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
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.
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.
government long people
It's the nature of government, to build enduring institutions, structures that stay long after their purpose is over. If you pay people to help the poor, you have people who won't be paid if there aren't any poor, so they'll be sure to find some.
warrior cities people
Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.
stupid people done
Because Tom Doherty and people like that are not stupid. If they could have streamlined their operation more to get more money out of it, they would have done it. It's not like they're a bunch of idiots.
law people goal
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.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]
american-journalist people
And meanwhile, the storytellers like me and Anderson, Silverberg... we tell stories. People like them. They want to know how it comes out, they want to know what the ending is.
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.
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.