James Cooke Brown

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James Cooke Brown bigraphy, stories - Science - Other

James Cooke Brown : biography

July 21, 1921 – February 13, 2000

Dr. James Cooke Brown (July 21, 1921 – February 13, 2000) was a sociologist and science fiction author., Astounding Science Fiction (UK) Dec 1952, BROWN, JIM (chron.) He is notable for creating the artificial language Loglan and for designing the Parker Brothers board game Careers., How Life Imitates a Board Game, by Rachel Hutton, Issue 3: The Outdoors Issue, Summer 2002, ReadyMade

Brown’s novel The Troika Incident (Doubleday, 1970), Author:James Cooke Brown, Publisher:Doubleday, 1970, Length:399 pages, ASIN: B0006C09JO 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. The author would doubtless appreciate the irony of "The Troika Incident" being viewed on almost exactly the "readers" he imagined.

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.