We've lost one of the greats. (Destiny)

by Quirel, Monday, October 02, 2017, 01:30 (2421 days ago)

Jerry Pournelle passed away last month.

Most of you don't know what we lost. I've sat here for more than a handful of hours over the past few weeks, trying to write something that can encompass all that he was. I can't. He was larger than life. He originated the concept of Rods From God. He taught Arthur C. Clarke everything he knew about orbital mechanics. He ran a long-standing tech column that got him kicked off Arpanet. He advised Ronald Reagan on the Star Wars program. He wrote the first blog and updated it until the day of his death. He was Larry Niven's greatest co-author, and a fine writer on his own. There's only one book of his that I never finished reading, and that's because the spectacular cover was falling apart.

I had the pleasure of meeting him once. Briefly. Last year at Midamericon II (Worldcon 2016) he almost ran me over with his walker. I don't mean he almost bumped into me, I mean that if I didn't get out of the way right that damn second, he'd go right over the top of me and keep going. It was ten o'clock at night, his panel had just ended, and people swarmed to the front with books and questions. But he wasn't having any of it. He loudly announced that he had to talk to his agent about a panel he was double-booked for, looked around, and determined that I was standing on the path of least resistance.

He was eighty-three years old at the time, but still full of life. As long as I live, I hope I never forget that panel, because the topic was space exploration, and Jerry Pournelle had so much to say on the subject. In the 1950's and 1960's, he was in the industry. Through his connections in the aerospace industry and in the science fiction community, he must have heard everything that was done in our first tentative steps into space. He talked of the speeches Robert Heinlein used to give on the subject, and quoted him verbatim.

This is the great day. This is the greatest event in all the history of the human race, up to this time. That is — today is New Year's Day of the Year One. If we don't change the calendar, historians will do so. The human race — this is our change, our puberty rite, bar mitzvah, confirmation, from the change of our infancy into adulthood for the human race. And we're going to go on out, not only to the Moon, to the stars; we're going to spread. I don't know that the United States is going to do it; I hope so. I have — I'm an American myself; I want it to be done by us. But in any case, the human race is going to do it, it's utterly inevitable: we're going to spread through the entire universe.
-Robert Heinlein on the first moon landing.

Jerry Pournelle's favorite phrase in the panel was "14.7 psi of medium-Z material, which as billions of human beings will attest, does a perfectly fine job of blocking cosmic radiation!" Fourteen point seven PSI is standard atmospheric pressure, determined by the weight of the air above you. In a crazy way, it's a measurement of just how much matter you need between you and the sun to block harmful radiation. How much shielding does a spaceship to Mars need? 14.7 psi of medium-z material. How much material does the first astronaut on the moon need to survive if, say, we have to ship up the return vehicle separately? 14.7 psi of medium-z material, which the moon has in abundance. So he can go out with a shovel, dig a bunker in the lunar regolith, and hole up for a year or two. Fortunately, we didn't have to do that.

Also mentioned at the panel: The Saturn V Shake Test.

The man was a natural storyteller, and I wish I could have heard more from him. I am sorry that I will have to settle for his written works.

And there's a connection between him and Halo. A small one. I learned it at that very same convention, from the most unlikely source.

Star Wars and Larry Niven got me into science fiction. But when I ran out of Larry Niven's books at the library, Robert Reed was one of the authors I turned to. Over a decade later, I was wandering the halls of the Kansas City convention center when a man walks through a side door, looking for the admissions table. He is wearing a Destiny hoodie, and his nametag says "Robert Reed". I did my standard 'Holy fucking shit!' double take that I will someday learn to stop doing when I meet my favorite authors, said hello, and made myself scarce before I geeked out too hard.

Later came a panel, and on that panel were two Roberts. Robert Reed, Robert Sawyer. I think, and I would have to check the schedule that I saved somewhere, that the subject was the future of fandom. Or maybe the future of science fiction. Whatever that reason was, Robert Sawyer was ranting about how true science fiction fandom is dying out, and these modern day fans that love Marvel movies and video games aren't really fans of science fiction.

Yeah, he was an asshole, and I was an asshole right back. During the question and answer session, I raised the point that, yes, there are serious fans of science fiction in the young generations, and many of them do read the old classics. Like how fans of Halo like to bring up the similarities between Halo and Known Space, or the influence of AIs in the Hyperion quadrilogy. Then I insulted one of Robert Sawyer's books (Can't remember the name, it's the one about alien creationists and Christian fundamentalist terrorists) as unreadable. Like I said, I was an asshole too.

When that kerfuffle died down, Robert Reed said that he'd worked for Bungie as a writer on Destiny. Really more of a consultant than a writer, but he saw a lot of their material and is convinced that there is some really good stuff in store for Destiny when Bungie gets all their ducks in a row. But while he worked for Bungie, he heard a story about how Microsoft was worried that there were too many similarities between Halo and Known Space, back when Halo: Combat Evolved was in the pipeline.

This, by the way, confirms my suspicion that Halo had an awesome franchise management team back in the day.

What Microsoft did was, they sent a lawyer to meet with Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle happened to be there. Larry Niven said there wouldn't be a problem. He didn't think there were too many similarities, and he didn't mind at all if someone riffed off the same conceptual foundation as his stories. Who did Microsoft think he was, Harlan Ellison?

And Jerry Pournelle chimed in and said that it didn't matter if there were similarities because they'd sold the video game rights to Known Space and The Mote In God's Eye to some Czechoslovakian game company that went under. The rights were tangled up in a legal morass that they didn't want to touch.

The INSS MacArthur, the first Human starship to enter the Motie's home system. Based on a model designed by Matt Jefferies.

I said that I met him once, but I met him a second time a few days later. I was spectacularly drunk at the time, and it's a small miracle that I managed to wander from the bar back to my hotel without falling on my ass. And while I waited for a light at a crosswalk, they crossed the street and waited right next to me. Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven.

What had just happened was, the Hugo Award Ceremony had just finished. The Hugo Award is the most prestigious science fiction award an author can receive. Jerry Pournelle, who has been nominated yet never won a Hugo for his solitary efforts, was up for best editor. But because of his politics, and because of the politics of the people who nominated him, and because of some pretty disgusting politics in general, he did worse than not win. Out of five nominees, he came in under "No Award".

I wish I could say what he and Larry Niven thought of that, but I was pretty drunk at the time and I'm bad at reading people even when I'm sober. But Jerry Pournelle always said that "Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money," and he was a man who lived by his word. All I remember is shaking their hands and thanking them for a whole library's worth of good stories.

Most of which I have yet to read. Some of which have never been written down, and which I hope to hear someday.

See you starside, Mr. Pournelle.