James Cooke Brown
Brown in 1979 in San Diego
Brown in 1979 in San Diego
Born(1921-07-21)July 21, 1921[1]
Tagbilaran, Bohol, Philippine Islands[1]
DiedFebruary 13, 2000(2000-02-13) (aged 78)
Tierra del Fuego, Argentina[2]
Pen nameJim Brown
OccupationLinguistics[1]
NationalityAmerican
EducationB.A., University of Minnesota 1946, Ph.D., 1948[1]
GenreScience fiction
Spouse(1st wife) Lujoye Fuller Brown[3]
(2nd wife) Evelyn Ruth Anderson[4]
Children3
Brown's novella "The Love Machine" was cover-featured on the March 1954 issue of Fantastic Universe

James Cooke Brown (July 21, 1921 – February 13, 2000) was an American sociologist and science fiction author.[5] He is notable for creating the constructed language Loglan and for designing the Parker Brothers board game Careers.[6]

Brown's novel The Troika Incident (Doubleday, 1970)[7] describes a worldwide free knowledge base similar to the Internet. The novel begins with the belief that the world is on the eve of self-destruction, but then it presents a world about a century from now which is a paradise of peace and prosperity, all based on ideas, movements, and knowledge presently available in the world. In its metafictional structure, the novel is a call for social change, not through revolution but through free education and the resilience of human ingenuity. Long out of print and relatively rare, an e-book version (Amazon Kindle) of the novel was released in 2012. The novel envisioned all books and periodicals being viewed on portable electronic devices called "readers" in the year 2070, when it is set.

Among his other achievements, Brown designed, and had built, a three-hulled sailboat, called a trimaran. He utilized this boat to sail to many parts of the world.

While on a South American cruise with his wife, Brown was admitted to a hospital in Argentina, where he died at the age of 78.[2]

Bibliography

Science fiction

Sociology

Loglan

References

  1. ^ a b c d Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Volume 2, Page 833, Authors:R. Reginald, Douglas Menville, Mary A. Burgess, Publisher:Wildside Press LLC, 2010, ISBN 978-0-941028-77-6
  2. ^ a b "About the Author". Archived from the original on June 8, 2009. Retrieved 2011-11-12.((cite web)): CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), Job Market of the Future
  3. ^ Foreword:Finally, I wish above all to acknowledge the ten years' collaboration of my (then) wife, Lujoye Fuller Brown, often amounting to coauthorship,, LOGLAN 1: A LOGICAL LANGUAGE, Revised Fourth Edition, by James Cooke Brown. The ISBN printed in the document (1-877665-00-Z) is invalid.
  4. ^ The job market of the future: using computers to humanize economies, By James Cooke Brown, Page 319, Publisher:M.E. Sharpe, 2001, ISBN 978-0-7656-0732-4
  5. ^ The Emissary, (nv) Astounding Jul 1952 Archived 2011-11-08 at the Wayback Machine, Astounding Science Fiction (UK) Dec 1952, BROWN, JIM (chron.)
  6. ^ Designing His Own ‘Careers’, How Life Imitates a Board Game, by Rachel Hutton, Issue 3: The Outdoors Issue, Summer 2002, ReadyMade
  7. ^ The Troika incident: a tetralogue in two parts[permanent dead link], Author:James Cooke Brown, Publisher:Doubleday, 1970, Length:399 pages, ASIN: B0006C09JO
  8. ^ Fantastic Universe: March 1954, The Love Machine, Jim Brown
  9. ^ Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Minnesota, 1951.[permanent dead link]
Notes
a) He serves as a combat navigator in the Army Air Forces.
b) He received a doctorate in sociology, mathematical statistics and philosophy from the Univ. of Minnesota in 1952.
c) He published a novella ("The Emissary", under the by-line "Jim Brown") he wrote in Mexico City in "Astounding Science Fiction".
d) Shortly before his death he completed "From Job Markets to Labor Markets" in which he proposed a computer-moderated economic system dividing work among all who seek employment.
e) He was a guardian of civil rights and joined fellow educators in a 1963 protest of a restaurant's 'whites only' policy; the sit-in resulted in his arrest and jail time.
f) He vehemently opposed the Vietnam War.
g) Was one of the writers in the publication: Brown, J.C. and Greenhood, W. (1991). Paternity, jokes and song: A possible evolutionary scenario for the origin of language and mind. Journal of Social and Biological Structures.14(3), 255-309.

External links

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