Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall (Niven and Pournelle)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer%27s_Hammer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall

 

Lucifer's Hammer

First edition
Author	Larry Niven Jerry Pournelle
Cover artist	Anthony Russo
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Del Rey
Publication date	1977
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	494 pp
ISBN	0-87223-487-8
OCLC	2966712
Dewey Decimal	813/.5/4
LC Class	PZ4.N734 Lu PS3564.I9

Lucifer's Hammer is a science fiction post-apocalypse / survival novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, first published in 1977. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. A comic book adaptation was published by Innovation Comics in 1993.

Plot summary

When wealthy soap company heir and amateur astronomer Tim Hamner co-discovers a new comet, dubbed Hamner-Brown, documentary producer Harvey Randall persuades Hamner to have his family's company sponsor a television documentary series on the subject. Political lobbying by California Senator Arthur Jellison eventually gets a joint Apollo-Soyuz (docking with Skylab B) mission into space to study the comet, dubbed "The Hammer" by popular media, which is expected to pass close to the Earth.

Despite the scientific community repeatedly assuring the public that a collision with Earth is extremely unlikely, pieces of the comet's nucleus impact across the western hemisphere with devastating results. The strikes on parts of Europe, Africa, the Gulf of Mexico, and both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans set off volcanoes, destabilize fault lines, including the San Andreas fault, and cause tsunamis thousands of meters high, destroying major coastal cities around the world, killing billions and initiating long-term climate problems due to the massive quantities of vaporized seawater in the atmosphere.

Immediately after the strike, China, anticipating the coming ice age launches a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia. The last Soviet Premier reassures the US that they are not the target, and he requests help against the unprovoked attack.

Jellison's ranch forms the center post of a fiefdom in the Sierra foothills, dubbed "the Stronghold" where he presides over a small population of survivors, including Randall and Hamner, who struggle to maintain civilization.

Shortwave radio, the only surviving means of mass communication, is eagerly monitored and reveals a chaotic situation after the Fall. Several people, including some who were previously officials of the former United States Government, claim to be the new or currently acting President of the United States, while others are now self-proclaimed monarchs of various regions or areas. Many people subsist by looting former stores and by catching rats and various fish, especially the now-plentiful giant carp, which are mostly either former pet goldfish or their progeny, engorged by the massive supply of food available to them, primarily in the form of human and animal corpses. Some advanced technical knowledge was maintained by the means of the preservation of a collection of books which had been wrapped in impermeable plastic and submerged in a septic tank shortly after Hammerfall and later retrieved by a JPL scientist who realized their potential value and likely scarcity in a post-Hammer world.

Reverend Henry Armitage manages to take control of a cannibalistic group of petty thieves and the remnants of a former United States Army unit, integrating them into his pre-existing band of followers, the New Brotherhood Army. The Reverend's forces begin a rampage through the area, culminating in a series of battles with the inhabitants of the Stronghold. Jellison's force prevails with the help of chemical weapons, saving the Stronghold while also defending a nuclear power plant nearby, thus preserving a supply of electric power needed to rebuild civilization. 

Literary significance and reception

Niven and Pournelle originally pitched the story to publishers as an alien invasion story, wherein the aliens drop a comet onto Earth after humanity fights them. Jim Baen told them to just write the comet story. The original story idea was later written as their novel Footfall.

Judith T. Yamamoto in her review for the Library Journal said that the novel was full of "good, solid science, a gigantic but well developed and coordinated cast of characters, and about a megaton of suspenseful excitement." Her one negative comment was that the pro-technology pitch might turn off some readers but "all in all it's a good book, if not a great one." Lucifer's Hammer received a nomination for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978.

C. Ben Ostrander reviewed Lucifer's Hammer in The Space Gamer No. 13. Ostrander commented that "I recommend this book [...] Don't miss it for a long, interesting story."

Footfall

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Cover artist	Michael Whelan
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Del Rey Books
Publication date	May 12, 1985
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	495 pages (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	0-345-32347-5 (first edition, hardcover)
OCLC	11316829
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Class	PS3564.I9 F6 1985

Footfall is a 1985 science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The book depicts the arrival of members of an alien species called the Fithp that have traveled to the solar system from Alpha Centauri in a large spacecraft driven by a Bussard ramjet. Their intent is conquest of the planet Earth.

Plot

The alien Fithp resemble baby elephants with multiple prehensile trunks. They possess more advanced technology than humans, but have developed none of it on their own. In the distant past on their planet, another species was dominant. This predecessor species badly damaged the environment, rendering themselves and many other species extinct, but left behind their knowledge inscribed on large stone cubes, from which the Fithp have gained their technology. Facing possible extinction due to the long-term effects of biological weapons, a group of high-ranking Fithp were selected to escape to the stars. The Chtaptisk Fithp ('Traveling Herd') are divided between 'Sleepers' and 'Spaceborn', as the ship is both a generation ship and a sleeper ship. The original leaders are subordinate to the Spaceborn, who are prepared to start a space based civilization, but are still dedicated to the generations-old ideal of conquest. 

The Fithp are herd creatures, and fight wars differently from humans. When two herds meet, they fight until it is evident which is dominant; fighting then ceases and the losers are incorporated into the winning herd. The Fithp are confused by human attempts at peaceful contact. Upon arrival, they attack the Soviet space station (the Soviets still being a major world superpower) where Soviets and Americans wait to greet them. They proceed to destroy military sites and important infrastructure on Earth. United States Congressman Wes Dawson and several Soviet cosmonauts are captured from the ruins of the space station. 

The human characters fall into two major groups, those on Earth and those who are taken aboard the Fithp spaceship as captives. Civilians are used to show the effects of the war on day-to-day life in the United States, while military and government personnel convey a more strategic overview of events. Science fiction writers are employed as technical advisers on alien technology and behavior; the characters are based on real writers, including Niven ("Nat Reynolds"), Pournelle ("Wade Curtis"), and Robert Anson Heinlein ("Bob Anson"). 

After their initial assault, the Fithp land ground forces in the center of North America, primarily in and around Kansas. They initially repel attacks with orbital lasers and kinetic energy weapons, but a combined Soviet and U.S. nuclear attack wipes out their beachhead. The Fithp, who are familiar with nuclear weapons but prefer to use cleaner ones, are shocked by what they consider the barbarity of humans' willingness to "foul their own garden" with radioactivity. The Fithp respond to the defeat of their invasion by dropping a large asteroid into the Indian Ocean, whose impact results in environmental damage on a global scale, in particular the almost total destruction of India. The Fithp then invade most of Africa, successfully subjugating most of the people on the continent. On numerous occasions, the Fithp are assisted by warlords seeking to keep their power over the masses.

The U.S. secretly builds a large, heavily armed spacecraft in the State of Washington propelled by nuclear bombs (a real concept known as Project Orion). The ship is named after the Biblical Archangel Michael, who cast Lucifer out of Heaven. The Michael launches and battles through small enemy "digit" ships in orbit. Though seriously damaged, she pursues the alien mothership. One of the space shuttles carried aboard Michael rams the Fithp ship, seriously damaging it.

On Earth, U.S. President David Coffey receives an offer of conditional surrender from the Fithp. Coffey is willing to let the Fithp withdraw into space, and is reluctant to destroy their technology and cargo of females and children. He is opposed by his advisors, who feel that by allowing the Fithp to escape and regroup, he risks the whole of humanity. When Coffey seemingly folds under the pressure, National Security Adviser Admiral Carrell stages a bloodless coup d'etat, circumventing the President and communicating the rejection of the aliens' terms. An act of sabotage by the humans aboard the alien vessel disables the Fithp engines, allowing the Michael to inflict heavy damage, which forces the Fithp to accept humanity as the stronger species and surrender themselves to become part of the human "herd". In the final scene, the Fithp leader lies down on his back in a submissive gesture, and allows former captive Congressman Wes Dawson to place his foot on his chest, this being the formal Fithp gesture of surrender. 

Timeline

• c. 1915: The Chtaptisk Fithp ("Traveler Herd") leave Alpha Centauri for Earth on their spacecraft, the Thuktun Flishithy ("Message Bearer").
• c. 1919: The sleepers go into their death-sleep.
• September 1976: Thuktun Flishithy swings around the Sun, maneuvering towards Saturn.
• November 1976: Thuktun Flishithy reaches Saturn.
• June 1980: Thuktun Flishithy has been resupplied.
• June 1981: The Fithp have established themselves on the Foot, an asteroid colony.
• April 1995: The Thuktun Flishithy begins its journey towards the Earth.
• May 1995: Human astronomers in Hawaii realize that there is an alien ship on a trajectory towards the Earth.
• June 1995: The initial attack of the Fithp. Kinetic weapons wreak havoc on the Earth, and satellites are shot down; the Soviet space station Kosmograd is destroyed, and its surviving passengers captured.
• July 1995: The Fithp launch an invasion of Kansas. Shortly thereafter the Jayhawk Wars begin, a conventional attack against Fithp forces which is rapidly destroyed using space support. About two weeks later, the Americans and Soviets cooperate in a combined nuclear retaliation that defeats the Fithp forces and wrecks much of Kansas in the process.
• August 1995: Footfall. The Fithp drop the Foot into the Indian Ocean; tsunamis devastate surrounding landmasses, while the entire globe is enveloped in an endless salty rainstorm. India is practically destroyed, while the Fithp successfully invade much of Africa.
• July 1996: The flight of the Michael; ends with the formal surrender of the Chtaptisk Fithp to US Congressman Wes Dawson.
  

Reception

Footfall was nominated for the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was a No. 1 New York Times Bestseller.

Kirkus Reviews considered it to be "(o)verblown and largely underdone", judging it to be "more tedious and less thoughtful" than previous joint Niven–Pournelle works, with "barely relevant" subplots and a "cumbersome cast of thousands", but praising the fithp society as "particularly well worked-out".

David Langford called it a "ripping yarn", but stated that it had "typical blockbuster flaws", including slow pacing and an overly large cast with less-than-relevant characters; he also noted that "(t)he authors' enthusiasm for space weaponry comes over disturbingly strongly". James Nicoll found it to have "the mediocrity and tedium of a much longer novel", with weak characterization, and a scientifically inaccurate portrayal of the effects of the asteroid's impact, but conceded that it was better than the majority of works in its subgenre, and commended Niven for his portrayal of the fithp.

Jerry Pournelle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

Jerry Pournelle
Pournelle at NASFiC in 2005
Born	August 7, 1933 Shreveport, Louisiana, United States
Died	September 8, 2017 (aged 84) Studio City, California, United States
Pen name	Wade Curtis (early work)
Occupation	Novelist, journalist, essayist
Nationality	American
Period	1971–2017
Genre	Science fiction
Website
jerrypournelle.com

Jerry Eugene Pournelle (/pʊərˈnɛl/; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American polymath: scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s and early 1970s he worked in the aerospace industry, but eventually focused on his writing career. In an obituary in gizmodo, he is described as "a tireless ambassador for the future."

Pournelle is particularly known for writing hard science fiction, and received multiple awards for his writing. In addition to his solo writing, he wrote several novels with collaborators, most notably Larry Niven. Pournelle served a term as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Pournelle's journalism focused primarily on the computer industry, astronomy, and space exploration. From the 1970s until the early 1990s, he contributed to the computer magazine Byte, writing from the viewpoint of an intelligent user, with the oft-cited credo, “We do this stuff so you won’t have to.” He created one of the first blogs, entitled "Chaos Manor", which included commentary about politics, computer technology, space technology, and science fiction.

Pournelle was also known for his paleoconservative political views, which were sometimes expressed in his fiction. He was one of the founders of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which developed some of the Reagan Administration's space initiatives, including the earliest versions of what would become the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Early years

Pournelle was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the seat of Caddo Parish in northwestern Louisiana, and later lived with his family in Capleville, Tennessee, an unincorporated area near Memphis. Percival Pournelle, his father, was a radio advertising executive and general manager of several radio stations. Ruth Pournelle, his mother, was a teacher, although during World War II, she worked in a munitions factory.

He attended first grade at St. Anne’s Elementary School, in Memphis, which had two grades to a classroom. Beginning with third grade, he attended Coleville Consolidated Elementary School, in Colevile, which had about 25 pupils per grade and four rooms and four teachers for 8 grades. Pournelle attended high school at Christian Brothers College in Memphis, run by the De La Salle Christian Brothers; despite its name, it was a high school at the time.

He served in the United States Army during the Korean War. In 1953–54, after his military service, Pournelle attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Subsequently, he studied at the University of Washington, where he received a B.S. in psychology on June 11, 1955; an M.S. in psychology (experimental statistics) on March 21, 1958; and a Ph.D. in political science in March 1964.

His master's thesis is titled "Behavioural observations of the effects of personality needs and leadership in small discussion groups", and is dated 1957. Pournelle's Ph.D. dissertation is titled "The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political 'isms'".

Personal life

Pournelle married Roberta Jane Isdell in 1969; the couple had five children. His wife, and son, naval officer Phillip, and daughter, archaeologist Jennifer, have also written science fiction in collaboration with their father.

In 2008, Pournelle battled a brain tumor, which appeared to respond favorably to radiation treatment. An August 28, 2008 report on his weblog claimed he was now cancer-free. Pournelle suffered a stroke on December 16, 2014, for which he was hospitalized for a time. By June 2015, he was writing again, though impairment from the stroke had slowed his typing. Pournelle died in his sleep of heart failure at his home in Studio City, California, on September 8, 2017.

Faith and worldview

Pournelle was raised a Unitarian. He converted to Roman Catholicism while attending Christian Brothers College. 

Pournelle was introduced to Malthusian principles upon reading the book Road to Survival by the ecologist (and ornithologist) William Vogt, who depicted an Earth denuded of species other than humans, all of them headed for squalor. Concerned about the Malthusian dangers of human overpopulation, and considering the Catholic Church's position on contraception to be untenable, he left the Catholic Church while an undergraduate at the University of Iowa. Pournelle eventually returned to religion, and for a number of years was a high church Anglican, in part because Anglican theology was virtually identical to Catholic theology, with the exception that the Anglicans accepted as moral the use of birth control. Pournelle eventually returned to the Catholic Church, as his other beliefs were consistent with the Catholic communion, although he did not agree with the Church's position on birth control. Notably, despite his estrangement from the Catholic Church, he opposed having the government require that Catholic institutions provide access to birth control or abortion. In his online blog, the View from Chaos Manor, he exhibited familiarity with and admiration for Catholic theology, occasionally quoting Catholic liturgical phrases, often in Latin—notably, his oft-repeated comment on current events, "Despair is a sin." He also described Sunday attendance at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, as part of his family's routine. Upon his death, his family arranged a memorial mass at the church, on Saturday, 16 September 2017.

Career

Pournelle was an intellectual protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan T. Possony. Pournelle wrote numerous publications with Possony, including The Strategy of Technology (1970). The Strategy has been used as a textbook at the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs), the Air War College, and the National War College.

In the late 1950s, while conducting operations research at Boeing, he envisioned a weapon consisting of massive tungsten rods dropped from high above the Earth. These super-dense, super-fast kinetic energy projectiles delivered enormous destructive force to the target without contaminating the environs with radioactive isotopes, as would occur with a nuclear bomb. Pournelle named his superweapon “Project Thor”. Others called it "Rods from God". Pournelle headed the Human Factors Laboratory at the Boeing Company, where his group did pioneering work on astronaut heat tolerance in extreme environments. His group also did experimental work that resulted in certification of the passenger oxygen system for the Boeing 707 airplane. He later worked as a Systems Analyst in a design and analysis group at Boeing, where he did strategic analysis of proposed new weapons systems.

In 1964, Pournelle joined the Aerospace Corporation in San Bernardino, California where he was Editor of Project 75, a major study of all ballistic missile technology for the purpose of making recommendation to the US Air Force on investment in technologies required to build the missile force to be deployed in 1975. After Project 75 was completed Pournelle became manager of several advanced concept studies. 

At North American Rockwell’s Space Division, Pournelle was associate director of operations research, where he took part in the Apollo program and general operations.

He was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. In 1989, Pournelle, Max Hunter, and retired Army Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham made a presentation to then Vice President Dan Quayle promoting development of the DC-X rocket.

Pournelle was among those who in 1968 signed a pro-Vietnam War advertisement in Galaxy Science Fiction. During the 1970s and 1980s, he also published articles on military tactics and war gaming in the military simulations industry in Avalon Hill's magazine The General. He had previously won first prize in a late 1960s essay contest run by the magazine on how to end the Vietnam war. That led him into correspondences with some of the early figures in Dungeons and Dragons and other fantasy role-playing games.

Two of his collaborations with Larry Niven reached the top rankings in the New York Times Best Seller List. In 1977, Lucifer's Hammer reached number two. Footfall — wherein Robert A. Heinlein was a thinly veiled minor character — reached the number one spot in 1985.

Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.

In 1994, Pournelle's friendly relationship with Newt Gingrich led to Gingrich securing a government job for Pournelle's son, Richard. At the time, Pournelle and Gingrich were reported to be collaborating on "a science fiction political thriller." Pournelle's relationship with Gingrich was long established even then, as Pournelle had written the preface to Gingrich's book, Window of Opportunity (1985).

Years after Byte shuttered, Pournelle wrote his Chaos Manor column online. He reprised it at Byte.com, which he helped launch with journalist Gina Smith, John C. Dvorak, and others. However, after a shakeup, he announced that rather than stay at UBM, he would follow Smith, Dvorak, and 14 other news journalists to start an independent tech and politics site. As an active director of that site and others it launched, Pournelle wrote, edited, and worked with young writers and journalists on the craft of writing about science and tech. 

Fiction

Beginning during his tenure at Boeing Company, Pournelle submitted science fiction short stories to John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact), but Campbell did not accept any of Pournelle's submissions until shortly before Campbell's death in 1971, when he accepted for publication Pournelle's novelette "Peace with Honor." From the beginning, Pournelle's work has engaged strong military themes. Several books are centered on a fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.

Pournelle was one of the few close friends of H. Beam Piper and was granted by Piper the rights to produce stories set in Piper's Terro-Human Future History. This right has been recognized by the Piper estate. Pournelle worked for some years on a sequel to Space Viking but abandoned this in the early 1990s, however John F. Carr and Mike Robertson completed this sequel, entitled The Last Space Viking, and it was published in 2011.

In 2013, Variety reported that motion picture rights to Pournelle's novel Janissaries had been acquired by the newly formed Goddard Film Group, headed by Gary Goddard. The IMDb website reported that the film was in development, and that husband-and-wife writing team, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, had written the screenplay.

Pseudonyms and collaborations

Pournelle began fiction writing non-SF work under a pseudonym in 1965. His early SF was published as "Wade Curtis", in Analog and other magazines. Some of his work is also published as "J.E. Pournelle". 

In the mid-1970s, Pournelle began a fruitful collaboration with Larry Niven; he has also collaborated on novels with Roland J. Green, Michael F. Flynn, and Steven Barnes, and collaborated as an editor on an anthology series with John F. Carr.

In 2010, his daughter Jennifer R. Pournelle (writing as J.R. Pournelle), an archaeology professor, e-published a novel Outies, an authorized sequel to the Mote in God's Eye series.

Journalism and tech writing

The User's Column

Pournelle wrote The User's Column (later "Computing at Chaos Manor" column) in Byte. In it Pournelle described his experiences with computer hardware and software, some purchased and some sent by vendors for review, at his home office. Because Pournelle was then, according to the magazine, "virtually Byte's only writer who was a mere user—he didn't create compilers and computers, he merely used them", it began as "The User's Column" in July 1980. Subtitled "Omikron TRS-80 Boards, NEWDOS+, and Sundry Other Matters", an Editor's Note accompanied the article:

The other day we were sitting around the Byte offices listening to software and hardware explosions going off around us in the microcomputer world. We wondered, "Who could cover some of the latest developments for us in a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) style?" The phone rang. It was Jerry Pournelle with an idea for a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) series of articles to be presented in Byte on a semi-regular (i.e.: every 2 to 3 months) basis, which would cover the wild microcomputer goings-on at the Pournelle House ("Chaos Manor") in Southern California. We said yes. Herewith the first installment ...

Pournelle stated that

This will be a column by and for computer users, and with rare exceptions I won't discuss anything I haven't installed and implemented here in Chaos Manor. At Chaos Manor we have computer users ranging in sophistication from my 9-year-old through a college-undergraduate assistant and up to myself. (Not that I'm the last word in sophistication, but I do sit here and pound this machine a lot; if I can't get something to work, it takes an expert.) Fair warning, then: the very nature of this column limits its scope. I can't talk about anything I can't run on my machines, nor am I likely to discuss things I have no use for.

He introduced to readers "my friend Ezekiel, who happens to be a Cromemco Z-2 with iCom 8-inch soft-sectored floppy disk drives"; he also owned a TRS-80 Model I, and the first subject discussed in the column was an add-on that permitted it to use the same data and CP/M applications as the Cromemco. The next column appeared in December 1980 with the subtitle "BASIC, Computer Languages, and Computer Adventures"; Ezekiel II, a Compupro S-100 CP/M system, debuted in March 1983. Other computers received nicknames, such as Zorro, Pournelle's "colorful" Zenith Z-100, and Lucy Van Pelt, a "fussbudget" IBM PC; he referred to generic PC compatibles as "PClones". Pournelle often denounced companies that announced vaporware, sarcastically writing that they would arrive "Real Soon Now", later abbreviated to just "RSN". As part of a redesign in June 1984, the magazine renamed the popular column to "Computing at Chaos Manor", and the accompanying letter column became "Chaos Manor Mail". A memorable column written for Byte in August 1989 was User column 94, entitled, "The Great Power Spike", which gives a digital necropsy of his electronic equipment after high voltage transmission wires dropped onto the power line for his neighborhood.

After the print version of Byte ended publication in the United States, Pournelle continued publishing the column for the online version and international print editions of Byte. In July 2006, Pournelle and Byte declined to renew their contract and Pournelle moved the column to his own web site, Chaos Manor Reviews.

Other technical writing

Pournelle is recognized as the first author to have written a published book contribution using a word processor on a personal computer, in 1977.

In the 1980s, Pournelle was an editor and columnist for Survive, a survivalist magazine.

In 2011, Pournelle joined journalist Gina Smith, pundit John C. Dvorak, political cartoonist Ted Rall, and several other Byte.com staff reporters to launch independent tech and political news site, aNewDomain. Pournelle served as director of aNewDomain until his death.

After 1998, Pournelle maintained a website with a daily online journal, "View from Chaos Manor", a blog dating from before the use of that term. It is a collection of his "Views" and "Mail" from a large variety of readers. This is a continuation of his 1980s blog-like online journal on GEnie. He said he resists using the term "blog" because he considered the word ugly, and because he maintained that his "View" is primarily a vehicle for writing rather than a collection of links. In his book Dave Barry in Cyberspace, humorist Dave Barry has fun with Pournelle's guru column in Byte magazine. 

Software

Jerry Pournelle, in collaboration with his wife, Roberta (who was an expert on reading education) wrote the commercial education software program called Reading: The Learning Connection.

Politics

Pournelle served as campaign research director for the mayoral campaign of 1969 for Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (Democrat), working under campaign director Henry Salvatori. The election took place on May 27, 1969. Pournelle was later named Executive Assistant to the Mayor in charge of research in September 1969, but resigned from the position after two weeks. After leaving Yorty's office, in 1970 he was a consultant to the Professional Educators of Los Angeles (PELA), a group opposed to the unionization of school teachers in LA.

He is sometimes quoted as describing his politics as "somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan." Pournelle resisted others classifying him into any particular political group, but acknowledged the approximate accuracy of the term paleoconservatism as accurately applying to him. He distinguished his conservativism from the alternative neoconservatism, noting that he had been drummed out of the Conservative movement by "the egregious Frum", referring to prominent neoconservative, David Frum. Notably, Pournell opposed the Gulf War and the Iraq War, maintaining that the money would be better spent developing energy technologies for the United States. According to a Wall Street Journal article, "Science and science-fiction writer Jerry Pournelle estimates that for what the Iraq war has cost so far, the United States could have paid for a network of nuclear power stations sufficient to achieve energy independence, and bankrupt the Arabs for once and for all."

Pournelle chart

Pournelle is well known for his Pournelle chart, a 2-dimensional coordinate system used to distinguish political ideologies that he initially delineated in his doctoral dissertation. It is a cartesian diagram in which the X-axis gauges opinion toward state and centralized government (farthest right being state worship, farthest left being the idea of a state as the "ultimate evil"), and the Y-axis measures the belief that all problems in society have rational solutions (top being complete confidence in rational planning, bottom being complete lack of confidence in rational planning).

Strategic Defense Initiative

In a 1997 article, Norman Spinrad wrote that Pournelle had written the SDI portion of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address, as part of a plan to use SDI to get more money for space exploration, using the larger defense budget. Pournelle wrote in response that while the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy "wrote parts of Reagan's 1983 SDI speech, and provided much of the background for the policy, we certainly did not write the speech ... We were not trying to boost space, we were trying to win the Cold War". The Council's first report in 1980 became the transition team policy paper on space for the incoming Reagan administration. The third report was certainly quoted in the Reagan "Star Wars" speech.

Politics in fiction

As noted by James Wheatfield, "Jerry Pournelle delights in setting up complex background situations and plots, leading the reader step by step towards a solution which is the very opposite of politically correct and ... defying a dissenting reader to find where in this logical chain he or she would have acted differently."

Pournelle's laws

Pournelle suggested several "laws".

Pournelle's first law

His first use of the term "Pournelle's law" appears to be for the expression "One user, one CPU." He later amended this to "One user, at least one CPU."

Pournelle's second law

His second use of the term "Pournelle's law" is "Silicon is cheaper than iron." That is, a computer is cheaper to upgrade than replace. A second aspect of this law was Pournelle's prediction the hard disk drive would eventually be replaced by solid-state memory.

Pournelle's law of cables

He has also used "Pournelle's law" to apply to the importance of checking cable connections when diagnosing computer problems: "You’ll find by and large, the trouble is a cable."

Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy

His best-known "law" is "Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy":

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

He eventually restated it as:

...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

This can be compared to the iron law of oligarchy. His blog, "The View from Chaos Manor", often references apparent examples of the law. Some of Pournelle's standard themes that recur in the stories are: welfare states become self-perpetuating, building a technological society requires a strong defense and the rule of law, and "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." 

Awards

Pournelle never won a Hugo Award. He famously said, "Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money." 

• Bronze Medal, American Security Council, 1964
• John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of 1973
• Prometheus Hall of Fame Jerry Pournelle / John F. Carr (editors), The Survival of Freedom 1991
• Prometheus Award for Fallen Angels 1992
• Seiun Award for Foreign Novel (in Japanese translation): 1998, Fallen Angels
• Heinlein Society Award (with frequent co-author Larry Niven) 2005
• National Space Society Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award "for lifetime achievement in promoting the goal of a free, spacefaring civilization."
  

Bibliography

Scholarly

The SSX concept (The SSX concept became the DCX, the first successful reusable vertical landing rocket craft.) 

Non-fiction

• Stability and National Security (Air Force Directorate of Doctrines, Concepts and Objectives) (1968)
• The Strategy of Technology with Stephan T. Possony, PhD and Francis X. Kane, PhD (1970)
• A Step Farther Out: The Velikovsky Affair. Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1975, pp. 74–84.
• A Step Farther Out (1981)
• The users guide to small computers (1984)
• Mutually Assured Survival (1984)
• Adventures in Microland (1985)
• Guide to Disc Operating System and Easy Computing (1989)
• Pournelle's PC Communications Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Productivity With a Modem with Michael Banks (1992)
• Jerry Pournelle's Guide to DOS and Easy Computing: DOS over Easy (1992)
• Jerry Pournelle's Windows With an Attitude (1995)
• PC Hardware: The Definitive Guide (2003) with Bob Thompson
• 1001 Computer Words You Need to Know (2004)
  

Fiction

• Red Heroin (as Wade Curtis) (1969)
• Red Dragon (as Wade Curtis) (1970)
• novelisation of the movie Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1973)
• A Spaceship for the King (1973) expanded as King David's Spaceship (1981)
• High Justice (1974)
• Birth of Fire (1976)
• West of Honor (1976) (later integrated into Falkenberg's Legion, and as Arrarat incorporated into The Prince)
• The Mercenary (1977)
• Exiles to Glory (1977)
• Janissaries (1979)
• Men of War (1993)
• Starswarm (1998)
• Prince of Mercenaries (2002)
• Janissaries IV: Mamelukes (uncompleted fourth book in the series)
  

Collaborations

With Larry Niven

• The Mote in God's Eye (1974) (with Larry Niven)
• Inferno (1976) (with Larry Niven)
• Lucifer's Hammer (1977) (with Larry Niven)
• Oath of Fealty (1981) (with Larry Niven)
• Footfall (1985) (with Larry Niven)
• The Legacy of Heorot (1987) (with Larry Niven & Steven Barnes)
• Fallen Angels (1991) (with Larry Niven & Michael Flynn) (Prometheus Award) ISBN 0-7434-3582-6. Electronic edition free at the Baen Free Library
• The Gripping Hand (1993) (with Larry Niven) also known as The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (UK edition)
• Beowulf's Children (1995) (with Steven Barnes & Larry Niven) also known as The Dragons of Heorot (1995) (UK edition)
• The Burning City (2000) (with Larry Niven)
• Burning Tower (2005) (sequel to The Burning City, with Larry Niven)
• Escape from Hell (2009) (with Larry Niven)
• Lucifer's Anvil or Samael's Forge (in-progress as of 2015) (not a sequel to Lucifer's Hammer)

With others

• The Houses of the Kzinti (with S. M. Stirling and Dean Ing)
• The Children's Hour (with S. M. Stirling)
• Prince of Sparta (with S. M. Stirling)
• Go Tell The Spartans (2002) (with S. M. Stirling)
• Janissaries II: Clan and Crown (1982) (with Roland J. Green)
• Janissaries III: Storms of Victory (1987) (with Roland J. Green)
• Tran (with Roland J. Green, single-volume combination of the never completed second and third Janissaries novels)
• Higher Education (with Charles Sheffield)
  

Series

• Heorot
• CoDominium
• Janissaries series

Other media

• Triangulation – Dr. Pournelle was interviewed by Leo Laporte for 2 episodes of Triangulation (Episodes 90 and 95) in 2013.
• This Week in Tech – Dr. Pournelle has appeared a number of times as one of the panelists on the podcast This Week in Tech, including episode 427 on October 13, 2013; episode 463 on June 22, 2014; and with Larry Niven in episode 468 on July 27, 2014.
• He also appeared in the science documentary film Target... Earth? (1980).
  

Anthology (as editor)

• 20 20 Vision (1974)
• The Endless Frontier (1979)
• Black Holes (1981)
• The Survival of Freedom (1981) with John F. Carr
• Nebula Award Stories Sixteen (1982) with John F. Carr
• The Endless Frontier, Vol. II (1985) with John F. Carr
• Imperial Stars, vol 1, The Stars at War (1986)
• Imperial Stars, vol 2, Republic and Empire (1987)
• Imperial Stars, vol 3, The Crash of Empire (1989)
• Far Frontiers (anthology series, Vols I-VII edited with Jim Baen), Vols I-VII (1985–86)
• There Will be War (anthology series, Vols I-IX edited with John F. Carr), Vols I–X

I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot

 

I, Robot

First edition cover
Author	Isaac Asimov
Cover artist	Ed Cartier
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Robot series
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Gnome Press
Publication date	December 2, 1950
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	253
Followed by	The Complete Robot

I, Robot is a fixup novel of science fiction short stories or essays by American writer Isaac Asimov. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction between 1940 and 1950 and were then compiled into a book for stand-alone publication by Gnome Press in 1950, in an initial edition of 5,000 copies. The stories are woven together by a framing narrative in which the fictional Dr. Susan Calvin tells each story to a reporter (who serves as the narrator) in the 21st century. Although the stories can be read separately, they share a theme of the interaction of humans, robots, and morality, and when combined they tell a larger story of Asimov's fictional history of robotics.

Several of the stories feature the character of Dr. Calvin, chief robopsychologist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., the major manufacturer of robots. Upon their publication in this collection, Asimov wrote a framing sequence presenting the stories as Calvin's reminiscences during an interview with her about her life's work, chiefly concerned with aberrant behaviour of robots and the use of "robopsychology" to sort out what is happening in their positronic brain. The book also contains the short story in which Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics first appear, which had large influence on later science fiction and had impact on thought on ethics of artificial intelligence as well. Other characters that appear in these short stories are Powell and Donovan, a field-testing team which locates flaws in USRMM's prototype models.

The collection shares a title with the 1939 short story "I, Robot" by Eando Binder (pseudonym of Earl and Otto Binder), which greatly influenced Asimov. Asimov had wanted to call his collection Mind and Iron and objected when the publisher made the title the same as Binder's. In his introduction to the story in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories (1979), Asimov wrote:

It certainly caught my attention. Two months after I read it, I began 'Robbie', about a sympathetic robot, and that was the start of my positronic robot series. Eleven years later, when nine of my robot stories were collected into a book, the publisher named the collection I, Robot over my objections. My book is now the more famous, but Otto's story was there first.

Contents

1. "Introduction" (the initial portion of the framing story or linking text)
2. "Robbie" (1940, 1950)
3. "Runaround" (1942)
4. "Reason" (1941)
5. "Catch That Rabbit" (1944)
6. "Liar!" (1941)
7. "Little Lost Robot" (1947)
8. "Escape!" (1945)
9. "Evidence" (1946)
10. "The Evitable Conflict" (1950)
    

Reception

The New York Times described I, Robot as "an exciting science thriller [which] could be fun for those whose nerves are not already made raw by the potentialities of the atomic age." Describing it as "continuously fascinating", Groff Conklin "Unreservedly recommended" the book. P. Schuyler Miller recommended the collection "For puzzle situations, for humor, for warm character, [and] for most of the values of plain good writing".

Dramatic adaptations

Television

At least three of the short stories from I, Robot have been adapted for television. The first was a 1962 episode of Out of this World hosted by Boris Karloff called "Little Lost Robot" with Maxine Audley as Susan Calvin. Two short stories from the collection were made into episodes of Out of the Unknown: "The Prophet" (1967), based on "Reason"; and "Liar!" (1969). The 12th episode of the USSR science fiction TV series This Fantastic World, filmed in 1987 and entitled Don't Joke with Robots, was based on works by Aleksandr Belyaev and Fredrik Kilander as well as Asimov's "Liar!" story.

Both the original and revival series of The Outer Limits include episodes named "I, Robot"; however, both are adaptations of the Earl and Otto Binder story of that name and are unconnected with Asimov's work. 

Films

Harlan Ellison's screenplay (1978)

In the late 1970s, Warner Bros. acquired the option to make a film based on the book, but no screenplay was ever accepted. The most notable attempt was one by Harlan Ellison, who collaborated with Asimov himself to create a version which captured the spirit of the original. Asimov is quoted as saying that this screenplay would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever made." 

Ellison's script builds a framework around Asimov's short stories that involves a reporter named Robert Bratenahl tracking down information about Susan Calvin's alleged former lover Stephen Byerly. Asimov's stories are presented as flashbacks that differ from the originals in their stronger emphasis on Calvin's character. Ellison placed Calvin into stories in which she did not originally appear and fleshed out her character's role in ones where she did. In constructing the script as a series of flashbacks that focused on character development rather than action, Ellison used the film Citizen Kane as a model.

Although acclaimed by critics, the screenplay is generally considered to have been unfilmable based upon the technology and average film budgets of the time. Asimov also believed that the film may have been scrapped because of a conflict between Ellison and the producers: when the producers suggested changes in the script, instead of being diplomatic as advised by Asimov, Ellison "reacted violently" and offended the producers. The script was serialized in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine in late 1987, and eventually appeared in book form under the title I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, in 1994 (reprinted 2004, ISBN 1-4165-0600-4). 

2004 film

The film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was released by Twentieth Century Fox on July 16, 2004 in the United States. Its plot incorporates elements of "Little Lost Robot", some of Asimov's character names and the Three Laws. However, the plot of the movie is mostly original work adapted from the screenplay Hardwired by Jeff Vintar, completely unlinked to Asimov's stories, and has been compared to Asimov's The Caves of Steel, which revolves around the murder of a roboticist (although the rest of the film's plot is not based on that novel or other works by Asimov). Unlike the books by Asimov, the movie featured hordes of killer robots. 

Radio

BBC Radio 4 aired an audio drama adaptation of five of the I, Robot stories on their 15 Minute Drama in 2017, dramatized by Richard Kurti and starring Hermione Norris.

1. Robbie
2. Reason
3. Little Lost Robot
4. Liar
5. The Evitable Conflict

These also aired in a single program on BBC Radio 4 Extra as Isaac Asimov's 'I, Robot': Omnibus.

 

Prequels

Mickey Zucker Reichert was asked to write three prequels of I, Robot by Asimov's estate, because she is a science fiction writer with a medical degree. She first met Asimov when she was 23, although she did not know him well. She is the first female writer to be authorized to write stories based on Asimov's novels; follow-ups to his Foundation series were written by Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin. The prequels were ordered by Berkley Books, and consist of:

• I Robot: To Protect (2011)
• I Robot: To Obey (2013)
• I Robot: To Preserve (2016)
  

Popular culture references

In 2004 The Saturday Evening Post said that I, Robot's Three Laws "revolutionized the science fiction genre and made robots far more interesting than they ever had been before." I, Robot has influenced many aspects of modern popular culture, particularly with respect to science fiction and technology. One example of this is in the technology industry. The name of the real-life modem manufacturer named U.S. Robotics was directly inspired by I, Robot. The name is taken from the name of a robot manufacturer ("United States Robots and Mechanical Men") that appears throughout Asimov's robot short stories.

Many works in the field of science fiction have also paid homage to Asimov's collection.

An episode of the original Star Trek series, "I, Mudd" (1967), which depicts a planet of androids in need of humans references I, Robot. Another reference appears in the title of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "I, Borg" (1992), in which Geordi La Forge befriends a lost member of the Borg collective and teaches it a sense of individuality and free will.

Doctor Who's 1977 story, The Robots of Death, references I, Robot with the "First Principle" stating: "It is forbidden for robots to harm humans". 

In Aliens, a 1986 movie, the synthetic person Bishop paraphrases Asimov's First Law in the line: "It is impossible for me to harm, or by omission of action allow to be harmed, a human being."

An episode of The Simpsons entitled "I D'oh Bot" (2004) has Professor Frink build a robot named "Smashius Clay" (also named "Killhammad Aieee") that follows all three of Asimov's laws of robotics.

The animated science fiction/comedy Futurama makes several references to I, Robot. The title of the episode "I, Roommate" (1999) is a spoof on I, Robot although the plot of the episode has little to do with the original stories. Additionally, the episode "The Cyber House Rules" included an optician named "Eye Robot" and the episode "Anthology of Interest II" included a segment called "I, Meatbag." Also in "Bender's Game" (2008) the psychiatrist is shown a logical fallacy and explodes when the assistant shouts "Liar!" a la "Liar!". Leela once told Bender to "cover his ears" so that he would not hear the robot-destroying paradox which she used to destroy Robot Santa (he punishes the bad, he kills people, killing is bad, therefore he must punish himself), causing a total breakdown; additionally, Bender has stated that he is Three Laws Safe.

The positronic brain, which Asimov named his robots' central processors, is what powers Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as other Soong type androids. Positronic brains have been referenced in a number of other television shows including Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time... Space, Perry Rhodan, The Number of the Beast, and others.

Author Cory Doctorow has written a story called "I, Robot" as homage to Asimov, as well as "I, Row-Boat", both released in the short story collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. He has also said, "If I return to this theme, it will be with a story about uplifted cheese sandwiches, called 'I, Rarebit.'"

Other cultural references to the book are less directly related to science fiction and technology. The 1977 album I Robot, by The Alan Parsons Project, was inspired by Asimov's I, Robot. In its original conception, the album was to follow the themes and concepts presented in the short story collection. The Alan Parsons Project were not able to obtain the rights in spite of Asimov's enthusiasm; he had already assigned the rights elsewhere. Thus, the album's concept was altered slightly although the name was kept (minus comma to avoid copyright infringement). The 2009 album, I, Human, by Singaporean band Deus Ex Machina draws heavily upon Asimov's principles on robotics and applies it to the concept of cloning.

The Indian science fiction film Endhiran, released in 2010, refers to Asimov's three laws for artificial intelligence for the fictional character Chitti: The Robot. When a scientist takes in the robot for evaluation, the panel enquires whether the robot was built using the Three Laws of Robotics.

The theme for Burning Man 2018 was "I, Robot".