This page is for site visitors to post remembrances and thoughts at the time of Dr. Pournelle’s passing (8 Sep 2017). Your thoughts can be added using the form at the bottom of this page. Comments that are not related to words of encouragement or condolences will be removed.
Dr. Pournelle’s family appreciates those that have taken the time to send condolences and well wishes.
For those that are interested in Dr. Pournelle’s books, please see the e-books page or the Amazon page . Here’s a list of all of Jerry’s books: All The Books.
Jerry’s last post is here. The text of the eulogy given at the memorial is here. Site news is here. – Editor
Like many posting here, I first encountered Jerry Pournelle through his Byte column. I can honestly say it was his writing in that column that steered me toward a career in IT. Here was an extremely literate, intelligent and talented person who learned about personal computing by doing, and letting his readers know what he did, both right and wrong. I never read any of his fiction and I was not crazy about his politics, but I always admired his honesty and his amazing intellect. He was truly a renaissance man and I know he will be missed. Condolences to his friends and family.
I got into computing because of Jerry in his Byte days, even if Byte could sometime be hard to obtain here in Thailand. His User Column was the only reason I stayed with Byte till the end and continued to follow him on Chaos Manor in digital space. Through it all, I felt he was writing for the rest of us, the users bedeviled with gremlins in the early computers, battling DOS then Windows. And I learn a lot from him, not only computer stuffs, but all kinds of tidbits of knowledge that he would regularly share from his brilliant mind. Like he always said, “I do these kind of stupid things so you don’t have to do them.”
My deepest condolences to the Pournelle family.
We will miss you Jerry. There are no others like you. RIP
I am tardy to this page. My first thought on learning of his passing was sympathy for Dr. Pournelle’s family. My next was to feel sorry for myself because there is not going to be any more books, columns, or blog posts from Jerry Pournelle. I remember feeling much the same when I learned Poul Anderson had passed away. I will very much miss Jerry Pournelle’s wisdom, the well crafted plots in his fiction, and his historical perspective. I hope his collaborators finish his works in progress, especially Mamelukes, for which I’ve waited for years. RIP.
My condolences on the loss of this wonderful and inspiring man. We will not see his like again.
I was saddened to learn of Jerry’s passing in the pages of National Review. My wife and I knew him and his family from church, and he was one of the few genuine geniuses it’s been my privilege to know. We wish Jerry could have made it to 94 or even 104, but it was comforting to know he at least had an apparently peaceful end. We extend our condolences to his wife Roberta ( remembering her beautiful soprano voice) and the entire family. Best always from Patrick & Karen.
I have not visited Chaos Manor (.com) in a month (life has gotten in the way)… and now, I’m stunned.
Jerry and my correspondence was always respectful, illuminating (at least on his part), and always interesting. Amazingly, this brilliant man would sometimes ask for my opinion. Maybe that’s what made him brilliant – the realization that others with experience and different outlooks have interesting and salient opinions/observations from which other wisdom can be discerned.
I was passing through L.A. 10, or so, years ago and dropped in on Jerry. We’d never met, but he and Roberta (and assorted dogs) welcomed me in. I got to SIT AT THE DESK OF CHAOS MANOR! We walked down to a deli nearby – the conversation wasn’t noteworthy, just satisfying. Notably, both of us wore hearing aids and both of us spoke louder than the din of china, silver, and diners – such, that we were asked to ‘quiet down.’ Back at Jerry’s home, Miss Roberta told me that happened often! Shortly thereafter I received a box of a dozen, or so, of Jerry’s books; all inscribed to me. As lovely a gift as I have ever received.
Sir, I will miss you. To the Pournelle family, my great condolences. Jerry, though, will live forever in your hearts; and in the minds of the legions of current and future readers.
Semper Fidelis
Byte is where I read his stuff first. Was it 40 years ago? My father’s generation he was. He was probably no simple person, but I liked the way he could explain things and give his opinion. Without blabla and with a healthy dose of humor. Never stopped reading him. Will miss him!
Mr Pournelle was and will always be one of my favorite authors, he always inspired me to question everything and take nothing for granted. It would have been a privilege to meet him in person. My condolences to all his family and friends, we are all poorer for his passing.
As requested by many in attendance at his memorial service and wake:
In Remembrance of Jerry Eugene Pournelle
7 August 1933–8 September 2017
As written and delivered at St. Vincent de Sales Church, Sherman Oaks, California, September 16, 2017
I have been asked today to say his eulogy. From the Greek, as he would tell us, meaning true words, spoken in praise of the dead. And as the eldest of his children, presumed by age to know the most about his life, that duty falls to me.
But how is it possible to write truth in praise of a master of fiction? How is it possible to eulogize a man who rose to public acclaim while I was mostly away? Away to school, away to the Army, away to university, away to build my own career?
I cannot say truth about the personality—the public figure, known far better to many of you here than to me. I can only do my best to say truth about the person; about the man. About what I know to be true about the son, the husband, the father, the grandfather—and the loyalist of friends, to those fortunate to know him as a friend.
I begin with what we all know of him: his insatiable intellectual appetite. His breadth of subject was literally encyclopedic: as a child, alone on the farm, his parents away working, he entertained himself by reading the Britannica from A to Z. That reading foreshadowed an essential, but surprisingly inobvious, core trait of his character: iron discipline. Not imposed on others, but imposed on himself. The chaos we all observed around him, immortalized in the household epithet “Chaos Manor,” was actually symptomatic: the result of him making everything—absolutely everything—secondary to being done.
He quite openly expressed this sense of discipline about his writing: writing, he often said, was work. It was not difficult: you merely sat in front of a typewriter until beads of blood popped out on your forehead. Yet he did it, time and again: dozens of novels and anthologies authored and co-authored—eight of them bestsellers. Hundreds of columns, delivered weekly, on time, over decades.
But both his joking aphorism and prodigious output belie the other disciplines that lay behind them. First, his disciplined reading. He read voraciously. He read everything, on every subject. His walls at home are literally lined with enough books to fill a small library—and those are only the ones he kept. Thousands more no doubt fill others’ shelves today, donated to book sales or simply given away. And that’s the books: the breadth of periodicals, online and in print, is staggering.
He read to inform himself, and especially to form and inform his own opinions. Which leads us to his second discipline: he was disciplined in debate. He was, at core, a son of the south: where he, and his father, and grandfather, and their and their fathers back unto the foundation of the southeastern colonies were born; where he was born. And southern men of his time believed that expression of intellect demanded mastery of a style of discourse that brooked no prisoners— because, there and then, when discourse failed, violence inevitably ensued.
So, by nature more than a little reclusive, he mastered that style. And honed it. That is, he believed in the art and craft of rhetoric. He held it as a duty to be able to stand tall, in a crowded forum, command attention, sway opinion, and silence opposition. And a good deal of that mastery he learned on the road, because he was incredibly disciplined in travel. By that I mean his endless circuit of lectures, interviews, conventions, book signings, and background research. Despite his being, at heart, a homebody. He loved nowhere better than behind his own desk, in his own office, in his own home—or, failing that, in the home of his closest friends and collaborators. He loved no food better than that cooked on his own stove, or, failing that, in the kitchens of a few local dineries.
So, the frenetic travel, the speaking tours, the holding forth in yet another venue: they were all, for him, service. Duty. Discipline. A requirement of his craft and trade.
And they were also a reflection of his generosity. He was a remarkably generous man: generous with his time, his money, his possessions, and his ideas. As a son, as a husband, as a father, as a friend, and as a member of his (many) communities.
He was generous as a son. He was a Great Depression baby and a World War II latchkey kid, which made him just old enough to leave and fight for his country in Korea. So he never really knew his mother: she was out working her fingers to the bone, struggling to keep the wolf from the door, while his father struggled to craft a depression-proof future in the (then) new commercial radio industry. So, he often felt estranged from his parents, especially from a mother he felt he never saw. Yet, after his own father’s death, and well before he had earned anything like assured prosperity, with his own young sons yet to raise, he took her into his own home, where she lived out her years reclaiming the childhood he missed with her love for his children.
He was generous as a husband. He adored his wife. He loved deeply, and passionately, and never anyone more than her. The parable of the widow’s alms teaches us the truest measure of generosity: when that of which you have the least, you give most freely. So by “generous,” here I do not mean with obvious things like, like gifts and jewelry and public events (though with those too). I mean that, although always awkward as a schoolboy in showing his feelings for her, he did his utmost with what he knew how to do: jokes, and puns, and praise, and respect, and walks, and stalwart support of her career, and four sons.
And especially—and this is most telling—by listening to her, and to her alone. Certainly not always. Probably not often enough. But I do not believe that any other human being on the planet had the capacity to tell him “no” and make it stick. Because of his generous love for her, he listened, and learned how to be a better father, and an outwardly more affectionate one. To say the words out loud. She taught him that the great light of a generous heart need not be hidden beneath a bushel. He listened, and let his generous light shine on her, and everyone around them.
It certainly shined on us, his children. He was generous as a father. OK, let’s start with the obvious. There was never a check he would not roll his eyes, groan, and write. School fees? Of course. Wrecked car? Harrumph. No problem. College expenses? Well, it’s your job to get the best deal you can. It’s my job to pick up the rest. Airplane tickets, tailored mess uniforms, personal sidearms? Here you go. Need a tool, a meal, a book, a computer, a printer, a place to sleep, a bottle of white-out? There’s one here somewhere in the house. Go find it. Help yourself.
But his real generosity was with imagination. He believed in space. He believed in adventure. He believed in deep truths in myth, and deep lessons in legend. He believed in science. He believed in nature. He believed in fun. And he combined them all. Road trips, hiking trips, shooting trips; flights of imagination; cooking (badly), reading (well), brainstorming plot lines, standing up to bluster, figuring out what you need to know, then figuring out who could tell you. He’d pick up a phone in a heartbeat if he thought he could marshal support or make a contact. He’d invite you to dinners across thresholds you’d never otherwise cross—and then always pick up the tab.
And when you finished what you started, or achieved what you’d aimed, or found success in your field, his outpouring of respect was spontaneous and generous—and never seeking to curry your favor. He told everyone else how proud he was; how much respect he had. He seldom told you. For you, he was generous with what he most valued: drive. Achievement. Finding your own way, and your own mind, and (if you wanted to learn them) any skill or opportunity he’d mastered that might be of use to you.
He was similarly generous as a friend and colleague. That is the generosity of which I personally know the least. But over the past three days alone, I have lost count of the number of people who have messaged me—a person they know barely, if at all—to relay their heartfelt gratitude for what he most willingly provided: opportunity. Access. Introductions. Praise for work completed. Respect for early accomplishment.
I can add to that his remarkable financial generosity to people and causes and community. To his church. To the arts, especially the Los Angeles Opera. To battered women’s shelters, and widows & orphans funds, and of course to the greater science fiction community.
Which brings me to a final reflection, shared by one of those among us who is as close as a family member: How was it that a man so liberal with all he had, was so staunchly conservative in his political philosophy? I believe, in my very genetic soul, that this stemmed from his true and deepest belief: that we are all required to rise above adversity, and succeed, and then be generous with our success. And in the true world of his writer’s mind, this was always possible, for he could always imagine a universe in which it could be. And so he wanted us all to rise to that challenge, and having risen, to succeed.
So, from this house of God, in my own father’s name I invite you to go live your own dream. He was more than happy if you wanted to join and share in his. But he was always happiest, and most respectful, when you went and lived your own. Chin up, and soldier on.
It took me awhile to decide to write.
Being in my early 30’s I’m not old enough to have read BYTE. I found out about Jerry thanks to him being on TWiT. I found his stories about the old days in tech fascinating but this turned out to be only a small part of the interesting things I would learn from him.
I found his blog and while I didn’t read every post and didn’t always agree with him, anytime I wanted to learn anything about what was really going on in current events, his blog was the place to do it. He had a historical insight and a brilliant mind for strategy that you don’t see anywhere else on the net. Nothing will replace him but if anyone knows of a blog with similar insights I would love to hear about it because I already feel less intelligent than I was two weeks ago.
His strategic oriented mind played out brilliantly in the books of his I read as well. Actually I mostly listen to audiobooks rather than read them. Seven years ago I listened to The Mote in God’s Eye. It was such realistic book and the ending seemed so right; what would really happen when man meets alien. I did The Gripping Hand years later when it came out on audio. A year ago I got King David’s Spaceship mainly because I wanted to try a solo Jerry authored book but my reading list is long and my time is short so I didn’t get around to it until a couple months ago. I was actually going to start reading Outies (figuring it will never be an audiobook so no reason to wait) but then I read on the internet it had a similar feel to King David’s Spaceship so since I already had that I decided to listen to that first. I finished it on September 8th at about 2 AM CDT. Stayed up late to finish it because I knew I wasn’t going to get a chance to listen again for a couple days. So a couple days later I was searching to see what others thought of the book and Google informed me he died. As it turned out, the same night I finished the book. I still can’t help but wonder what to make of that coincidence. Actually I wonder what he would say about it.
All this to say Jerry will be greatly missed. Even by people like myself, who he didn’t know at all and I barely knew him.
Some of my most formative experiences as a young adult were arguing politics with Jerry on BIX, it was so great to interact with someone who’s books I’d read and enjoyed for years!
My friends and I earlier in the 80’s always tried to get to the library first at school when BYTE was out, we just had to read Chaos Manor.
I know he was loved by many and will be sorely missed, and my thoughts are with his family.
Condolences to his family.
I was born in ’70 and raised an Air Force brat by a father who was a tech geek. Via his military science fiction and Byte I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t know who Jerry was. Janissaries, Mote and other CoDo stories were ALWAYS there. He was my first favorite author. I will miss him.
Viae eius de scripto ad astra – ducit eum in paradisum
His writing about roads to the stars – leads him to paradise
Goodbye Jerry and God Speed
Just saw this. It is so sad. Forty years I have been following Jerry. To think that I was in the neighbouring state, on my first visit to the US. And I just missed Dragon Con… Landed on the Monday after…
I never met Jerry, but having read many of his books, Byte articles, and haunted Chaos Manor for years, I still think of him as a friend and kindred soul, now lost. His passing has left a hole in History. We will miss him, and the best way to celebrate his life will be to “live up to him,” if I can. Requiescat In Pace, Dr. Pournelle!
My condolences to you and your family on the passing of Jerry. I was a huge Byte magazine fan and would immediately turn to Chaos Manor upon receiving the issue. It was a very entertaining column and I always looked forward to reading about all the adventures in the manor. Again, my deepest condolences on your loss.
Third posting.
Jerry Pournelle had a few works in progress including Mamelukes and a sequel to Beawulf’s Children. I would hope that since these works were collaborations, they will be completed. Jennifer Pournelle demonstrated in OUTIES that she has the writing ability to do the job.
I started to read Byte when I was in High School in 1980. I am now a software engineer. Thank you so much for being part of my life for so long.
Rest in peace.
Rest In Peace, Jerry.
We will miss you.
Fond memories, I still have the CDs of Byte…. So much energy and insight. Of all people he WILL be missed, by me.
Goodbye Jerry. And thank you..
Condolences to his family.