The name may not mean much unless you’re a science fiction fan or writer, but Charles N. Brown died yesterday when returning home from Readercon.
Brown founded and ran Locus, the newsmagazine of science fiction. Before the web, it was the one way to keep up on the events and people in the field. Even now it continues with reviews, features Index to Science Fiction and the Locus Index to SF Awards. Locus won so many fanzine Hugo awards that they created the semiprozine category to give other people a chance, and Locus then won that category 21 of the 25 years its been awarded.
I first met him back in 1986 at a Boskone. My novel had come out – to an excellent review in Locus. He took a photo of me and put it into Locus, which made me feel I had arrived as an SF writer. I saw him over the weekend at Readercon for the first time in about 15 years and it’s very odd to realize he’s gone.
He was an important figure in science fiction and in Fandom, and his death is a shock to everyone in the field.
I agree completely; I just posted a note about his death on several SF related mailing lists that I participate in. I’ve subscribed to his magazine for years, and hope it lives on.
I started subscripting in college around 1970. They weren’t get super slick, just ordinary mimeograph pages. Later Locus got very slick and very full of themselves. A few years ago I just stopped taking it. No malice, just a parting of the ways and different roads taken.
Charles N. - never knew that the N was for Nikki - was legendarily irascible. I don’t think he ever put my picture in, unless it was part of a group he needed the famous people of. Never figured out why.
He do do a lot to create a semi-professional news organization that concentrated on books rather than personalities. That’s worth something.
Brown certainly had his idiosyncrasies. (And yes, I’ve often heard him referred to as “Charlie Brown,” although it looks like he didn’t like that at all.) I know one writer who was never reviewed in Locus because of some grudge that Brown had for him. And though I subscribed for Locus for several years when I got into the field, I tended to prefer Andrew Porter’s Science Fiction Chronicle as a source of news (I’m sure older fans can have a debate about the strengths and weaknesses of the two publications, but Locus is still publishing while SFC is long gone).
Brown won more Hugo Awards than anyone else by a wide margin. I’m guessing Locus will probably win the semiprozine Hugo this year, too.
That’s a great loss; I’ve read most of the issues of Locus since the mid-70s, and even got namechecked in a copy long ago.
I don’t think I ever met him to speak to, but he and his magazine were mainstays of the field in his reporting of news and reviewing books.
