Jerry Pournelle | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Pournelle atNASFiC in 2005 | |
| Born | (1933-08-07)August 7, 1933 Shreveport, Louisiana, United States |
| Died | September 8, 2017(2017-09-08) (aged 84) Studio City,California, United States |
| Pen name | Wade Curtis (early work) |
| Occupation |
|
| Period | 1971–2017 |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Website | |
| jerrypournelle | |
Jerry Eugene Pournelle (/pʊərˈnɛl/; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American scientist in the area ofoperations research andhuman factors research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the firstbloggers.[1] In the 1960s and early '70s, he worked in the aerospace industry, but eventually focused on his writing career. In an obituary inGizmodo, he was described as "a tireless ambassador for the future."[2]
Pournelle'shard science fiction writing received multiple awards. In addition to his solo writing, he wrote several novels with collaborators includingLarry Niven. Pournelle served a term as President of theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.[3]
Pournelle's journalism focused primarily on the computer industry, astronomy, and space exploration. From the 1970s until the early 1990s, he contributed to the computer magazineByte, writing from the viewpoint of an intelligent user, with the oft-cited credo, "We do this stuff so you won't have to."[4] He created one of the first blogs, entitled "Chaos Manor", which included commentary about politics, computer technology, space technology, and science fiction.
Pournelle heldpaleoconservative political views,[5] which were sometimes expressed in his fiction. He was one of the founders of theCitizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which developed some of theReagan Administration's space initiatives, including the earliest versions of what would become theStrategic Defense Initiative.
Pournelle was born inShreveport, Louisiana, the seat ofCaddo Parish in northwesternLouisiana, and later lived with his family inCapleville, Tennessee, an unincorporated area nearMemphis.[6] Percival Pournelle, his father, was a radio advertising executive and general manager of several radio stations. Ruth Pournelle, his mother, was a teacher, although during World War II, she worked in a munitions factory.[7]
He attended first grade at St. Anne's Elementary School, in Memphis, which had two grades to a classroom. Beginning with third grade, he attended Coleville Consolidated Elementary School, in Colevile, which had about 25 pupils per grade and four rooms and four teachers for 8 grades[8][9] Pournelle attended high school atChristian Brothers College in Memphis, run by theDe La Salle Christian Brothers; despite its name, it was a high school at the time.[10]
He served in theUnited States Army during theKorean War. In 1953–54, after his military service, Pournelle attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City.[11] Subsequently, he studied at theUniversity of Washington, where he received aB.S. inpsychology on June 11, 1955; anM.S. in psychology (experimental statistics) on March 21, 1958; and aPh.D. inpolitical science in March 1964.[12]
His master's thesis is titled "Behavioural observations of the effects of personality needs and leadership in small discussion groups", and is dated 1957.[13] Pournelle's Ph.D. dissertation is titled "The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political 'isms'".[14][15]
Pournelle married Roberta Jane Isdell in 1959; the couple had five children.[16] His wife, his son, naval officer Phillip, and daughter, archaeologist Jennifer, have also written science fiction in collaboration with their father.[17][18][19]
In 2008, Pournelle battled a brain tumor, which appeared to respond favorably to radiation treatment.[20] An August 28, 2008 report on his weblog claimed he was now cancer-free. Pournelle suffered a stroke on December 16, 2014, for which he was hospitalized for a time. By June 2015, he was writing again, though impairment from the stroke had slowed his typing.[21][22] Pournelle died in his sleep of heart failure at his home inStudio City, California, on September 8, 2017.[23][24][7]
Pournelle was raised aUnitarian. He converted toRoman Catholicism while attending Christian Brothers College.
Pournelle was introduced toMalthusian principles upon reading the bookRoad to Survival[25] by the ecologist (and ornithologist)William Vogt, who depicted an Earth denuded of species other than humans, all of them headed for squalor. Concerned about the Malthusian dangers ofhuman overpopulation, and considering the Catholic Church's position oncontraception to be untenable, he left the Catholic Church while an undergraduate at the University of Iowa. Pournelle eventually returned to religion, and for a number of years was ahigh churchAnglican, claiming thatAnglican theology was virtually identical toCatholic theology, with the exception that the Anglicans accepted as moral the use of birth control.[25]
Pournelle eventually returned to the Catholic Church, as his other beliefs were consistent with the Catholic communion, although he did not agree with the Church's position on birth control.[25] Despite his estrangement from the Catholic Church, he opposed having the government require that Catholic institutions provide access to birth control or abortion.[25] He wrote that Sunday attendance at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, inSherman Oaks, Los Angeles, was part of his family's routine.[4] Upon his death, his family arranged a memorial mass at the church, on 16 September 2017.[26]
Pournelle was an intellectual protégé ofRussell Kirk andStefan T. Possony.[27] Pournelle wrote numerous publications with Possony, includingThe Strategy of Technology (1970).The Strategy has been used as a textbook at theUnited States Military Academy (West Point), theUnited States Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs), theAir War College, and theNational War College.[28]
He told fellow authorRobert Heinlein, Pournelle recalled, "that once I got into advance plans atBoeing I probably wrote more science fiction than he did, and I didn't have to put characters in mine".[7] In the late 1950s, while conducting operations research at the company, he envisioned a weapon consisting of massive tungsten rods dropped from high above the Earth. These super-dense, super-fast kinetic energy projectiles delivered enormous destructive force to the target without contaminating the environs with radioactive isotopes, as would occur with a nuclear bomb. Pournelle named his superweapon “Project Thor”. Others called it "Rods from God".[29] Pournelle headed the Human Factors Laboratory at Boeing, where his group did pioneering work on astronaut heat tolerance in extreme environments. His group also did experimental work that resulted in certification of the passenger oxygen system for the Boeing 707 airplane. He later worked as a Systems Analyst in a design and analysis group at the company, where he did strategic analysis of proposed new weapons systems.
In 1964, Pournelle joined the Aerospace Corporation in San Bernardino, California where he was Editor ofProject 75, a major study of all ballistic missile technology for the purpose of making recommendations to the US Air Force on investment in technologies required to build the missile force to be deployed in 1975.[30] After Project 75 was completed Pournelle became manager of several advanced concept studies.
At North American Rockwell’s Space Division, Pournelle was associate director of operations research, where he took part in the Apollo program and general operations.[31][32][33][34]
He was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. In 1989, Pournelle,Max Hunter, and retired Army Lieutenant GeneralDaniel O. Graham made a presentation to then Vice PresidentDan Quayle promoting development of theDC-X rocket.[35]
Pournelle was among those who in 1968 signed a pro-Vietnam War advertisement inGalaxy Science Fiction.[36] During the 1970s and 1980s, he also published articles on military tactics and war gaming in themilitary simulations industry inAvalon Hill's magazineThe General. That led him into correspondences with some of the early figures inDungeons & Dragons and other fantasy role-playing games.[37]
Two of his collaborations withLarry Niven reached the top rankings in theNew York Times Best Seller List. In 1977,Lucifer's Hammer reached number two.[citation needed]Footfall — wherein Heinlein was a thinly veiled minor character — reached the number one spot in 1986.[7]
Pournelle served as President of theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.[3]
In 1994, Pournelle's friendly relationship withNewt Gingrich led to Gingrich securing a government job for Pournelle's son, Richard.[38] At the time, Pournelle and Gingrich were reported to be collaborating on "a science fiction political thriller."[38] Pournelle's relationship with Gingrich was long established even then, as Pournelle had written the preface to Gingrich's book,Window of Opportunity (1985).[39]
Years afterByte shuttered, Pournelle wrote his Chaos Manor column online. He reprised it at Byte.com, which he helped launch with journalistGina Smith,John C. Dvorak, and others. However, after a shakeup, he announced that rather than stay at United Business Media, he would follow Smith, Dvorak, and 14 other news journalists to start an independent tech and politics site called anewdomain.net. As an active director of that site and others it launched, Pournelle wrote, edited, and worked with young writers and journalists on the craft of writing about science and tech.
Beginning during his tenure at Boeing Company, Pournelle submitted science fiction short stories toJohn W. Campbell, the editor ofAstounding Science Fiction (later calledAnalog Science Fiction and Fact), but Campbell did not accept any of Pournelle's submissions until shortly before Campbell's death in 1971, when he accepted for publication Pournelle's novelette "Peace with Honor."[40][41] From the beginning, Pournelle's work has engaged strong military themes. Several books are centered on a fictional mercenary infantry force known asFalkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and theChilde Cycle mercenary stories byGordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein'sStarship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.
Pournelle was one of the few close friends ofH. 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 Piper estate.[citation needed] Pournelle worked for some years on a sequel toSpace Viking but abandoned this in the early 1990s, howeverJohn F. Carr and Mike Robertson completed this sequel, entitledThe Last Space Viking, and it was published in 2011.[42]
In 2013,Variety reported that motion picture rights to Pournelle's novelJanissaries had been acquired by the newly formed Goddard Film Group, headed byGary Goddard.[43] TheIMDb website reported that the film was in development, and that husband-and-wife writing team,Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, had written the screenplay.[44]
Pournelle began fiction writing non-SF work under a pseudonym in 1965. His early SF was published under the name "Wade Curtis", inAnalog and other magazines. Some works were also published under the name "J.E. Pournelle".
In the mid-1970s, Pournelle began a fruitful collaboration withLarry Niven; he has also collaborated on novels withRoland J. Green,Michael F. Flynn, andSteven Barnes, and collaborated as an editor on an anthology seriesThe Endless Frontier withJohn F. Carr.
In 2010, his daughter Jennifer R. Pournelle (writing as J.R. Pournelle), an archaeology professor, e-published a novelOuties, an authorized sequel to theMote in God's Eye series.[45][46]
Pournelle began using a computer to write in 1977 on the advice of his "mad" friend Dan MacLean.[47] He wrote the "Computing at Chaos Manor" column inByte, describing experiences with computer hardware and software, some purchased and some sent by vendors for review, at his home office. Because Pournelle was then, according to the magazine, "virtuallyByte's only writer who was a mere user—he didn't create compilers and computers, he merely used them", it began as "The User's Column" in July 1980. Subtitled "Omikron TRS-80 Boards, NEWDOS+, and Sundry Other Matters", an Editor's Note accompanied the article:[48][49]
The other day we were sitting around theByte offices listening to software and hardware explosions going off around us in themicrocomputer 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 inByte 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. Herewith the first installment ...
Pournelle stated that
This will be a column by and for computer users, and with rare exceptions I won't discuss anything I haven't installed and implemented here in Chaos Manor. At Chaos Manor we have computer users ranging in sophistication from my 9-year-old through a college-undergraduate assistant and up to myself. (Not that I'm the last word in sophistication, but I do sit here and pound this machine a lot; if I can't get something to work, it takes an expert.) Fair warning, then: the very nature of this column limits its scope. I can't talk about anything I can't run on my machines, nor am I likely to discuss things I have no use for.
Among recurring characters were Pournelle's family members, friends, and many computers.[47] He introduced to readers "my friend Ezekiel, who happens to be aCromemco Z-2 with iCom 8-inch soft-sectored floppy disk drives"; he also owned aTRS-80 Model I, and the first subject discussed in the column was an add-on that permitted it to use the same data andCP/M applications as the Cromemco.[49] The next column appeared in December 1980 with the subtitle "BASIC, Computer Languages, and Computer Adventures";[50] Ezekiel II, a Compupro S-100 CP/M system, debuted in March 1983.[51] Other computers received nicknames, such asZorro, Pournelle's "colorful"Zenith Z-100, andLucy Van Pelt, a "fussbudget"IBM PC;[52] he referred to genericPC compatibles as "PClones". Pournelle often denounced companies that announcedvaporware, sarcastically writing that they would arrive "Real Soon Now"[53] (later abbreviated to just "RSN"), and those that used softwarecopy protection.[47] As part of a redesign in June 1984, the magazine renamed the popular column to "Computing at Chaos Manor", and the accompanying letter column became "Chaos Manor Mail".[48]
Pournelle preferred 8-inch floppy disks to 5 1/4 inch disks as late as 1982,[54] and still used "Zeke" to write as late as 1987, but admitted that he would soon have to use PCs because tools likeBorland Sidekick were unavailable. He hesitated, Pournelle said, because Niven would buy two exact copies of his writing computer and software.[55] He announced in February 1989 that theSmithsonian had asked for "Zeke" as part of a history of computing.[56] A memorable column in August 1989 was "The Great Power Spike", which gives a digital necropsy of his electronic equipment after high voltage transmission wires dropped onto the power line for his neighborhood.[57][58]
After the print version ofByte ended publication in the United States, Pournelle continued publishing the column for the online version and international print editions ofByte. In July 2006, Pournelle andByte declined to renew their contract[citation needed] and Pournelle moved the column to his own web site, Chaos Manor Reviews.[59]
Pournelle claimed to be the first author to have written a published book contribution using aword processor on apersonal computer, in 1977.[60][61]
In the 1980s, Pournelle was an editor and columnist forSurvive, asurvivalist magazine.[62] He wrote the monthly column "The Micro Revolution" forPopular Computing from April 1984 until the magazine's closure in December 1985. The column focused on the ways microcomputers were reshaping society.[63][64]
In 2011, Pournelle joined journalistGina Smith, punditJohn C. Dvorak, political cartoonistTed Rall, and several other Byte.com staff reporters to launch an independent tech and political news site, aNewDomain.net[65] Pournelle served as director of aNewDomain until his death.[66]
After 1998, Pournelle maintained a website with a daily online journal, "View from Chaos Manor," a blog dating from before the use of that term.[67] It is a collection of his "Views" and "Mail" from a large variety of readers. This is a continuation of his 1980s blog-like online journal onGEnie. He said he resists using the term "blog" because he considered the word ugly, and because he maintained that his "View" is primarily a vehicle for writing rather than a collection of links. In his bookDave Barry in Cyberspace, humoristDave Barry has fun with Pournelle's guru column inByte magazine.
Pournelle, in collaboration with his wife, Roberta (who was an expert on reading education) wrote the commercial education software program called Reading: The Learning Connection.[68][69]
Pournelle served as campaign research director for the mayoral campaign of 1969 for Los Angeles MayorSam Yorty (Democrat), working under campaign directorHenry Salvatori.[70] The election took place on May 27, 1969.[71] Pournelle was later named Executive Assistant to the Mayor in charge of research in September 1969, but resigned from the position after two weeks.[72] 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.[73]
He is sometimes quoted as describing his politics as "somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan."[74] Pournelle resisted others classifying him into any particular political group, but acknowledged the approximate accuracy of the termpaleoconservatism as applying to him. He distinguished his conservativism from the alternativeneoconservatism, noting that he had been drummed out of the Conservative movement by "the egregious Frum", referring to prominent neoconservative,David Frum.[75] Notably, Pournelle opposed theGulf War and theIraq War, maintaining that the money would be better spent developing energy technologies for the United States. According to aWall Street Journal article, "Pournelle estimates that for what the Iraq war has cost so far, the United States could have paid for a network of nuclear power stations sufficient to achieve energy independence, and bankrupt the Arabs for once and for all."[76]
Pournelle created thePournelle chart in his doctoral dissertation, a 2-dimensional coordinate system used to distinguish political ideologies. It is acartesian diagram in which 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 rational planning, bottom being complete lack of confidence in rational planning).[77]
In a 1997 article,Norman Spinrad wrote that Pournelle had written theSDI portion ofRonald Reagan'sState of the Union Address, as part of a plan to use SDI to get more money for space exploration using the larger defense budget.[78] Pournelle wrote in response that while theCitizens' 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". The Council's first report in 1980[79] became the transition team policy paper on space for the incoming Reagan administration. The third report was quoted in the Reagan "Star Wars" speech.[citation needed]
Pournelle suggested several "laws". He used the term "Pournelle's law" for the expression "One user, one CPU". He later amended this to "One user, at least one CPU" in a column inInfoWorld.[80] He also used the term "Pournelle's law" for "Silicon is cheaper than iron." That is, a computer is cheaper to upgrade than replace. A second aspect of this law was Pournelle's prediction thathard disk drives would eventually be replaced bysolid-state memory,[81] although he admitted thatbubble memory had failed to do so as he had expected.[55] He has also used "Pournelle's law" to apply to the importance of checking cable connections when diagnosing computer problems: "You'll find by and large, the trouble is a cable."[82] Another Pournelle's Law is "If you don’t know what you’re doing, deal with those who do".[47]
Another "law" of his is "Pournelle's iron law ofbureaucracy":
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[83]
He eventually restated it as:
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.[84]
His blog, "The View from Chaos Manor", often references apparent examples of the law.[85] 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".
Pournelle never won aHugo Award. He said, "Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money."[86]The Mote in God's Eye andInferno were both nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1975.[87]
Are you writing for her, too? I'm working with her. [...] the name of her site is some weird name [...] A new domain
An award-winning science fiction author, Jerry Pournelle is the best-known columnist in tech journalism history. His BYTE magazine column, Computing at Chaos Manor, was legendary. Now Jerry is our lead commentator at aNewDomain, where he is reprising that column. Email Jerry at Jerry@aNewDomain.net or jerry@jerrypournelle.com and check out his site at jerrypournelle.com.
This is credited to Pournelle, who died in 2017, "with contributions from David Weber and the author's son Phillip Pournelle."
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