RIP Jerry Pournelle

One of the great ones. Loved his collaborations with Larry Niven.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/09/science-fiction-author-jerry-pournelle-has-died.html

Robert Silverberg Sep 8, 2017 at 5:49 pm
We were friends for more than fifty years, a warm and close relationship despite great differences in personal style. I will miss him.

Robert Silverberg

His collaborations with Niven (and Barnes) were fantastic, as was a lot of his stand-alone stuff (Janissaries, King David’s Spaceship, etc.)

One of my all-time favorites, and one of the writers who shaped SF for decades.

RIP Jerry Pournelle

Ah, damn.

I once shared a dinner table with Jerry Pournelle. It was a long time ago, and I wish I could remember more of the conversation, but we talked a while.

I think he’s also an important influence on technology in general, particularly on personal computers. He was a periodic guest on This Week in Tech podcast with Leo Laporte. He often talked about getting called into IBM and Lotus and similar tech pioneers to chat about whatever they were building. He said that he was one of the training voices for Dragon Naturally Speaking, for example, IBM’s voice dictation software. His voice was pretty extreme, actually, so I can see why they’d want him for sampling.

His career is amazing. They don’t make guys like Jerry Pournelle anymore.

Pournelle served as campaign research director for the mayoral campaign of 1969 for Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (Democrat), working under campaign director Henry Salvatori.[6] The election took place on May 27, 1969.[7] Pournelle was later named Executive Assistant to the Mayor in charge of research in September 1969, but resigned from the position after two weeks.[8] After leaving Yorty’s office, in 1970 he was a consultant to the Professional Educators of Los Angeles (PELA), a group opposed to the unionization of school teachers in LA.[9]
Pournelle was an intellectual protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan T. Possony. Pournelle wrote numerous publications with Possony, including The Strategy of Technology (1970). The Strategy has been used as a textbook at the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs), the Air War College, and the National War College.[10]
Pournelle’s work in the aerospace industry includes time he worked at Boeing in the late 1950s. While there, he worked on Project Thor, conceiving of “hypervelocity rod bundles”, also known as “rods from God”.[11] He edited Project 75, a 1964 study of 1975 defense requirements.[12] He worked in operations research at The Aerospace Corporation, and North American Rockwell Space Division, and was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. In 1989, Pournelle, Max Hunter, and retired Army Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham made a presentation to then Vice President Dan Quayle promoting development of the DC-X rocket.[13]
During the 1970s and 1980s, he also published articles on military tactics and war gaming in the military simulations industry in Avalon Hill’s magazine The General. He had previously won first prize in a late 1960s essay contest run by the magazine on how to end the Vietnam war. That led him into correspondences with some of the early figures in Dungeons and Dragons and other fantasy role-playing games.[14]
In 1985, Footfall, in which Robert A. Heinlein was a thinly veiled minor character, reached the number one spot on the New York Times Best Seller List. Another bestseller, Lucifer’s Hammer (1977), reached number two. Both novels were written with Larry Niven.
In 1994, Pournelle’s friendly relationship with Newt Gingrich led to Gingrich securing a government job for Pournelle’s son, Richard.[15] At the time, Pournelle and Gingrich were reported to be collaborating on “a science fiction political thriller.”[15] Pournelle’s relationship with Gingrich was long established even then, as Pournelle had written the preface to Gingrich’s book, Window of Opportunity (1985).[16][/quote]

The Mote In God’s Eye is one of my favorites. RIP

RIP. A giant in his field.

Sad. He just replied to a post of mine on the SFWA forums the day before, too. We didn’t agree on much of anything but video games, and I loathed his politics, but still very much regret his death. I remember exchanging some email with him about Earth & Beyond years ago.

RIP, Mr. Pournelle.

Interacted with him a bit during the early online days when he was really active on BIX, and a bit on GEnie’s SFRT.

Also remember my days as a religious Amiga zealot getting pissed at his coverage of the computer because he treated it like a regular consumer would, getting frustrated by its peculiarities, instead of noticing its advances and forgiving the quirks because it was so awesome. The Amiga community was pretty annoyed. Of course, looking back, he was mostly right.

Always enjoyed his Chaos Manor columns in Byte. He’ll be missed.

That is sad. I too heard him often on TWIT. I hope they bring it up on TWIT today, I would like to know what Leo has to say, since he knew Jerry well.

The first novel typed on a computer was Len Deighton’s Bomber, but that was his typist rather than the author directly, iirc.

I loved reading Chaos Manor before I even knew he was a sci-fi author.

I loved his books, and Chaos Manor was so much fun.
He’ll definitely be missed.

While I hated his politics I still loved his work.

Indeed, that was always a must read column.

I just read “King David’s Spaceship” last week for the umpeenth time. One of his earlier works, but quite enjoyable.

That’s a wonderful piece. Thanks for posting it.

Fascinating piece.