Jerry Eugene Pournelle is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writerA writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
,
essayAn essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
ist and
journalistA journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
who contributed for many years to the computer magazine
ByteBYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage...
and has since 1998 been maintaining his own website/blog.
From the beginning, Pournelle's work has engaged strong
militaryA military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
themes. Several books are centered on a fictional
mercenaryA mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
infantryInfantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...
force known as
Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the
Childe CycleThe Childe Cycle is an unfinished series of science fiction novels by Gordon R. Dickson. The name Childe Cycle is an allusion to Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, a poem by Robert Browning, which provided considerable inspiration for elements in Dickson's magnum opus.The series is sometimes...
mercenary stories by
Gordon R. DicksonGordon Rupert Dickson was an American science fiction author.- Biography :Dickson was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1923. After the death of his father, he moved with his mother to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1937...
, as well as Heinlein's
Starship TroopersStarship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, first published as a serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and published hardcover in December, 1959.The first-person narrative is about a young soldier from the Philippines named Juan "Johnnie" Rico and his...
, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.
Pournelle was one of the few close friends of
H. Beam PiperHenry Beam Piper was an American science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series of stories and a shorter series of "Paratime" alternate history tales.He wrote under the name H. Beam Piper...
and was granted by Piper the rights to produce stories set in Piper's Terro-Human Future History.
