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SciFi Author (and Byte Columnist) Jerry Pournelle Has Died (jerrypournelle.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader BinBoy writes: Science fiction author and Byte magazine columnist Jerry Pournelle has died according to a statement by his son Alex posted to Jerry's web site. A well-wishing page has been set up for visitor's to post their thoughts and memories of Mr. Pournelle.
Pournelle's literary career included the 1985 science fiction novel Footfall with Larry Niven, which became a #1 New York Times best-seller -- one of several successful collaborations between the two authors. In a Slashdot interview in 2003, Larry Niven credited Jerry for the prominent role of religion in their 1974 book The Mote in God's Eye.
Wikipedia also remembers how Byte magazine announced Pournelle's legendary debut as a columnist in their June 1980 issue.
"The other day we were sitting around the BYTE offices listening to software and hardware explosions going off around us in the microcomputer world. We wondered, "Who could cover some of the latest developments for us in a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) style?" The phone rang. It was Jerry Pournelle with an idea for a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) series of articles to be presented in BYTE on a semi-regular (i.e.: every 2 to 3 months) basis, which would cover the wild microcomputer goings-on at the Pournelle House ("Chaos Manor") in Southern California. We said yes."
Slashdot reader tengu1sd fondly remembers Pournelle as "frequently loud, but well reasoned." He also shares a link to a new appreciation posted on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site. And Slashdot reader Nova Express also remembers Pournelle's Chaos Manor website "later became one of the first blogs on the Internet."
Pournelle's literary career included the 1985 science fiction novel Footfall with Larry Niven, which became a #1 New York Times best-seller -- one of several successful collaborations between the two authors. In a Slashdot interview in 2003, Larry Niven credited Jerry for the prominent role of religion in their 1974 book The Mote in God's Eye.
Wikipedia also remembers how Byte magazine announced Pournelle's legendary debut as a columnist in their June 1980 issue.
"The other day we were sitting around the BYTE offices listening to software and hardware explosions going off around us in the microcomputer world. We wondered, "Who could cover some of the latest developments for us in a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) style?" The phone rang. It was Jerry Pournelle with an idea for a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) series of articles to be presented in BYTE on a semi-regular (i.e.: every 2 to 3 months) basis, which would cover the wild microcomputer goings-on at the Pournelle House ("Chaos Manor") in Southern California. We said yes."
Slashdot reader tengu1sd fondly remembers Pournelle as "frequently loud, but well reasoned." He also shares a link to a new appreciation posted on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site. And Slashdot reader Nova Express also remembers Pournelle's Chaos Manor website "later became one of the first blogs on the Internet."
Too bad for you. You missed out on some great books and a magazine that helped define early PCs and programming.
Go back to your mobile device and continue ignoring the world.
I very much enjoyed the "Mote" series of novels.
Yes the Byte era. Eyes filled with wonder, not so jaded and cynical back then. Computers had possibilities instead of limitations.
--He was a major contributor to the "great fiction" genre. He will be missed.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
I used to think he was intelligent and thoughtful capable of cutting through the crap, yet sadly his last "post" exemplifies all that I later found mistaken and flawed in his approach.
Maybe he isn't quite as much of a flaming ideologue as some of the die-hards here, but it still reeks of a bias, a sneering condescending disdain for the liberals that he blames for all the problems of the world.
All supported with a litany of aphorisms to recite until they are ingrained into your very soul.
Sad to lose such a man, but we lost him to his own bitterness many years ago.
Until Dr. Dobbs, BYTE was the technical go to computer magazine about what was happening in computers.
I credit them with almost everything I've learned about computers (despite having multiple EE degrees). When I was a little kid, I'd go to the library and spend hours a day reading all of the periodicals. BYTE was my favourite,even though I had no idea what they were talking about. I read every issue from 1975 until I got a subscription the early 90's when it took a huge dive in quality
All of his colabs with Niven were always a great read.
Also "Falkenberg's Legion" was an excellent read.
He may be gone, but his writing will be with us for ever.
Godwin in 9 - you guys are slipping a bit. Let's tighten it up.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Take a look in the Sci-Fi section of Amazon or a local bookstore. Mr. Pournelle made some terrific contributions to the genre. "The Mote in God's Eye" being my favourite, a collaboration between him and Larry Niven (I also really liked "Oath of Fealty") but he wrote a number of very entertaining novels as well as edited a lot of great anthologies - seeing his name on a book meant is was definitely worth reading.
In regards to Byte, I was in university at the time and I remember that other students and, more than a few professors, would go directly to his articles - he gave a different, less hyped, picture of Silicon Valley, the products, some of the people, and what was really happening and what was important. What I found most useful was his (along with family and staff) tribulations in trying out new products and setting them up - a lot of wisdom for what would be later known as "User Experience".
He hasn't written a lot in the last twenty years, but he left his mark in a very positive way.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I'm imagining a beyond-the-grave interview from Heinlein. Pournelle was a pantywaist compared to RAH.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Back in '87, the tax laws were changing so that you couldn't deduct magazine subscriptions as a business expense. That didn't matter to me, but they made a special offer of a six-year subscription for $99. By the time that ran out in '93, Byte had gotten... boring. It seemed like it was nothing but reviews, and stuff that would mostly be of interest to IT department types. Except for one thing, Jerry's column. That was the only reason left for me to care about Byte, and it wasn't enough to get me to renew again.
It was good to read about the various problems he would encounter and overcome, and it was also good to know that someone else cared about keyboard layouts. Back around that time, lots of crap was being done to keyboard layouts, obviously by people who had never learned to touch-type. The worst were the broken backspace key (usually a backslash between +/= and a tiny backspace key) making the right pinky have to go too far, something between Z and left shift making the left pinky have to go too far (hey, if the Europeans do it, it must be good!), and big return keys, usually resulting in the \| key pushing something else around. But I've been a Mac guy since 1985, and Apple managed to avoid such annoyances in their keyboards. Fortunately, a sane layout won, at least in the US.
I still have a couple of old Northgate keyboards, and a stack of Model Ms that I acquired over the years, and I hope to get around to replacing their guts with a "bluepill" board running my own USB code. But it won't do me a lot of good, since most of my typing these days is done on a laptop, where there just isn't room for a good mechanical keyboard.
Anyhow, I tried to see if I could look at his most recent Chaos Manor postings, but it appears that the database behind it has overloaded. At least the page linked in TFS seems to have been made static.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Byte was THE magazine to read for general computer news in the late 80's and early 90's. I have a bunch of them and I re-read them from time to time. This is back when nobody knew what was coming down the pipe, or what would even work. You had document-based object-oriented application paradigms being tried out, all kinds of new languages, new processor and hardware architectures being tried out. Weird storage mediums (floptical? ZIP drives? MO Drives?) By today's standards, weird OSes being tried out (BeOS, OS/2, even QNX made a bid for the desktop)
Now the big research goes into what kind of screens the next smartphones will have, or how much faster the next version of the same graphics card you own will be.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
No, his politics have always been fucked up.
He even liked Newt Gingrich!
Jerry had an interesting style of writing.
It's too bad he never wrote anything original of consequence.
His appearance in Byte marked the start of it's decline.
There were so many interesting things going on at that time.
Why would anyone be interested in the myopic view of Chaos Manor?
Not anyone with a deep interest in the evolving technology.
Kinda like what is happening to Slashdot these days.
Never heard of him. Byte magazine?
Yes, and for "Lucifer's Hammer."
"a sneering condescending disdain for the liberals that he blames for all the problems of the world."
They are not the cause of all the problems in the world, just for being wrong about all the problems of the world - even when compared to the old Greatest Generation Democrats.
No, not confusion caused by his debilitating health. He was drawn into the whole devolution of the modern conservative movement for many years.
I lost a lot of respect for him when he started spouting a lot of that nonsense well before the GWB days.
Good books though.
He was always libertarian right. Guessing he'd be 'disappointed' with Trumps' level of competence at this point as he was very firmly of the "engineers can save the world" faction of the libertarian right.
I read Jerry's science fiction back when he was writing for Analog Science Fiction magazine, and later had the opportunity to work with him at Byte magazine. Byte even flew me out to Chaos Manor to get him up to speed on their new BIX system, a computer conferencing system (a pre-Web forerunner to systems like /., Ars Technica, etc.) based on software I wrote. He invited me to a party where I met the likes of Larry Niven, Bob Silverberg and Poul Anderson.
I later worked with him, Niven, Anderson and a number of other writers, scientists and astronauts as part of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy. We (mostly he) helped get the DC-X project started -- reusable, vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket technology that SpaceX built on for their Falcon launcher.
He inspired me to start selling my writing, both non-fiction and later fiction. In fact, by a series of events I won't go into here (but involving the Council and an International Space Development Conference) he led to me meeting the woman I later married. When we had twin boys, we briefly (very briefly) considered naming them Jerry and Larry.
His passing isn't a complete surprise; he was getting on in years and he had had health issues in recent years, but it is still sad to see him gone. My condolences to his family, who were all very gracious when I visited his home.
Ad astra, Jerry.
-- Alastair
Thanks for using your mod points as a "I disagree" button, I'll give you a chance to waste them some more.
The fact is, Pournelle succumbed to the worst commandment of all, not criticizing his fellow "conservatives" as declared by his Saint, the Great Reagan.
Against my better judgment, but to give the benefit of the doubt, I've read a few more pages of diaries. What do I see? The standard right-wing catechisms.
For example, the usual song-and-dance over Confederate statues, and esteem for the fabled Lee. No, it isn't history being torn down, it is a false portrayal of history being rejected. Including the traitor and oathbreaker who invaded the North, caused widespread harm, and whose real saving grace was being strategically incompetent so that slavery was nor preserved as a legal institution. I'm sure he was miseducated as a child, for which he cannot be blamed, but as an adult, well, to use his own words, he really ought to have known better.
Really, he claimed he wanted the law to be colorblind. A nice sentiment. How can you argue against it? Well, leaving aside the quibbling that say, reflecting on the importance of viewing color in this world might constitute, the observation that the most strident advocates of this purported standard often are those who express disdain and disregard towards those who are "colored" with a great leavening of falsehood and prejudice.
He should really have been more aware of the company he was keeping, the fellow travelers with which he was walking.
Failing to do so just destroyed his own credibility. As did representing the "KKK" as the militant wing of the "Democratic" party which is a phrasing widely adopted by the right lately, as they neglect to admit that they are talking about a historical association when said Democrats were more aligned with themselves in terms of political identity.
But it's the Republicans in Tennessee who are all aghast at removing Nathan Bedford Forrest's statues, the ones who fall all over themselves in defending him, ignoring his crimes and abuses. Then again, he thought that the GOP didn't sell out the free blacks of the South in 1876 either.
Oh, and he still wanted his solar power satellites and kinetic bombardment system. I really hope there is an angel teaching him the error of his ways.
I got to know Jerry personally when I started writing for BYTE back in 1984. While I had read his BYTE column as well as much of his science fiction writings to date (both solo and with Larry Niven), what I didn't appreciate until some fact time with him was how much he knew about so many subjects. "Chaos Manor" (his name for the house that he and Roberta lived in in Studio CIty) was so named because of the shelves and stacks of books everywhere, on every conceivable subject. Jerry had a BA/MA in psychology and a PhD in political science; he was also an army vet, and did a lot of consulting for the US government, both in terms of the military and the space program. He also had what was pretty much a photographic memory. When I would argue with him on subjects, he'd bring up facts and figures from a vast array of sources.
He also didn't suffer fools gladly, which is why he ticked off so many people. :-) Also, he knew too much for them to prove him wrong, which these days is an unforgivable sin. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
No comments on what you think of his politics - to each his own, but how did his appearance in BYTE have anything to do w/ its decline? He just had a 1-2 page essay at the end of every magazine. If one bought it for just that, it'd be one thing, but typically, one would go there after reading the bulk of the issue - the cover story, any articles on subjects of interest, be it the latest CPU, Y2K, workstation lineups, et al. I myself didn't often read them: I mainly found a few articles of his where he described his experience w/ OS/2 Warp 3.0 when it surfaced.
BYTE declined partly due to the 'consolidation' of the industry, and also the fact that it seemed geared towards a niche readership. The print edition was doing badly, and in its last 2 years, it was considerably thinner than it used to be.
Well, yes and no. He had strong and not always rational views on many things. I still remember him arguing that Basic was a superior language over C. The real reason was that he just did not understand C, but the dizzying logic he used to come up with an alternative explanation for his preference was both scary and entertaining. Similar for his political views: they were a disappointment because they were argued just as poorly.
However, the main reason they were a disappointment was that on many other things he HAD a very rational and well-reasoned view. He knew what he wanted, he was very willing to spend time and money to get what he wanted, and he was very rational about it, on his own terms. That was important at the time as a counterweight to all those lofty ideas about what computers could and could not do, and all the technological geekery that went on in the rest of Byte. Arguing that Byte went downhill because of him is therefore just not reasonable. He was an important feature in Byte, and he had a unique view on the computer world that was important for that world.
Considering he'd been a big fan of Gingrich, why would that surprise you? I actually corresponded with him briefly about a decade ago, and he was very much a libertarian with some isolationist tendencies. I didn't think much of his politics but immensely enjoyed his writing, even some of his essays
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I seem to be a bit unusual in that I didn't learn about him from reading his science fiction books, and I didn't learn about him from reading his magazine columns. A search for some computer problem led me to an entry in his day book where he had dealt with a similar problem.
Nowadays, we'd call it a blog, making it possibly one of the oldest such on the internet, but the format at the time was one page per week, with new topics added at the bottom as the week went on. There was a second one, for his correspondence. For many years, every Monday, I would load up the pages from the previous week and read bits and pieces as free time presented itself.
I didn't always agree with him, but the wisdom available (from him and his incredible readership via email) was unmatched.
In addition to current events and computers, he also included pieces on his family, his dogs, his health, opera, TV, etc. Reading it for a while, it felt like you knew him. So, one day when I was in LA, I took a wrong turn and ended up, I suspect within a few blocks from his house. I mused that if I had known I was going to be that close, I should have made arrangements to stop in to meet him and shake his hand.
When I got home a few days later, I emailed him to ask if he accepted drop-ins, should I ever find myself out that way again. He said that he'd be delighted, assuming that he was home and didn't have other plans, of course.
Sadly, I haven't been out west since then, and now I've missed the chance.
I would like to add one thing - it would be nice if people remembered his small, but meaningful, contribution to the space program, and also his role in helping win the Cold War.
See that "Preview" button?
I recently had a "whatever happened to" moment and spent an evening reading his more recent opinion posts, and it was kind of sad to see him become more hardened into an increasingly bitter-sounding, yes, even Trumpist view of the world over time. The one where civilization is always falling into disrepair from the gradual takeover of ever-expanding bureaucracy and government control.
Go back a ways and you can see all the attitudes there - the "Fallen Angels" book from 1991 isn't just about how an ice age is far more likely than this liberal global warming theory (which the liberals in the book stick to even as mile-high ice sheets wipe out Canada and are eating Wisconsin), it's about how government with liberal concerns becomes a kind of fascist dictatorship, controlling individual economic choices and oppressing honest scientists who won't toe a party line.
And then there's Mote in Gods Eye which proposes an enemy which must be inherently treated like an enemy no matter how nice and reasonable they are as individuals, because as a race, they breed like flies... and just can't help but displace us utterly from the universe if we let them out of their cage. Which are defeated by a hereditary nobility, because feudalism turned out to be the best way to bring order to our race in an age of star travel.
But you know something? It didn't work. Not on me, nor on a bunch of friends I have that all enjoy SF; we all read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress without turning libertarian, and I must have read Starship Troopers 3 times but am not militarist, and certainly Jerry and Larry didn't turn me into a feudalist who fears that the teeming hordes of populous countries will overrun us like army ants. It was all just fiction, I enjoyed it, by my core politics were not particularly affected by it.
People who get upset when authors weave their opinions into their work all need to take a deep breath: if YOU can see it, can you possibly credit the rest of us with seeing it, too? We can filter our own inputs, honest: we live in a world of advertising. [Criticized for advertising certain products to the very young, advertisers today plead back that their sneakiest approaches can't break through the suspicious natures of modern kids: by nine, they know the toy isn't really as fun as it looks on TV.]
So, yeah, I sputtered with disbelief at his column when Obamacare was enacted, raging that for the first time in his life he was now held responsible for the medical care of complete strangers - I supposed he'd never before in his life considered complete strangers over 65, despite being there himself - but I bid him farewell with sorrow. He gave me a lot of fun hours in fantasyland, and a lot of fun hours reading about the latest in WORM drives (look it up) and literally a hundred other technologies that have come, and mostly gone, all building the world's most exciting industry. I thank him for his opinions even though I shared few; testing my reasoning against his was good for me.
Jerry-haters can take some comfort, if you feel mean today: Jerry's fondest youthful dreams for The Future (i.e. now) were all cruelly disappointed. We got no moonbase, no space industries, no asteroid miners. Worse yet, while Jerry may have convinced himself that NASA bureaucracy and general liberal anti-science budget cutting were at fault, I doubt it; he was opinionated but not irrational. And the painful fact is that no private industry was ever found for space.
Jerry's stories always featured a booming space industry by 2020 because zero-gee manufacturing was going to lead to ultra-fast computer chips, amazing new drugs, and ultra-strong materials. No such private, commercial reason to build in space ever materialized, despite billions of dollars of publicly-funded experiments to find such industrial processes. That's a shame for a space dreamers, but it's nobody's fault, it's just a scientific fact about the universe: space is way harder to conquer and way less rewarding than we hoped. Some front
Reading Chaos Manor was like meeting my hero.
And it turned out exactly as the adage predicts.
BYTE magazine was the dominant magazine for electronic and software engineers from the mid 1970's until the mid 1990's (when they went all pastel coloured and corporate IT). It was published each month and articles on everything from building your own home security system to software simulations and making your own VGA graphics card.
Early issues covered everything from cellular automata like John Conway's game of Life to fractals and networking with TCP/IP.
If you look around, you can find old scans of BYTE magazine online as PDF files.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
When I corresponded with him, it actually began with my mild criticism of his anti-evolution stance, or rather his critique of Darwinism (I never got the feeling he was a creationist). He leaned towards some sort of panspermia (maybe that's the SF author coming out in him)j, and I just wrote him and said I thought all panspermia did was push the problem back. He went on about how no less than Fred Hoyle was a panspermia advocate. My response was simply that while Hoyle was a very good astronomer, he was speaking outside his field of expertise when critiquing abiogenesis on Earth or asserting extraterrestrial origins of life. He took some offense to that, mainly that a mere Internet dweller would question Fred Hoyle. It was a peculiar exchange that suggested to me that he had staked out his positions and had little interest in actual debate.
I still enjoyed his writing, his military SF was some of the best of that genre, though I clearly saw his beliefs and prejudices coming out in some of his stories, but that's no different than any writer.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The whole "KKK are extremist Democrats" is an absurd statement. That was true 70 years ago before the Dixiecrats basically split from the Democrats. And where did most of the Dixiecrats ultimately end up? In the Republican Party.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It was personal back then - owning a computer, that is. Whether you had a shining masterpiece or a pile-of-junk, it was yours and you were deeply and personally invested. People sometimes named their computers (Mr. Pournells's main computer was, "Golem") but, named- or un-named, our computers represented huge investments in time, energy and cash. Before the megacorp-driven commodity market that the computer industry has become, the PC scene was an effervescent, always-changing wonderland of new companies, new software and new products (even new product categories). In the crowded, low-rent sections of ComDex, there were hopeful and brilliant engineers hawking their latest doodads, hoping to change the world. Most failed but that didn't stop anybody from trying. What a great time it was and Byte magazine tried to pack all that into each of its issues. You definitely wouldn't want to get hit in the head with one of those issues! Jerry Pornelle's column helped to distill some of that spirit from the swirling mass of cards and code and hardware. Thanks, Jerry. You lit a path for many and entertained many more.
Every R candidate for president back to Eisenhower has been Hitler...
Haven't you been paying attention? Swallowing bullshit takes practice, 'they' have lots and lots of practice.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I don't evaluate authors by their degree of cookie-cutter alignment with my own political views. If I did, I would have missed all the great Charles Stross that's out there now.
The grave dude. If they're still voting, you can bet it's D.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You've got nothing but pretend dude. Look at the #s of people in the KKK. It basically no longer exists. About the same number of idiots as Antifa. Lunatic fringe is lunatic, duh.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I can make arguments that at least some forms of BASIC are superior to C. Language holy wars are something that has existed since Grace Hopper created the first compiler. With object-oriented COBOL, it is hard to suggest that any particular language is necessarily good at everything.
C just happens to have a good code base and was taught to many CS students as something to create compilers... which made a plethora of compilers available to pick from and for a whole lot of the awful compilers to disappear into oblivion from sheer Darwinian competition. BASIC was in a similar position though, which is why a certain Bill Gates happened to already know how to code a BASIC interpreter for the 8080 CPU by simply dusting off his lecture notes.
No, he was always right wing and his political points of view didn't align with my own, but they were well thought out and worth considering nonetheless.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Panspermia has basically nothing to do with "evolution" in the Darwinist sense, all of that is the same. It only differs on the question of what got it started. Darwin didn't insist on a certain mechanism for Earth life to start, his argument is that all Earth life could evolve from a primordial form; panspermia is simply an offered primordial mechanism! Darwin talked about believing in "spontaneous generation" but also that he understood science to be not far advanced enough to handle the question. There is no reason at all to believe that panspermia is inconsistent with his views.
But the huge, gaping, unresolvable problem with the claim that panspermia is anti-Darwinist is that panspermia still supposes the exact same spontaneous generation as Darwin was considering, it simply moves it back to an earlier time in a different geographical place.
On one hand, that shows you are ignorant. On the other hand, maybe you are just too young. On the gripping hand, most likely you are an ignorant arse who is proud of his ignorance, and that's why you had to post.
On the gripping hand, ...
Nicely done.
Pournelle came from a time when United States patriotism was understood to be a good thing, and rightly so. He was brought up Roman Catholic, and that formed another base for his views. Like many with that combination of views, he did not understand the inherent conflict, and that showed up as holes in his arguments that he could not recognize.
Pournelle was extraordinarily intelligent. Many extraordinarily intelligent people learn early on that people who disagree with them are usually wrong, and for the sake of efficiency should be ignored or their arguments discarded without due consideration. However, his knowledge of many areas of history and current events was deep, wide, and insightful, resulting in his conclusions being much better than most people's.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I can make arguments that at least some forms of BASIC are superior to C.
Quite possible, for some application areas. However, the arguments Mr. Pournelle gave for BASIC and against C showed that he did not understand C, and that he was not aware that he did not understand it.
Language holy wars are something that has existed since Grace Hopper created the first compiler.
Yes, but they are only interesting if the arguments are solid; coming as poorly armed as Mr. Pournelle to these wars is just tedious, and tells more about the person than the languages involved.
Actually, the election evidence shows that the GOP absorbed the Peripheral South and gained in the South primarily from the importing transplants into the region, not by converting Dixiecrats and Democratic Party KKK leaders like Robert Byrd into Republicans. The racist Democrats in the Solid South primarily stayed Democrats. The GOP got more votes from the non-racists, both among the existing population and from immigrants from other States to turn the South into their voting block, beginning with the least (not most) racist States. The details have been written up in many places, but here’s one I found with a quick Google search if you’re looking for more details.
To quote that article in relation to the myth you keep trying to spread:
"Starting in the 1950s, the South attracted millions of Midwesterners, Northeasterners, and other transplants. These "immigrants" identified themselves as Republicans at higher rates than native whites. In the 1980s, up to a quarter of self-declared Republicans in Texas appear to have been such immigrants. Furthermore, research consistently shows that identification with the GOP is stronger among the South's younger rather than older white voters, and that each cohort has also became more Republican with time. Do we really believe immigrants were more racist than native Southerners, and that younger Southerners identified more with white solidarity than did their elders, and that all cohorts did so more by the 1980s and '90s than they had earlier?
In sum, the GOP's Southern electorate was not rural, nativist, less educated, afraid of change, or concentrated in the most stagnant parts of the Deep South. It was disproportionately suburban, middle-class, educated, younger, non-native-Southern, and concentrated in the growth-points that were, so to speak, the least "Southern" parts of the South."
Or as the NY Times put it:
"In the postwar era, they note, the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the G.O.P. Working-class whites, however — and here’s the surprise — even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. (This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.)
The two scholars support their claim with an extensive survey of election returns and voter surveys. To give just one example: in the 50s, among Southerners in the low-income tercile, 43 percent voted for Republican Presidential candidates, while in the high-income tercile, 53 percent voted Republican; by the 80s, those figures were 51 percent and 77 percent, respectively. Wealthy Southerners shifted rightward in droves but poorer ones didn’t."
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
There is a great article from author Sarah Hoyt on Jerry, who by all accounts was really helpful to other writers - I liked a lot of JP stuff but it's even more impressive to think of all the other great SF the world has today he may have helped foster.
Of special note is that Jerry was truly open minded and not really part of the political spectrum as some here are trying to paint him. From the article:
In fact, that to me was Jerryâ(TM)s characteristic: in an age riven by deep political divisions, he refused to draw a political line, and associated with people on both sides of the spectrum, treating all as humans and worthy â" or not worthy â" of his attention. (Yes, I do remember a few comments of âoeweâ(TM)re done hereâ in answer to less-than-stellar arguments.) If anyone drew a political color line, it was not Jerry. In fact, he urged me more than once to be forgiving of things that colleagues on the left side of the spectrum said while in the heat of battle. Heâ(TM)d point out the good things theyâ(TM)d said â" or done, or written â" and find excuses for their more intemperate behavior.
It's worth remembering that these days, if you do not agree with some people 100% they will consider you a vile enemy, to be tarnished and dismissed. The world is better off with people like Jerry, who welcome discussion from all and treat everyone as human regardless as viewpoint. We would all do well to remember his example.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I met Jerry decades ago at a Soldier of Fortune convention to which my then boyfriend had dragged me. As the days progressed my attire morphed somewhat, to John's obvious delight. In those days I was pretty decent looking. Then I got sadder and wider instead of wiser. So I was dressed down somewhat extremely when John and I were sitting at one of the Sahara Hotel's (RIP) bars awaiting Jerry's presentation. We were talking about an observation I, an engineer in the RF communications field, had noticed. I asked John to back me if I went over to ask Jerry about it.
Jerry had just been approached by a trophy hunter who tried to bed the macho men at the SoF convention and write a book about it. Jerry had brushed her off. So I walked over. He expected another proposition. "May I ask a question about the people here at the convention?"
He allowed me to ask. So I asked something like this (the exact quote is lost in time), "For a collection of men who are obviously interested in the art of warfare why in heck is there no communications equipment on display along with the firearms in the huckster room?"
Jerry performed the best double-take I have ever seen. His expression went through states faster than I could register. Finally with a mildly bewildered look he allowed as how he didn't know and that it was indeed a good question. Then we went off to his presentation.
Some time later I got into my car with John and we went to the local Science Fiction and Fantasy club, LASFS. Jerry was there and recognized me. We had fun talking dirty, I mean techie both PCs and novels.
Along about 1985 when BYTE Magazine's online service BIX was being beta tested Jerry whispered to me during a LASFS meeting, "Don't leave before you talk to me." So outside we talked. He gave me the instructions for accessing BIX's beta test. I didn't know he was a damn pusher! {^_-} It infected me so badly that by the time BIX's lights were turned out I was the head moderator on the system and getting paid for my addiction.
During all this time I never once saw Jerry as anything other than an old style gentleman to those who treated him fairly and decently. If I had to grade how much I respected him on a scale of one to ten it would be something like 15. We didn't always agree. But he respected me and I respected him. (And I still think the Commodore Amiga was better than either the Macintosh or the IBM PC of the same era. {^_-})
Damn I'm going to miss him even though I've been expecting it and dreading that it would happen someday. Warranties expire. His did. Mine is in the process. Still, losing him is a serious loss. I sit here imagining his parade ground tenor happily giving God some computer advice to make his job easier or spinning yet another good yarn.
Jerry, please rest in peace. Your legacy will live on for a long time.
{^_^} Joanne Dow