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
A nostalgia trail brought me here. ‘What happened to Byte?’ Loved chaos manor, often quoted over the years.
At times I aspire to being a motie engineer. If a thing can be improved, then do so.
A great writer and thinker, the world is slightly darker now.
This story reminded me of Jerry’s warnings that dictators were learning a lesson that possessing nuclear weapons was the only way to guarentee their survival.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-16/specter-of-qaddafi-haunts-north-korea-talks
Very sad to hear of Jerry’s passing. He is and will remain my favorite SciFi writer. Condolences to his family.
Still missing Dr. Pournelle’s level headed commentary on events, his fascinating diversions in to history or science, and the occasional anecdote.
RIP Dr. Pournelle.
The Mote and Jannissaries series are my favorites.
I have read almost all of Mr. Pournelle’s fictional books and enjoyed them all. His writings had a great impact on my views of the world and military life. I especially enjoyed reading his Janissaries series and kept on waiting for him to complete the final book Janissaries IV: Mamelukes. I now see at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries_series that he actually completed 151,000 words of this book with just the final battle and ending to be completed. I also see that Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have bought the rights to make a Movie about Janissaries and it is listed as ‘in development’.
Please consider having Roland J. Green who co-authored the second two books finish the battle and ending to Mamelukes so we all can see Dr. Pournelle’s Janissaries vision completed for all his fans to read and enjoy.
I think he is up there plotting stories with Asimov and Heinlein
I have followed Dr. Pournelle’s work since the days of Byte magazine. He was among the pioneers. He will be missed, it is true, but he will also be remembered, for who he was, as well as what he did. One of the greats.
Sad to hear of Jerry’s passing. his novels and the Byte column will always be a part of my upbringing and I’ll remember him with fondness.
We miss you dearly Jerry.
Your wisdom and insights are invaluable.
We so wish you were with us still.
God Speed Old Friend.
I am supremely grateful that I got to meet Jerry at MidAmericon II. When I told him I’d missed him when I won Writers of the Future because he was recovering from his stroke at the time, he was oddly apologetic, as if somehow he’d robbed me by being merely human.
With me was Martin Shoemaker, who’d been wanting to tell Jerry how much his encouragement had meant to his own budding career. Then Jerry went around the table, making sure each person had a chance to say or ask what he wanted, then he returned to me.
I’m a space nerd, and Jerry could tell it, and we spent most of the rest of our time together talking about writing and about space. That is, we listened while Jerry plucked jewels from his vast knowledge and fascinating life.
One of those jems wound up as inspiration for “Dangerous Company,” a story about the future and past of lunar adventure that just won me the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award.
I wish I could share that with Jerry, but mine is far from the only life he touched. I believe he knew, not of this particular, but of the general goodness he brought into the world.
I wish I’d known him better, but every time I go to a convention or workshop, I learn of another tale about him or idea shared by him. That’s a very real, very special immortality.
Godspeed, sir.
Dear Jerry,
I discovered your books with The Mote In God’s Eye, and didn’t look up until I’d finished every book in that universe.
You continue to inspire my writing, and your books are the first I recommend whenever someone asks for something amazing to read!
Thanks for all your amazing work in fiction, non-fiction, and even in real life!
Roland
When we first started up a reading course at my son’s school, a mention by Jerry in his blog about Roberta’s reading program led me to follow up and buy a copy. We did some testing at the school and it was well-received. I read his blog avidly – when I first discovered it many years ago, I read it all from start to finish. I always enjoyed following his writing in Byte, to which I was a subscriber from issue 1 on. His adventurous style led me to brave computer exploits, testing the limits of my knowledge and logic, from which I learned massively – enough such that I started my own company, with the belief that the human mind and curiosity was the main engine of technological innovation. That and money . . . I retired early after going public, in no small part owing to the lessons learned in those early days. His wide-ranging ruminations and wisdom have made us all more than we were, and his loss has made us all a bit less. To his family I say: we have lost a purveyor of wisdom, and those of us who watched and listened feel that loss very acutely. RIP Dr. Pournelle. You did good work.
Goodbye Dr Pournelle,
Your writings and the discussions on this website were true treasures.
You will be missed, more than you know.
Sincere condolences to the family, and Godspeed.
Gary Klopp
I’m sure Jerry was loving the show today! He helped point the way.
I wish the Doc could’ve seen the Falcon Heavy launch and the spectacular recovery of the booster stages today…
It is said that you can never repay favors, you can only pay them forward. As untold numbers of his readers, and later as a participant in some debates in his online columns I stand in debt to Dr Pournelle for his many illuminating comments and for providing a forum where we could make our opinions known. Never mind if he agreed with them or not. He always provided reasoned information, guidance and the essential benefit of sharing the information to which he had access, an endless bounty of verified data.
In his own special way he marked a road for many of us who are quite a bit younger (in my case almost exactly 23 years) and in so doing illuminated a critical view of life and living. I won’t even try to deal with the enjoyment his books provided.
It was only today that with much sadness I learned of his passing, to his family and personal friends my condolences.
I am sad to hear of Dr. Pournelle’s passing and I offer my condolences to his family. I was an very engaged reader of most of his work, beginning in England in the 1970s. I was as impressed with his none-fiction work as well as his science fiction. Later, I would purchase Byte primarily for his column and its practical approach to problem-solving.
I believe that he influenced many people, in the best possible way.
I grew up reading every article you wrote on Byte Magazine. I became a computer scientist because select people like you showed how fascinating pretentious pocket calculators could be.
Thank you so much. Perhaps in an afterlife I’ll read your articles on hacking the universe’s virtual machine.
I happen to bump into the first book of the Janissaries series somewhere in a second hand bookstore in the Scottish highlands. I loved it and I had incredible difficulties finding the two other books in the series (I finally found both as second hand books through amazon.com after 2 or 3 years).
I always hoped he’d write another Janissaries book.
I hadn’t realized I already had some of his other work in my bookshelf (Heorot series). I tried to find as many of his books I could in the following years.
I’m sad to hear he passed away last September.
My condolences…