A simple question re: Footfall. Which author had Harry say “Sancho! My armor!”?
I believe, from being on the Niven list, that the character of Harry Red was based on the authors’ real-life friend Frank Gasperik, who died a year or two ago. So maybe he came up with it himself…?
I read somewhere that their M.O (also evident in The Mote in God’s Eye) was for Niven to write the humans, Pournelle to write the aliens. So, Niven.
I can concur on this; one of Niven’s retrospective collections-with-commentary mentions that Harry Reddington and also Frank the brother-in-law in Lucifer’s Hammer were based on Gasperik, with his consent and occasional consultation. He’s also responsible for choosing Harry Red’s heroic death. (As also was Da Alderson for his alter ego in LH.)
In passing, I’ve always wanted to see a list of the Threat Team and their real-life alter egos. Some are obvious, some too much inside jokes to be clear. (The “Threat Team” is a top-priority national security team composed of SF writers, on the quite logical premise that when faced in real life with an alien invasion, one should turn to the only people with prior experience in dealing with them, albeit in trying to write realistic fiction combatting them.)