Jerry Pournelle, (born August 7, 1933) is an American essayist, journalist and science fiction author who contributed many years to the computer magazine Byte. He is an avowed conservative; some of his critics describe him as "slightly to the right of Genghis Khan".
Pournelle was born Jeremia Eugene Pournelle in Shreveport, Louisiana. In the course of his education, he obtained advanced degrees in psychology, statistics, engineering, and political science, including two PhDs. He acquired political experience by serving as Executive Assistant to the Mayor and Director of Research for the City of Los Angeles.
His science fiction, much of it written in collaboration with Larry Niven, frequently has strong military themes. Several books center around a fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion.
He wrote the "Chaos Manor" column in the print version of Byte for many years, describing his experiences with various hardware and software configurations. He continues to write the column for the online version and international print editions of Byte. Since 2003, he also been contributing to the computer programming magazine Dr. Dobb's Journal.
Since 1998, Pournelle has maintained a daily blog, "View from Chaos Manor", which predates that term. He says he resists using blog because he considers it ugly and because he maintains his "View" is primarily a vehicle for writing rather than a collection of links.
In a 1997 article Norman Spinrad wrote that Pournelle had written the SDI portion of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address, as part of a plan to use SDI to get more money for space exploration, exploiting the larger defence budget. [1] Pournelle wrote in response that while the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy "wrote parts of Reagan's 1983 SDI speech, and provided much of the background for the policy, we certainly did not write the speech ... We were not trying to boost space, we were trying to win the Cold War". [2]
Pournelle is also known for his Pournelle Chart, a 2-dimensional coordinate system used to distinguish political ideologies. It is similar to the Nolan Chart, except that the X axis refers to your feelings toward state and centralised government (farthest right being state worship, farthest left being the idea of a state as the "ultimate evil"), and the Y axis refers to your belief that problems in society will be solved once your ideology of choice is implemented (top being complete confidence that your political ideology can manage the problems in the world, bottom being mindless adherence to your ideology of choice).
Bibliography
(incomplete)
Non-fiction
- Stability and national security (Air Force Directorate of Doctrines, Concepts and Objectives) (1968)
- The Strategy of Technology with Stephan T. Possony , Ph.D. and Francis X. Kane , Ph.D. (1970) available at [3]
- A Step Farther Out (1981)
- The users guide to small computers (1984)
- Mutually Assured Survival (1984)
- Adventures in Microland {1985)
- Guide to Disc Operating System and Easy Computing (1989)
- Pournelle's PC Communications Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Productivity With a Modem with Michael Banks (1992)
- Jerry Pournelle's Guide to DOS and Easy Computing: DOS over Easy (1992)
- Jerry Pournelle's Windows With an Attitude (1995)
- PC Hardware: The Definitive Guide (2003) with Bob Thompson
- 1001 Computer Words You Need to Know (2004)
Fiction
Series
Awards
External links
