I’ve just learned of the death of F. Alexander Brejcha on February 11, 2019, at the age of 61. I knew him when I worked at Analog. He made his authorial debut at the same time I started my sf career. His first professionally published story, “Viewpoint,” appeared in the April 1989 issue of Analog (my name first appeared in the May 1989 issue as editorial assistant). We shared the table of contents in the November 1995 issue (Alex’s novelette “With Other Eyes” and my short-short “Without an S”).

Alex never published a novel, but he did self-publish two collections of his short sf: No World Warranty and People First!, both in 2004.

Like most Analog authors, his interests were intense and varied, and they showed up in his fiction, most of which featured “differently abled” people. Their abilities were rarely the plot of the story; they were just the characters, and had to take into account the way they did things that others might not think about. Alex himself used a wheelchair, but if the reason ever came up in conversation, I don’t remember it. It didn’t matter; that was just part of his appearance. Actually, the only time I remember it even being discussed was at an Analog Mafia dinner at Lunacon (probably in 1993—see the attached photo): we were in a back room, which was up a couple of steps from the main restaurant, so I had to find a way around those steps for Alex (this was just before the ADA covered all such places).

When I knew him, in the 1990s, he worked as an ambulance dispatcher in his local hospital, which he said gave him time to write as well. I’m sorry we hadn’t been in touch in a long time.

His last professionally published story appears to have been “Take a Load Off,” which appeared in the November 1999 issue of Analog. His work also appeared in Science Fiction Age. Several newer stories appeared in his 2004 collections.

F. Alexander Brejcha was born in Amal, Sweden, on December 1, 1957. He immigrated to the United States fairly young, and lived in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

(Analog Mafia dinner at Lunacon 1993. Back, left-to-right: Michael F. Flynn, Daniel Hatch, Ian Randal Strock. Front, left-to-right: F. Alexander Brejcha, Dr. Stanley Schmidt, A.J. Austin.)

Klotzbach Funeral Home death notice: https://www.klotzbachfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/Fedor-Brejcha/#!/Obituary

ISFDB bibliography: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?2108