Jerry Pournelle

Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Pournelle at the 2005 NASFiC
Born	August 7, 1933 (1933-08-07) (age 78) Shreveport, Louisiana
Pen name	"Wade Curtis" (early work)
Occupation	Novelist, Journalist, Essayist
Nationality	American
Genres	Science fiction
Influences Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, A. E. van Vogt, John W. Campbell, Russell Kirk
Influenced James Wesley Rawles
jerrypournelle.com

Jerry Eugene Pournelle (born August 7, 1933) is an American science fiction writer, essayist and journalist who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte and has since 1998 been maintaining his own website/blog.

From the beginning, Pournelle's work has engaged strong military themes. Several books are centered on a fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.

Pournelle was one of the few close friends of H. Beam Piper and was granted by Piper the rights to produce stories set in Piper's Terro-Human Future History. This right has been recognized by the copyright owner of the Piper estate. Pournelle did work for some years on a sequel to Space Viking but seems to have abandoned this in the early 1990s.

Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.^[1]

Biography

Pournelle was born in Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish in northwestern Louisiana, and educated in Capleville, Tennessee.^[2] He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. Afterwards, he obtained advanced degrees: M.S. degrees in both experimental statistics and systems engineering, and Ph.D.'s in both psychology and political science, all from the University of Washington. His political science thesis was titled "The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political 'isms'" and is dated 1964.^[3]

He served as campaign research director for the mayoral primary campaign of 1969 for Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (Dem.), working under campaign director Henry Salvatori.^[4] After the primary he was named Executive Assistant to the Mayor in charge of research in September, 1969, but resigned from the position after two weeks.^[5] 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.^[6]

Pournelle was an intellectual protege of Russell Kirk (Kenneth C. Cole, Pournelle's mentor at the University of Washington, was co-founder with Kirk of Modern Age) and Stefan T. Possony. Pournelle wrote numerous publications with Possony, including The Strategy of Technology (1970). 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.^[7]

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."^[8] He edited Project 75, a 1964 study of 1975 defense requirements.^[9] 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.^[10]

He also published in the military simulations industry in a competitor to Simulation Publications. That led him into correspondences with some of the early figures in D&D and other FRPGs.

In 1994, Pournelle's friendly relationship with Newt Gingrich led to Gingrich securing a government job for Pournelle's son, Richard.^[11] At the time, Pournelle and Gingrich were reported to be collaborating on, "a science fiction political thriller."^[11] Pournelle's relationship with Gingrich was long established even then, as Pournelle had written the preface to Gingrich's book, Window of Opportunity (1985).^[12]

In 1985, Footfall, in which Robert A. Heinlein was a thinly veiled minor character, reached the number one spot on The New York Times bestseller list. Another bestseller, Lucifer's Hammer (1977), reached number two.

As of early 2008, Pournelle has been battling a brain tumor, which appears to be responding favorably to radiation treatment.^[13] As of 28 August 2008 he is cancer-free according to a report on his weblog.

Pseudonyms and collaborations

Pournelle began fiction writing non-SF work under a pseudonym in 1965. His early SF was published as "Wade Curtis", in Analog and other magazines. Some of his work is also published as by "J.E. Pournelle."

In the mid-1970s, Pournelle began a fruitful collaboration with Larry Niven; he has also collaborated on novels with Roland J. Green, Michael Flynn, and Steven Barnes, and collaborated as an editor on an anthology series with John F. Carr.

Journalism

Pournelle wrote the "Chaos Manor" column in the print version of Byte, beginning in January 1982. In the column, Pournelle described his experiences with computer hardware and software, some purchased and some sent by vendors for his review. After the print version of Byte ended publication in the United States, Pournelle continued publishing the column for the online version and international print editions of Byte. In July 2006, Pournelle and Byte declined to renew their contract and Pournelle moved the column to his own web site, Chaos Manor Reviews.

In the 1980s, Pournelle was an editor and columnist for Survive, a survivalist magazine.^[14]

Since 1998, Pournelle has maintained a website with a daily online journal, "View from Chaos Manor", a blog dating from before the use of that term. This is a continuation of his 1980s blog-like online journal on GEnie. He says he resists using the term blog because he considers the word ugly and because he maintains that his "View" is primarily a vehicle for writing rather than a collection of links.

Humorist Dave Barry gives accolades to Pournelle's guru column in Byte magazine in Dave Barry in Cyberspace.

Politics

In a 1997 article Norman Spinrad wrote that Pournelle had written the SDI portion of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address, as part of a plan to use SDI to get more money for space exploration, using the larger defense budget. [2] Pournelle wrote in response that while the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy "wrote parts of Reagan's 1983 SDI speech, and provided much of the background for the policy, we certainly did not write the speech ... We were not trying to boost space, we were trying to win the Cold War". [3] The Council's first report [1980] became the transition team policy paper on space for the incoming Reagan administration. The third report was certainly quoted in the Reagan "Star Wars" speech.

He is sometimes quoted as describing his politics as "somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan".

Pournelle opposed both Gulf Wars, maintaining that the money would be better spent developing energy technologies for the United States. He is quoted as saying "with what we spent in Iraq we could build nuclear power plants and space solar power satellites and tell the Arabs to drink their oil." His web site is critical of the Iraq War, but demands support of troops committed there. "Once you send the troops in, you have no choice but to give them what they need until you bring them home."

Pournelle is also known for his Pournelle chart, a 2-dimensional coordinate system used to distinguish political ideologies. It is similar to the Nolan chart, except that the X-axis gauges opinion toward state and centralized government (farthest right being state worship, farthest left being the idea of a state as the "ultimate evil"), and the Y-axis measures the belief that all problems in society have rational solutions. (top being complete confidence in planning, bottom being its total lack).

Pournelle is a member of commentator Steve Sailer's "Human Biodiversity Institute."

Iron Law of Bureaucracy

Pournelle has suggested several "laws". His first use of the term "Pournelle's law" appears to be for the expression "one user, one CPU." He has also used "Pournelle's law" to apply to the importance of checking cables connections when diagnosing computer problems. His best-known "law" is "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy":

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

He has restated it as:

...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

This can be compared to the Iron Law of Oligarchy. His "blog", "The View from Chaos Manor", often references apparent examples of the law.

Some of Pournelle's standard themes that recur in the stories are: Welfare States become self perpetuating, building a technological society requires a strong defense and the rule of law, and "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it."

Politics in fiction

In The Mercenary, later integrated into Falkenberg's Legion, the newly-independent planet Hadley is threatened with economic collapse, famine, and resulting mass death. This can only be avoided by having a large part of its city population relocated to the countryside and assigned to work in agriculture (a socialist solution which is very reminiscent of Mao's "cultural revolution"). This solution is unpopular, and the leading Freedom Party won't hear of it. The party uses bloody, violent means to force the planet's President to resign and get themselves into power. The story's protagonist, mercenary commander John Christian Falkenberg, finds what he considers a brutal but unavoidable solution: in order to force the city people to move to the countryside, the Freedom Party must be completely crushed, in however bloody a way - as the other alternative is a total economic collapse in which at least a third of the population would perish. Accordingly, he gets his soldiers into the stadium where the Freedom Party holds its rally, catching its members by complete surprise. His men break the disorganized resistance and proceed to systematically kill the armed militants and party leaders. Mission completed, Falkenberg hands over power to a well-meaning liberal who hitherto could only wring his hands in despair, and departs the planet. Falkenberg freely offers to use himself and his men as scapegoats, since "nobody is going to forget what happened today".

Pournelle clearly set up the situation leading to such a climax to illustrate his opinion that in some situations a brutal solution is unavoidable, and that those willing to implement such a solution unflinchingly should be considered heroes.

The climax and perhaps some of the politics are borrowed from Fletcher Pratt's The Battles That Changed History, specifically "Fighting in the Streets and the Future of Order." Justinian the Great suppressed a revolt in Constantinople by seeming to capitulate, and then sending in Belisarius with reliable mercenaries to butcher the celebrating faction in the Hippodrome together with their leaders. This incident is formally known as the Nika riots.

For more details on this topic, see The Prince (Pournelle).

In Footfall, elephant-like alien invaders seize a foothold in Kansas. Unable to dislodge them with conventional weapons, the US government finally resorts to annihilating Kansas with nuclear weapons—killing aliens and humans alike. Later, when the aliens continue their offensive, the President authorizes the construction of a spaceship powered by nuclear explosions; the dangerous technology is presented as the only viable technology available to humans for powering a space warship. Safety, environmental and civil rights protections are suspended in the construction area. An investigative journalist discovers the Orion ship. Wrestling with whether to reveal the scoop of the century to the world (and therefore alerting the alien invaders as well), he confides the secret to an environmental activist. Although he does this as protection against being arrested by the government and had not definitively decided to publish, the activist kills him to protect the secret.

After the human ship fights the alien mothership to the brink of destruction, the aliens finally attempt to negotiate a surrender. The President expresses his willingness to accept a peaceful settlement. Unwilling to spare the enemy mothership for a mere promise from the alien leader, the National Security Advisor seizes control of the government and refuses the alien's terms. The aliens immediately turn their ship over to human control and offer their unconditional surrender.

In Lucifer's Hammer, the world is thrown into total chaos by the disastrous strike of a comet. In the wreckage of central California, a coalition of US Army deserters, Black Power activists, militant environmentalists, and evangelical religious fanatics take up cannibalism and pursue an anti-technological crusade against the remaining enclaves of civilization. When a farming community is attacked by this group, the settlers are forced to counter the invading army's superior numbers, fanaticism and weapons with home-brewed chemical weapons (mustard gas). The farmers successfully use this weapon of mass destruction to annihilate their enemies, enslaving the survivors.

Bibliography

Non-fiction

• Stability and National Security (Air Force Directorate of Doctrines, Concepts and Objectives) (1968), available at [4] (.PDF file)
• The Strategy of Technology with Stephan T. Possony, Ph.D. and Francis X. Kane, Ph.D. (1970), available at [5]
• A Step Farther Out: The Velikovsky Affair. Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1975, pp. 74–84.
• A Step Farther Out (1981)
• The users guide to small computers (1984)
• Mutually Assured Survival (1984)
• Adventures in Microland (1985)
• Guide to Disc Operating System and Easy Computing (1989)
• Pournelle's PC Communications Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Productivity With a Modem with Michael Banks (1992)
• Jerry Pournelle's Guide to DOS and Easy Computing: DOS over Easy (1992)
• Jerry Pournelle's Windows With an Attitude (1995)
• PC Hardware: The Definitive Guide (2003) with Bob Thompson
• 1001 Computer Words You Need to Know (2004)

Fiction

• Birth of Fire (1976)
• Beowulf's Children (1995) (with Steven Barnes & Larry Niven) also known as The Dragons of Heorot (1995) (UK edition)
• The Burning City (2000) (with Larry Niven)
• Burning Tower (2005) (sequel to The Burning City, with Larry Niven)
• The Children's Hour (with S. M. Stirling)
• novelisation of the movie Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1973)
• Exiles to Glory (1977)
• Footfall (1985) (with Larry Niven)
• Go Tell The Spartans (2002) (with S. M. Stirling)
• The Gripping Hand (1993) (with Larry Niven) also known as The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (UK edition)
• High Justice (1972–1975)
• The Houses of the Kzinti (with S. M. Stirling and Dean Ing)
• Inferno (with Larry Niven)
• Janissaries (1979)
• Janissaries II: Clan and Crown (1982) (with Roland J. Green)
• Janissaries III: Storms of Victory (1987) (with Roland J. Green)
• Janissaries IV: Mamelukes (Unpublished; working title)
• The Legacy of Heorot (1987) (with Larry Niven & Steven Barnes)
• Lucifer's Hammer (with Larry Niven)
• Men of War (1993)
• The Mercenary (1977)
• The Mote in God's Eye (1975) (with Larry Niven)
• Oath of Fealty (1982) (with Larry Niven)
• Prince of Mercenaries (2002)
• Prince of Sparta (with S. M. Stirling)
• Red Heroin (as Wade Curtis) (1965)
• Red Dragon (as Wade Curtis) (1970)
• A Spaceship for the King (1973) expanded as King David's Spaceship (1981)
• Starswarm (2003)
• Tran (with Roland J. Green, single-volume combination of the second and third Janissaries novels)
• West of Honor (1976)
• Fallen Angels (with Larry Niven & Michael Flynn) (1991) (Prometheus Award) ISBN 0-7434-3582-6. Electronic edition free at the Baen Free Library

Series

• Heorot
• CoDominium
• Janissaries series

Other media

• This Week in Tech - Dr. Pournelle has appeared a number of times as one of the panelists on the podcast This Week in Tech.

Anthology (as editor)

• Black Holes (1981)
• Imperial Stars, vol 1, The Stars at War (1986)
• Imperial Stars, vol 2, Republic and Empire (1987)
• Imperial Stars, vol 3, The Crash of Empire (1989)
• There Will be War (anthology series edited with John F. Carr), Vols I-IX

Awards

• Bronze Medal, American Security Council, 1964
• John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of 1973
• Prometheus Award for Fallen Angels 1992
• Heinlein Society Award (with frequent co-author Larry Niven) 2005^[15]

Seiun Award for Foreign Novel (Japan's): 1998, Fallen Angels

References

1. ^ The SFWA Grand Masters, Vol. One edited by Frederik Pohl, 1999, NY, NY, pg. 12
2. ^ The View from Chaos Manor, June 20, 2003
3. ^ The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political "isms." listing, University of Washington Libraries
4. ^ "Yorty Campaign Reorganized; Henry Salvatori Takes Charge," KENNETH REICH, Los Angeles Times, Apr 15, 1969
5. ^ "Key Assistant to Yorty Quits After 2 Weeks," Los Angeles Times, Sep 30, 1969
6. ^ "UTLA Captures 6 of 9 Positions on Teacher Council," HARRY BERNSTEIN, Los Angeles Times, Oct 29, 1970
7. ^ "The First Essential of Airpower: The Case for Air Force Laboratories," Air & Space Power Journal, Maj Daniel E. Bullock, 9/29/1999
8. ^ "Rods From God," The New York Times, JONATHAN SHAININ, 10 December 2006
9. ^ "Deep Impact," Dr Dobb's Journal, Jerry Pournelle, October 2005. I'm reluctant to use Pournelle himself as a source, but he goes into some detail, and the study was classified. [1]
10. ^ "TEST OF TAIL-FIRST LANDING / Science Fiction Gives Rocket a Boost," Charles Petit, 17 June 1993, The San Francisco Chronicle
11. ^ ^{a b} "HOT TOPICS," Jon Bream, 2 May 1995, Star-Tribune Newspaper of the Twin Cities Mpls.-St. Paul
12. ^ "The Truth Is Out There," Alexander Star, 9 August 1998, The New York Times
13. ^ View 502 January 21 - 27, 2008
14. ^ Notes from a Survival Sage
15. ^ Heinlein Society 2005 Heinlein Award

External links

• Chaos Manor Musings, a blog by Jerry Pournelle
• Jerry Pournelle Facebook group
• Jerry Pournelle Byte column parody
• Jerry Pournelle at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Jerry Pournelle (May 11, 2007). West of Honour. Baen Free Library. http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0671653474/0671653474.htm. 
• Jerry Pournelle at 1999 NASFiC website where he was GoH
• How Jerry Pournelle got kicked off the ARPANET
• Jerry Pournelle Interview at AMCtv.com

Persondata
Name	Pournelle, Jerry
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1933-08-07
Place of birth	Shreveport, Louisiana
Date of death
Place of death