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Jerry Pournelle (born 1933- died 2017) was American journalist, essayist, and bestselling science fiction author. He was a regular contributor to the popular computer magazine in 1970, the 80s and early 90s. In 2011 Pournelle joined pundit John C. Dvorak, political cartoonist Ted Rall, journalist Gina Smith, and other Byte.com reporters to start an independent technological and political news site aNewDomain.
The author served as a president of the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973 and served as the director of aNewDomain Media until his death. He is famously recognized as the first writer to have written a published novel using a word processor on a PC in 1977.
Pournelle was born in Shreveport in northwestern Louisiana. He served in the US Military during the Korean War. After the war, he joined the University of Washington where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology in 1955 and masters in 1958. He graduated with a Ph.D. in political science in 1964.
From the start, Pournelle’s work has involved military themes. Some of his books are centered on a fictional mercenary force known as Falkenberg’s Legion. There is a strong similarity between Pournelle’s Falkenberg’s Legion stories and the Childe Cycle stories by Gordon R. Dickson and the Starship Troopers, but Pournelle work takes a fewer tech leaps than either of the two.
Pournelle was a close friend of the H. Beam Piper such that Piper granted him the rights to produce the stories set in Piper’s Terro-Human Future History. The author also worked for years on a follow up to Space Viking but appears to have abandoned the project in the early 1990’s- however, John F. Car intends to complete it and have it published in 2018.
In 2013, it was reported that Goddard Film Group had acquired the right to the adaptation of Pournelle’s book Janissaries. The IMDB website claimed that the film was in development and that husband and team Judith & Garfield Reeves had written the screenplay.
Pournelle started writing nonscience fiction work under the pen name in 1965. His early science fiction work was published as Wade Curtis in Analogy and other magazines. Some of Pournelle works was also released as under the name J.E. Pournelle. In the mid-1970’s Pournelle collaborated with Larry Niven and even collaborated on novels with Steven Barnes, Roland J. Green, and Michael F. Flynn.
In 1964, Pournelle won a Bronze Medal presented to him by the American Security Council. In 1973, the author won John W. Campbell Award for category Best New Writer and won a Prometheus Award in 1992 for his novel Fallen Angels. The Fallen Angels (the Japanese translation version) won Seuin Award for the best foreign book.
Janissaries
In many different ways, the best sci-fi is that based on human history, and the Janissaries is one of the best. The story opens up with Captain Rick Galloway, the man in charge of a group of mercenaries leading his team against a larger Cuban unit in a tropical African country.
The situation is appalling, and Rick and his team know that their fate is either to be killed while in service or be captured and then executed. The officials of their sponsors- the Central Intelligence Agency have pulled all their support for this operation, and so Rick’s team can expect no assistance in this operation.
Out of nowhere, spaceship lands and its occupants gives them one simple choice- to stay on earth and get killed or either be transported to another planet to engage in battle and have a chance at life. Apparently, there is a complex interplanetary organization that allows for contacting Earthlings if they were to be dead anyway shortly. Rick, taking advantage of the only survival option they have, they agree to be transported to a planet that is only in the technological state of the famous Roman Empire.
The planet where Rick’s team is located goes through a series of the multiplex cycle over hundred years to a point where it warms dramatically such that highly valuable narcotic can be grown- which is what this interstellar group is highly interested in. It is their greatest hope that Rick and his team can learn how to grow the drug for interstellar business.
It turns out that thousands of humans have been taken from Earth during the cycles when the drug can be grown for thousands of years and therefore, some of the feuding and functioning governments are a conglomeration of Scottish clans and Roman Empire. As a result, the narrative is also a lesson in Earth’s history- the storage units of the Roman Empire even hold parchments authored by the real Roman Caesars. On the other hand, the Galloway is trying to place the rules so that societies that exist on the planet can develop. Simple things such as brushing, and other simple human hygiene, rudimentary health, education are all unknown to Earth. Therefore the Galloway must do this within the framework of nearly constant battles that exist between different factions.
Janissaries is a brilliant and well-written narrative. The author makes use of an alien race known as the Shlanuksis. Despite the alien group being both technologically advanced than the Earth’s people and also being a part of an interstellar confederacy. The author makes use of his creative story writing techniques to explain to the readers why the Aliens can never recruit soldiers from one of the confederated planets.
King David’s Spaceship
In the era of John Christian Falkenberg, the exploration of humanity into space resulted in galaxy full technological collapse. Since the fall, King David’s followers have regained an early industrial age tech, but another planet have developed faster, and the Navy has discovered them. If David’s followers can never spend the rest of their time in satrapy, they must prove to the world that can gain entry in space unaided. Even though they’ve just only discovered the steam engine, the king will have his spaceship.
A Spaceship for the King was the title of the original version in Analog Magazine. The novel featuring fascinating characters and a lovely setting, on the one hand, the strongest juxtapositions of this story is the comparison between tech levels of two fallen civilizations.
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