Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Eugene Pournelleis an American science fiction writer, essayist and journalist who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte. Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 August 1933
CountryUnited States of America
mean thinking comeback
I think it takes about a million words to make a writer. I mean that you're going to throw away.
mean writing stories
I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another story.
mean school government
As a means of subsidizing lawyers the present nuclear regulation system is well designed - but is there not perhaps a cheaper way of rewarding legal diligence? It would probably be cheaper to give each law school graduate a guaranteed salary of $50,000 a year on the condition that he (or she) not practice law.
american-journalist asimov changed convinced
Asimov was the reason why we changed some rules in the SFWA, and I'm not convinced we changed it for the best.
answer damn few future guess hard novel people
So, I guess the answer to your question is very few people can bring off a novel of the future because it's just so damn hard to make it look like the future.
american-journalist hundred publishing trend
One the other hand, the publishing trend is ghastly, isn't it? Two hundred and something distributors are now down to 10 or 12? And what's the recruiting drive?
believe both convenient equally necessity
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
american-journalist early heard nobody racket science sixth writers
I started in this racket in the early '70s, and when I was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, of which I was like the sixth president, I was the first one nobody ever heard of.
american-journalist basically joe likes
We're basically after Joe's beer money, and Joe likes his beer, so you better make sure that what you give him is at least as pleasurable to him as having his six-pack of beer would be.
american-journalist fantasy hard science
We do a hard fantasy as well as hard science fiction, and I think I probably single-handedly recreated military science fiction. It was dead before I started working in it.
american-journalist couple hundred members whom
There were probably, what, 300 science-fiction members in the SFWA, of whom probably a hundred were active members in the sense that they were selling something every year, or every couple years.
american-journalist business lecture talk
Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket.
american-journalist best seller stranger york
Heinlein never had a best-seller. Even, I think, with Stranger in a Strange Land, I don't think it was actually on the New York Times best seller list.
years people fundamentals
It's not only possible, but likely that the Nobel Prize in economics will go in alternate years to people who disagree on nearly everything fundamental.