Jerry Pournelle has died. He was 84.
At 13 years of age we picked up Jerry Pournelle's Janissaries a brilliant novel about aliens rescuing CIA mercenaries from Angola and bringing them to a world inhabited by medieval humans. This was high adventure of the first order.
From there we moved on to Falkenburg's Legion, about mercs fighting on far off planets. We found some truly inspiring writing in the battles for Sparta, 'God may have mercy on them but we shall not!' In college we took a risk and read The Mote in God's Eye. Mote is set in the same universe, though a thousand years apart. Mote brilliantly reverses the old science fiction equation. This time, we're the aliens arriving at a new world.
Pournelle wrote Mote in collaboration with Larry Niven. He also wrote Footfall with Niven, a book we give great credit to in our To Defend the Earth. Footfall showed us what alien invasion could be like. Militarily we just wanted to take the idea to the next level, as if Tom Clancy wrote an alien invasion novel.
Let us not forget Lucifer's Hammer, about a comet slamming into Earth. We read it in two days and its always stuck with us.
Needless to say Jerry Pournelle was a great inspiration to us. Thank you, Mr, Pournelle.
Rest in Peace.
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