Jerry Pournelle RIP

[Andy44]

Somehow I missed this, one of my favorite SF authors of all time died the other day:

http://www.sfwa.org/2017/09/memoriam-jerry-pournelle/

Pournelle was a major figure in the "military SF" genre, in the tradition of Robert Heinlein, with a mapped out future history and hard-as-nails sci fi.

He worked with Larry Niven to create at least two SF masterpieces I can think of immediately: The Mote in God's Eye, a first-contact novel set in the CoDominium universe, and Footfall, possibly the best alien invasion story I've ever read. Certainly for me it was the most entertaining and satisfying in terms of the human technological response.

Pournelle worked for various companies in the defense industry, including the Rand Corporation, which is the company chartered by the US government to study, among other things, nuclear warfare and foreign policy strategic thinking. He was involved in the SDI studies of the 1980s, and I heard somewhere that his blog was the first ever of its type.

This was a guy that I was hoping to meet at a convention or something someday, and I always lamented that his novel-writing slowed down as he got older; I will have to re-read his stuff from now on.

He will be missed.

 

[dbeachy1]

I loved his "Lucifer's Hammer" book, co-written with Larry Niven. He will indeed be missed.

 

[Andy44]

I loved his "Lucifer's Hammer" book, co-written with Larry Niven. He will indeed be missed.

Another one I loved was King David's Spaceship, also set in the CoDominium universe, which involved a colonized planet that had to prove they had a manned spaceflight capability to get full membership in the Empire. Being that this planet had lost whatever industrial base it once had due to an interstellar war, the leaders and scientists had to scramble to find a solution.

 

[Traveller]

I always enjoyed his "Computing at Chaos Manor" in the old Byte magazine. I was introduced to his SF stuff in his collaborations with Larry Niven. I've followed his online blog for the last few years.

 

[Face]

Sad to hear about this. I loved "Inferno" he did together with Niven.

 

[dbeachy1]

Ah, I had forgotten about that one! I loved Inferno, too.