{"id":19618,"date":"2017-09-10T13:32:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-10T18:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smaggi.us-east-1.derr.space\/?p=19618"},"modified":"2017-09-10T21:55:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T02:55:57","slug":"rip-jerry-pournelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/2017\/09\/10\/rip-jerry-pournelle\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP: Jerry Pournelle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Science Fiction writer Jerry Pournelle passed away Friday from a long series of health incidents.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those who read a lot of the genre may recognize his name, Jerry often collaborated with Larry Niven on several books, especially\u00a0The Mote in God’s Eye<\/em> which became their shared universe. Many saw\u00a0Mote<\/em> was also foundation to Traveller’s default campaign, The Third Imperium.<\/span><\/p>\n

I stumbled upon his work in 1983 through a trio of random novels my dad gave me via a co-worker who no longer wanted them. After read Alan Dean Foster’s\u00a0The End of the Matter<\/em>, because I recognized him, I investigated Pournelle’s\u00a0The Mercenary<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>which was a precursor story to\u00a0Mote<\/em>. It was definitely eye opening for I was 14 going on 15 then. The bulk of the Sci-Fi I had read and seen was very black and white with morality. Pournelle’s protagonist Colonel Falkenberg had little issue being in the gray, especially at the end when he said something to the effect of, “The people are due for monarchy again.” Pournelle’s characters would probably be good friends with war criminal Erik Prince of Blackwater notoriety.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless I did read other books to draw the previous conclusion. My personal favorite was\u00a0King David’s Spaceship<\/em> also set in the\u00a0Mote<\/em> universe. In entailed residents of a world with early rocket technology getting permission from the Empire to visit another planet that regressed to the Dark Ages. On this barbaric world there’s an operational AI the people treat as a god. The computer may provide the solution to get a craft into orbit, which they need to be made full members of the Empire and not a protectorate. So the heroes use the cover of anthropological curiosity to find the AI. Could be a clever episode of\u00a0Star Trek<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the above was his positive contribution to my life. As for the rest, I personally considered him a Heinleinesque flunky with Niven. In short, Pournelle found Democracy to be a nuisance due to it allowing the “wrong” kind of people having the right to vote instead of “rational” thinkers\u2026such as himself. Pournelle unnecessarily contributed to heightening the tension in the Cold War by writing propaganda for SDI (aka Reagan’s\u00a0Star Wars<\/em> missile defense). Billions America should’ve spent on infrastructure and other social programs instead of pissing it away on technology that was never going to work, it only takes one warhead to get through to spell game over. Despite his bullshit neutrality, he cooperated in a\u00a0quid pro quo<\/em> with the delusional Newt Gingrich. They “wrote” a book together and Pournelle’s son got a government job.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a shame he died but I wanted to get out a reality check before all the prolific praising and hyperbole swarm the Internet.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Science Fiction writer Jerry Pournelle passed away Friday from a long series of health incidents. For those who read a lot of the genre may recognize his name, Jerry often collaborated with Larry Niven on several books, especially\u00a0The Mote in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,47,44],"tags":[144,148,109,64,154],"class_list":["post-19618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-dnd","category-physics","category-sci-tech","tag-eighties","tag-obit","tag-politics","tag-science-fiction","tag-seventies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19619,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19618\/revisions\/19619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}