Dr. James Robinson (born 1948, Maine) is an American filk music

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music gen ...

and performer (known as Dr. Jane Robinson prior to 2004 sex reassignment surgery) whose songs focus on scientific themes, particularly

paleontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

. Robinson earned a

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

in 1976, and went on to teach at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. His filk albums include ''Dr. Jane's Science Notes'' (later reissued as ''Wackademia''), ''Fossil Fever'', ''Bedlam Cats'', ''Midlife Crisis'' and ''Dr. Jane's Remains''. Robinson has won two Pegasus Awards (2000, Best End of the World Song, for "Out of a Clear Blue Sky"; and 1992, Best Writer/Composer); and has been nominated an additional 14 times. Robinson was inducted into the

Filk Hall of Fame Filk music is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction, fantasy, and horror fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has existed since the early 1950s and been played primarily since the mid-1970s. Etymology and defin ...

in 2000. Robinson's life partner was the late

Cynthia McQuillin Cynthia McQuillin (July 25, 1953 – January 14, 2006) was a filk singer and writer as well as an author and artist. She lived in the San Francisco Bay area. Her songs touched the usual filk topics of science fiction, fantasy, and cats, but ...

, who reportedly said, upon meeting James for the first time, "At last I get to meet the man I fell in love with!" He lives in

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

.LosCon 34 Program book
(page 64) A book of songs by Robinson as "Dr. Jane", ''Dr. Jane's Songs'', ("all of Dr. Jane's songs that Dr. Jim Robinson could find in his archives, plus a few that Lee Gold found from other sources") was compiled and published by

Lee Gold Lee Gold is a member of California science fiction fandom and a writer and editor in the role-playing game and filk music communities. Gaming Gold became prominent after 1975 as the editor of '' Alarums and Excursions'', a monthly amateur pre ...

in 2012.Dr. Jane's Songs

, ed.

Guest of Honor appearances

Robinson has been a Guest of Honor (or similar position, e.g., Toastmaster) at over half a dozen conventions, including both Filk-Music-specific conventions: *Counterpoint Too!(the second NEFilk con) *

FilKONtario FilKONtario is a fan-run convention in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario area dedicated to filk, the music of science fiction and fantasy fandom. Established in 1991, it is the only filk convention in Canada. In its fifth year (1995), the conven ...

2003http://www.other-worlds-cafe.com/news/newsletter/news_dtl.php?id=51 * Consonance 1994http://www.textfiles.com/magazines/HTOMC/htomc.025 (Toastmaster, responsible for introducing other guests but also entertaining the membership with a concert performance), and non-filk conventions: * Marcon 39 *

Capricon Capricon is a science fiction convention held annually in the Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footn ...

XXIV * Norwescon XVII * ConFurence 8(Furry convention) * Loscon 34

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, James 21st-century American biologists American paleontologists Filkers American LGBT musicians Transgender men Transgender singers University of California, Berkeley faculty University of California, Los Angeles alumni Singers from Maine 1948 births Living people Songwriters from Maine LGBT people from Maine Singer-songwriters from California Transgender male musicians