http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Jerry_Pournelle
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.
Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.[1]
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 studied at the University of Washington and received a BS in psychology on June 11, 1955; an M.S. in psychology on March 21, 1958; and a PhD in political science in March 1964.[3] The thesis for his M.S. is titled "Behavioural observations of the effects of personality needs and leadership in small discussion groups", and is dated 1957.[4] His thesis for the PhD in political science 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'" and is dated 1964.[5]
He served as campaign research director for the mayoral campaign of 1969 for Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (Democrat), working under campaign director Henry Salvatori.[6] The election took place on May 27, 1969.[7] Some months after the election Pournelle was named Executive Assistant to the Mayor in charge of research in September 1969, but resigned from the position after two weeks.[8] 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.[9]
Pournelle was an intellectual protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan T. Possony. Pournelle wrote numerous publications with Possony, including The Strategy of Technology (1970). The 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.[10]
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".[11] He edited Project 75, a 1964 study of 1975 defense requirements.[12] 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.[13]
During the 1970s and 1980s he also published articles on military tactics and war gaming in the military simulations industry in Avalon Hill's magazine The General. He had previously won first prize in a late 1960's essay contest run by the magazine on how to end the Vietnam war. That led him into correspondences with some of the early figures in Dungeons and Dragons and other fantasy role-playing games.[14]
In 1985, Footfall, in which Robert A. Heinlein was a thinly veiled minor character, reached the number one spot on the New York Times Best Seller List. Another bestseller, Lucifer's Hammer (1977), reached number two. Both novels were written with Larry Niven.
In 1994, Pournelle's friendly relationship with Newt Gingrich led to Gingrich securing a government job for Pournelle's son, Richard.[15] At the time, Pournelle and Gingrich were reported to be collaborating on "a science fiction political thriller."[15] Pournelle's relationship with Gingrich was long established even then, as Pournelle had written the preface to Gingrich's book, Window of Opportunity (1985).[16]
In 2008, Pournelle battled a brain tumor, which appeared to respond favorably to radiation treatment.[17] An August 28, 2008 report on his weblog claimed he was now cancer-free.
In 2010, his daughter Jennifer R. Pournelle (writing as J.R. Pournelle), an archaeology professor, e-published a novel Outies, an authorized sequel to the Mote in God's Eye series.[18][19]
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.
In February 2013, Variety reported that motion picture rights to Pournelle's novel Janissaries had been acquired by the newly formed Goddard Film Group, headed by Gary Goddard.[20] In October 2013, the IMDbPro site reported that the movie was in development, and that husband-and-wife writing team, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, had written the screenplay.[21]