# Jerry Pournelle has died.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jerry-pournelle-has-died/795853>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [September 9, 2017, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jerry-pournelle-has-died/795853 "2017-09-09T00:21:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2017, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jerry-pournelle-has-died/795853/41 "2017-09-12T11:16:48Z")

</div>

Back when I was working on Laser Propulsion, my boss was on the Citizen’s Space Council with Pournelle and Niven. I was always amazed and a little frustrated that he didn’t seem to know or care that the two were major SF writers, or that Pournelle had, in fact, written a story involving Arthur Kantrowitz’ ground-to-orbit laser launching (_High Justice_, which was also the lead story in the anthology of that title). I had a framed copy of the issue of _Analog_ that appeared in (with a Frank Kelly Freas cover illustrating the story) over my desk for inspiration.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2017, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jerry-pournelle-has-died/795853/42 "2017-09-12T14:08:28Z")

</div>

This is a tremendous loss. Not only could he write, he made you think.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Arcite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/67e7ee/32.png) [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jerry-pournelle-has-died/795853/43 "2017-09-19T02:36:42Z")

</div>

Those of us who read his _Byte_ column will likely appreciate [this parody.](http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/95q1/jpreviews.html) (I like to think Jerry would think this was in good fun.) The writer captures a lot of the themes we knew so well: the name-dropping, the humble bragging about his sons, the shilling of his wife’s reading program, and most of all, the envy we computer geeks felt over the fact that someone was getting paid basically to mess around with free computer equipment and write about it.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jerry-pournelle-has-died/795853.md?page=2)