Dr. Jerry Pournelle: A Titan of SF (and REH fan)

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Jerry Pournelle died on September 8.  He was a huge influence on numerous authors and blazed a trail in SF that many followed. He was also a fan of REH. A good write-up:

infogalactic.com/info/Jerry_Pournelle


Pournelle was also a fine editor. Today and tomorrow, the Kindle edition of Jerry's landmark There Will Be War, Volume I is free. I own it and can vouch for the quality. For fans of A Mote in God's Eye, it contains an excellent space battle cut from the original novel. Hurry up and get it free here:


www.amazon.com/There-Will-Be-War-I-ebook/dp/B00WONO0C0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1465720470&sr=1-1&keywords=there+will+be+war+volume+1&linkCode=sl1&tag=chaosmanor-20&linkId=89079b624ed022fe5879e0e337e3e984

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Jerry wasn't just a fine author and editor. He was also an important figure in the fields of science and technology. A good write-up on that angle from USA Today:

www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/09/11/science-fiction-writer-jerry-pournelle-offered-fact-based-hope-future-glenn-reynolds-column/651515001/


Dr. Pournelle in the upper left.

[almuric]

I just reread Pournelle's Bicentennial novel Birth of Fire in his honor.

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The e-book of There Will Be War, Volume II is free on Amazon today (9/12) and tomorrow:


www.amazon.com/There-Will-Be-War-II-ebook/dp/B00WOM86I0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&dpID=51xioSjWFGL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_UX300_PJku-sticker-v3,TopRight,0,-44_OU01_AC_UL320_SR200,320_&refRID=9RN4KMKSBJK14307AKXC&linkCode=sl1&tag=voxpop06-20&linkId=3b4bef04326a6bb70f5c526089441942


Drake, Rosenberg, Anderson, Fehrenbach, Clarke...nuff said.

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EDIT: My apologies. The original link was to Volume II. The correct link has been inserted.


There Will Be War, Volume X is free as an e-book today (9/15) and tomorrow:

www.amazon.com/There-Will-Be-War-X-ebook/dp/B019KYLOKQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1505537437&sr=1-1&keywords=there+will+be+war+volume+x


The TWBW series always featured non-fiction articles as well as great MilSF/fantasy tales. So, in this volume, besides the likes of Larry Niven and Ben Bova, there are great essays by Martin van Creveld, William Lind and Gregory Thiele. All three are considered absolutely top-tier in their respective fields. This volume was published less than 2yrs ago, so the essays are quite timely and relevant.

[finarvyn]

Love Janissaries and wish that he had gotten around to continuing the series. (Rumors were out there that #4 was in the works ... then, nothing.)

He was a great author and will be missed. :-(

[trescuinge]

A great writer! My favorite is still 'King David's Spaceship'.

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A good one on Pournelle from the NYT, actually:

www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/obituaries/jerry-pournelle-science-fiction-novelist-and-computer-guide-dies-at-84.html?mwrsm=Facebook


“As far as I’m concerned,” [Pournelle] said, “we are not any different from the old storytellers, the old bards back in Bronze Age time who would go from campfire to campfire, and they’d see a warrior sitting there and say, ‘You fill my cup up with that wine you’ve got there and chop me a piece of that boar you’re roasting and I’ll tell you a story about a virgin and a bull that you just wouldn’t believe!’ ”


Pournelle in '85.

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GRRM's memories of Pournelle:



grrm.livejournal.com/548650.html

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The eulogy from Dr. Pournelle's memorial service:

I have been asked today to say his eulogy. From the Greek, as he would tell us, meaning true words, spoken in praise of the dead. And as the eldest of his children, presumed by age to know the most about his life, that duty falls to me.

But how is it possible to write truth in praise of a master of fiction? How is it possible to eulogize a man who rose to public acclaim while I was mostly away? Away to school, away to the Army, away to university, away to build my own career?

I cannot say truth about the personality—the public figure, known far better to many of you here than to me. I can only do my best to say truth about the person; about the man. About what I know to be true about the son, the husband, the father, the grandfather—and the loyalest of friends, to those fortunate to know him as a friend.

I begin with what we all know of him: his insatiable intellectual appetite. His breadth of subject was literally encyclopedic: as a child, alone on the farm, his parents away working, he entertained himself by reading the Britannica from A to Z. That reading foreshadowed an essential, but surprisingly inobvious, core trait of his character: iron discipline. Not imposed on others, but imposed on himself. The chaos we all observed around him, immortalized in the household epithet “Chaos Manor,” was actually symptomatic: the result of him making everything—absolutely everything—secondary to being done...


The rest can be read here:

www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/eulogy-in-remembrance/

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A good review of Pournelle's A Spaceship For the King, also known as King David's Spaceship:


www.castaliahouse.com/king-davids-spaceship/