistakes and by the way I'm also out of a job....

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Posted in February Rainbow

2 Votes

Those old magic photos

Posted on Mon, 07 Oct 2024

Those old magic photos Jenny! I think they call them kodak moments. Something like that. These days people have so many photos they're hard to find Hey? What strikes me how happy we are me & my brother on all of them there are hundreds codac...

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Posted in Magic Of Youth

2 Votes

enough

Posted on Tue, 27 Aug 2024

You never know what is enough, untill you know what is too much / The road excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

I read these in poems of William Blake, in the proverbs of hell.

Good luck! Tom

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Posted in Never Enough?

2 Votes

The elephant and ant

Posted on Tue, 25 Jun 2024

The elephant and ant were walking together over the bridge, the ant said "We make this bridge shake hey?!"

We usually say an elephant "trumpets" or such, but you can say "roar" if you like why not?

Keep well, greetings from Africa!...

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Posted in Extreme differences!

2 Votes

Yes

Posted on Tue, 14 Sep 2021

Yes. Beautiful ending, man's best friend. Heartbreaking sometimes we feel a duty for mourning. And indeed, it is much more noble to live for someone than to die for someone, sometimes living takes great courage.

Keep well Paul! Tom

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Posted in With or Without You

2 Votes

No doubt inspired

Posted on Mon, 16 Mar 2020

No doubt inspired by Jules Verne's classic scifi novel 20,000 leagues under the sea. Also makes one think of Jacques C. and the research ship the Calypso.

Good work, original too! We are in, looking out, man and fish roles reversed! Who's...

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Posted in Here Be Dragons

2 Votes

it's good to be young

Posted on Fri, 14 Mar 2014

It's good to be young and insane.

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Posted in Mental Illness

1 Vote

Unbelievable!

Posted on Tue, 26 May 2026

Planting trees by the hundreds of thousands and by the million is probably our best defence against global warming, and how pleasant!

Machines of nature capturing and removing CO2 back into into carbon (fuels) and free oxygen gas, the...

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Posted in Roots

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