REAL SOON NOW
Jerry Pournelle
Thursday, April 05, 2007
A sort of Work In Progress Report. This page supercedes a previous Work in Progress page. This page is current projects. The previous page had references to longer term stuff, and may be of interest, but understand that it's not updated as often as this one.
Coming Real Soon Now:
Notice the absence of dates.
INFERNO II (working title) by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. 70,000 words as of April 2007. Should be completed by end of April 2007; after editorial consultation with Bob Gleason of Tor may be finished by June 2007. Sequel to Inferno.
Working Title: Mojave Rising. That won't be the final title. This is a story to create a new universe, one that starts now in a time of American Hegemony and the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security. It will do for this timeline what the CoDominium series did for that timeline. I started the CoDominium books in 1971, and they had a pretty good run: for a while there it really did look as if things would go that way. The Seventy Years War AKA the Cold War ended with a whimper, and other things happened. Francis Fukuyama predicted "The End of History" but in fact history has not ended.
This novel takes place a few years from now. There is still terrorism. The US is still responding. Anarcho-tyranny hasn't taken over but there has been more of a trend toward the police making easy collars and leaving the tough cases alone. There is more money. Computers make it a lot easier to identify and track people. There is a real threat from terrorists, but there is also a real threat to liberty from what we do to ourselves. There are good guys and bad guys on both sides of the law. And a boy is caught up in it and grows to be a man...
This book is still in progress. Progress is slow.
LISABETTA A story set in more or less the world of Higher Education. In progress.
MAMELUKES: Latest Janissaries Novel. I have 75,000 words done of about 80,000. There are many new characters, as well as all -- ALL -- of the old ones. A lot happens. A LOT. Some happens off stage in the High Commission: I have no viewpoint characters who can see that, but the effects will be felt both on Earth and Tran.
I've been working pretty steadily on this. Watch out for Ghurkas...
Alas, as of Spring, 2007 I haven't finished this. It is about next on my schedule, after Inferno II, and I expect to turn it in to Ace in July, 2007. Portions of Mamelukes are available to subscribers in the subscriber only area of the Chaos Manor Reviews web site.
BURNING TOWER: Sequel to Burning City. Is now finished and available for pre-order on Amazon. Should be published in book stores late 2004, but certainly by early 2005 by Simon and Schuster. Watch for it, order copies early.
Burning Tower is as good a "hard" fantasy as we know how to write, and my wife made me go through and put new scenes in it to help character development. I cannot imagine anyone who likes the kind of work Niven and I do who won't like this book. THIS BOOK IS DONE and in print.
BURNING MOUNTAIN the third volume in the BURNING CITY (buy that one if you don't have it) series is in planning stage. No date. Not scheduled. No contract as yet.
HIGH TECH WARS in two volumes: Pournelle on how to make war and what kind of military we need. Discusses why there are two military concepts we must choose between: what is right for EMPIRE and what is right for a Republic. There's also what is best if we want to muck about being the world policeman, but in fact NOTHING will let us do that properly. Republics need one kind of military (mostly Navy, with the Marines to fight Small Wars); Empires need something else entirely, an army more than good enough to best any client states; let the client states fight the small wars and do the messy work of anti-terrorism.
There's also what we need to fight the WAR AGAINST THE UNIVERSE namely saving the planet from Lucifer's Hammer...
These are still "in progress" and I plead pressure of other work. I have not abandoned these books.
Spartan Hegemony: outline stage. Not much more done than that.
Falkenberg on Kennicott: also outline stage.
I hope to get up ALL my old BYTE columns with web exclusives, and links and so forth, but it has been a big job putting all that together, and much is historical now. Bear with me.
