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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.
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
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.
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
mykepredko enthused:
Take a look in the Sci-Fi section of Amazon or a local bookstore. Mr. Pournelle made some terrific contributions to the genre.
-1 Disagree
As an SF writer, Pournelle was, at best, a hack. Were it not for Larry Niven, he'd be known only for his Byte column. As a writer of fiction, his prose was pedestrian, his characters one-dimensional, and his philosophy repugnant.
He was also an intolerant, alchoholic narcissist.
I know I'm going to attract a lot of hate for the above, but hear me out before you downmod me.
At an SF convention in the Bay Area, he was on a panel discussing the Reagan Star Wars initiative - and pretty strident in his advocacy of it. After the panel discussion concluded, one of the attendees approached him to engage him in debate about the program. The guy made it clear that he disagreed with Pournelle about the initiative's technical feasibility, was concerned by its projected cost, and felt that it would decrease geopolitical stability. He made his points calmly and respectfully, and he stood his ground, despite Pournelle calling him a Communist and a traitor. When he pointed out that ad hominems didn't address his factual arguments, Pournelle sucker-punched him.
I was there. I witnessed it. And whatever respect I might have had for Jerry Pournelle permanently vanished the moment he resorted to violence to silence someone who presented zero physical threat, merely because he didn't like what the man had to say.
That action is of a piece with the facsistic philosophy he espoused via his fantasy doppelganger John Christian Falkenberg, and is best exemplified by Falkenberg's "final solution" to the problem of overpopulation of the planet Hadley by involuntarily-transported convict-colonists. Falkenberg conspires to trap them in the capitol city's stadium, then orders his troopers to murder literally thousands of them - and Pournelle presents this act of mass murder with a straight face as somehow necessary, noble, and right.
It's an absolutely classic example of narcissist wish-fulfillment: treating the lives people of whose political views and power he disapproves as subhuman, and therefore legitimate targets of genocide ... all for the "greater good", of course. And, because Falkenberg has the "strength" to murder thousands whose only crime is that he considers them surplus population, Pournelle presents this despicable atrocity as admirable and praiseworthy.
It turned my stomach when I read it in Analog as a 20-something, and it still revolts me today.
It was clear to me then that Pournelle desperately wanted to be Gordon R. Dickson and the Falkenberg chronicles was his attempt to re-imagine the Childe Cycle from a far-right perspective - and minus all that nauseating, limp-wristed, left-wing compassion and humanity with which Dickson insisted on spoiling his narrative. Humanity and compassion had no place in Pournelle's philosophy. To him they were unnecessary distractions that should ruthlessly be dispensed with, along with the undeserving hordes of subhuman trash.
What makes Pournelle's fiction particualrly dull is that he constantly indulged himself in polemical justifications for his principal characters' psychopathic actions by constructing antagonists who were uniformly, relentlessly unidimensional caricatures, rather than characters. No one who disagreed with what he presented as ideologically-correct attitudes, strategies, and philosophies displays ANY characteristics other than unwavering venality and profound physical cowardice. (Well, okay, I'll concede that some of them also exhibit ham-fisted duplicity, as well.) They barely even aspire to the status of straw men, much less fully-realized, three-dimensional characters complete with depth, nuance, and complexity. They are, without exception, not so much cartoons as stick figures.
Of course, the same can fairly be said of Pournelle's protagonists, so that's
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