Jerry Pournelle
Overview
 
Jerry Eugene Pournelle is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

ist and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte
Byte (magazine)
BYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage...

and has since 1998 been maintaining his own website/blog.

From the beginning, Pournelle's work has engaged strong military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...

 themes. Several books are centered on a fictional mercenary
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...

 infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

 force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle
Childe Cycle
The Childe Cycle is an unfinished series of science fiction novels by Gordon R. Dickson. The name Childe Cycle is an allusion to Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, a poem by Robert Browning, which provided considerable inspiration for elements in Dickson's magnum opus.The series is sometimes...

mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson
Gordon R. Dickson
Gordon Rupert Dickson was an American science fiction author.- Biography :Dickson was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1923. After the death of his father, he moved with his mother to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1937...

, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers
Starship Troopers
Starship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, first published as a serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and published hardcover in December, 1959.The first-person narrative is about a young soldier from the Philippines named Juan "Johnnie" Rico and his...

, 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
H. Beam Piper
Henry Beam Piper was an American science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series of stories and a shorter series of "Paratime" alternate history tales.He wrote under the name H. Beam Piper...

 and was granted by Piper the rights to produce stories set in Piper's Terro-Human Future History.
Quotations

In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.

The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

To stand on the firing parapet and expose yourself to danger; to stand and fight a thousand miles from home when you’re all alone and outnumbered and probably beaten; to spit on your hands and lower the pike; to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King; to be rear guard at Kunu-Ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead Drill; these are not rational acts. They are often merely necessary.

There Will Be War (1983)

I've noticed that just about every time I find a large program with known glitches that no one seems able to fix, that program is written in C and is likely written by a programming team in a remote location.

Chaos Manor, Byte magazine, October 1990, page 84.

 
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