Somehow I missed this, one of my favorite SF authors of all time died the other day:
http://www.sfwa.org/2017/09/memoriam-jerry-pournelle/
Pournelle was a major figure in the "military SF" genre, in the tradition of Robert Heinlein, with a mapped out future history and hard-as-nails sci fi.
He worked with Larry Niven to create at least two SF masterpieces I can think of immediately: The Mote in God's Eye, a first-contact novel set in the CoDominium universe, and Footfall, possibly the best alien invasion story I've ever read. Certainly for me it was the most entertaining and satisfying in terms of the human technological response.
Pournelle worked for various companies in the defense industry, including the Rand Corporation, which is the company chartered by the US government to study, among other things, nuclear warfare and foreign policy strategic thinking. He was involved in the SDI studies of the 1980s, and I heard somewhere that his blog was the first ever of its type.
This was a guy that I was hoping to meet at a convention or something someday, and I always lamented that his novel-writing slowed down as he got older; I will have to re-read his stuff from now on.
He will be missed.
http://www.sfwa.org/2017/09/memoriam-jerry-pournelle/
Pournelle was a major figure in the "military SF" genre, in the tradition of Robert Heinlein, with a mapped out future history and hard-as-nails sci fi.
He worked with Larry Niven to create at least two SF masterpieces I can think of immediately: The Mote in God's Eye, a first-contact novel set in the CoDominium universe, and Footfall, possibly the best alien invasion story I've ever read. Certainly for me it was the most entertaining and satisfying in terms of the human technological response.
Pournelle worked for various companies in the defense industry, including the Rand Corporation, which is the company chartered by the US government to study, among other things, nuclear warfare and foreign policy strategic thinking. He was involved in the SDI studies of the 1980s, and I heard somewhere that his blog was the first ever of its type.
This was a guy that I was hoping to meet at a convention or something someday, and I always lamented that his novel-writing slowed down as he got older; I will have to re-read his stuff from now on.
He will be missed.