Jerry Pournelle

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Jerry Pournelle


Born
in Shreveport, Louisiana, The United States
August 07, 1933

Died
September 08, 2017

Website

Genre


Dr Jerry Eugene Pournelle was an American science fiction writer, engineer, essayist, and journalist, who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte, and from 1998 until his death maintained his own website and blog.

From the beginning, Pournelle's work centered around strong military themes. Several books describe the fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.

Pournelle spent years working in the aerospace industry, including at Boeing, on projects including studying heat tol
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Jerry Pournelle isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.

MOVING DAY


MOVING DAY


Well, moving weekend. My old ISP, which was operated by Greg Lincoln and
Brian Bilbrey, is closing down. We're moving to a different location, and
this is the weekend for most of the moves.


As a consequence we will be changing formats here. View and Mail will
remain, but just how they look and how they work will change. It will be a
WordPress operation, and a lot of the peculiarities of

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Published on June 25, 2011 21:27
Average rating: 3.97 · 195,613 ratings · 6,918 reviews · 234 distinct worksSimilar authors
Falkenberg's Legion (Falken...

4.15 avg rating — 2,150 ratings — published 1990 — 5 editions
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King David's Spaceship

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3.86 avg rating — 2,108 ratings — published 1973 — 19 editions
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Janissaries (Janissaries, #1)

3.83 avg rating — 2,065 ratings — published 1979 — 30 editions
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Prince of Mercenaries (Falk...

4.11 avg rating — 1,429 ratings — published 1989 — 8 editions
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West of Honor

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4.06 avg rating — 1,337 ratings — published 1976 — 16 editions
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Prince of Sparta (Falkenber...

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4.15 avg rating — 1,076 ratings — published 1993 — 5 editions
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Go Tell the Spartans (Falke...

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4.08 avg rating — 1,082 ratings — published 1991 — 6 editions
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The Mercenary

3.96 avg rating — 910 ratings — published 1977 — 16 editions
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Starswarm

3.82 avg rating — 760 ratings — published 1998 — 17 editions
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The Prince (Falkenberg's Le...

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4.21 avg rating — 674 ratings — published 2002 — 4 editions
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Quotes by Jerry Pournelle  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]”
Jerry Pournelle

“One of your most ancient writers, a historian named Herodotus, tells of a thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing hymns. The other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse and laughed. "You will not succeed," they told him. "No one can." To which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might happen in that time. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And perhaps the horse will learn to sing.”
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

“We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity. I am afraid. I will taste fear until I die.”
Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye

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