James Cooke Brown

Dr. James Cooke Brown (July 21, 1921 – February 13, 2000) was a sociologist and science fiction author. He is notable for creating the artificial language Loglan and for designing the Parker Brothers board game Careers.

Brown's novel The Troika Incident (Doubleday, 1970) 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.

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.^[1]

References

Anderson, Evelyn. James Cooke Brown: A Multitalented Man.

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 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. J. of Social and Biological Structures.14(3), 255-309.