Rosel George was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 15, 1926. She attended Sophie Newcomb College and earned a Master of Arts degree in Greek at the University of Minnesota. In 1947, she married W. Burlie Brown, a lawyer who would go back to school in 1949 to earn a Ph.D. in history before joining the Tulane University faculty in 1951. Aside from the period when she was attending graduate school in Minnesota and Burlie was attending graduate school in North Carolina, Rosel George Brown lived in New Orleans. The Browns had two children. For about three years, Rosel worked as a welfare visitor.

Brown began publishing science fiction in 1958 when her story “From an Unseen Censor” appeared in the September issue of Galaxy Science Fiction alongside established authors Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Arthur C. Clarke, and Willy Ley. The following year, she published seven additional stories in If, Fantastic Universe, Star Science Fiction, F&SF, Galaxy, and Amazing, demonstrating the ability to sell to multiple editors. In 1959, she was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best New Writer, alongside Kit Reed, Louis Charbonneau, Pauline Ashwell, and Brian W. Aldiss.

She focused on short fiction through 1964, publishing a collection of her short stories, A Handful of Time, in 1963, which included two original stories. 1966 saw her publish two novels, Earthblood, which was a collaboration with Keith Laumer and was serialized in If from April through July before being published on its own. The novel made the Nebula Award preliminary ballot for the second Nebula Awards. She also published the novel Sibyl Sue Blue about a female cop’s interstellar adventures. A sequel, The Waters of Centaurus, was published posthumously in 1970.

In 1965, Brown became one of the charter members of the Science Fiction Writers of America. Unfortunately, as her career was picking up and shifting from short story author to novelist, Brown died of lymphoma on November 26, 1967. She was one of the three women Anne McCaffrey dedicated her anthology Alchemy and Academe to in 1970. The two had met at the Milford Writer’s Workshop.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.