SHORT STORIES BY A MASTER OF SCIENCE FICTION! Includes over a dozen stories by SF legend Jerry Pournelle, and remebrances by Pournelle collaborators and admirers. THE GRAND MASTER OF HUGE IDEAS AND STAR-SPANNING WONDER For half a century, Jerry Pournelle’s name has been synonymous with hard-hitting, idea-driven, wonder-inducing science fiction. His Falkenberg’s Legion stories and Janissaries series helped define the military SF genre, his CoDominium universe is an SF standard for worldbuilding and future history, and his novels with frequent collaborator Larry Niven are some of the most important works science fiction has ever seen—and the best-selling and most read. Now, for the first time, Pournelle’s best short work is collected together in a single volume. Here are over a dozen short stories, each with a new introduction by editor and long-time Pournelle assistant John F. Carr. There is also a cornucopia of Pournelle’s rampantly imaginative and compelling essays as well as great remembrances by Pournelle collaborators Larry Niven, S.M. Stirling, and more! About The Best of Jerry “. . . showcases a huge swath of [Pournelle’s] work, including much that were previously unpublished... Fans of Pournelle will love this collection of stories, essays, and remembrances, and others will be glad to discover him.”— Booklist About Jerry "Possibly the greatest science fiction novel I have ever read."—Robert A. Heinlein on The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle "Jerry Pournelle is one of science fiction's greatest storytellers."—Poul Anderson "Jerry Pournelle's trademark is first-rate action against well-realized backgrounds of hard science and hardball politics."—David Drake "Rousing ... The Best of the Genre"— The New York Times "On the cover . . . is the claim 'No. 1 Adventure Novel of the Year.' And well it might be."— Milwaukee Journal on Janissaries
Author
Dr Jerry Eugene Pournelle was an American science fiction writer, engineer, essayist, and journalist, who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte, and from 1998 until his death maintained his own website and blog. From the beginning, Pournelle's work centered around strong military themes. Several books describe the 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 spent years working in the aerospace industry, including at Boeing, on projects including studying heat tolerance for astronauts and their spacesuits. This side of his career also found him working on projections related to military tactics and probabilities. One report in which he had a hand became a basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense system proposed by President Ronald Reagan. A study he edited in 1964 involved projecting Air Force missile technology needs for 1975. Dr. Pournelle would always tell would-be writers seeking advice that the key to becoming an author was to write—a lot. “And finish what you write,” he added in a 2003 interview. “Don’t join a writers’ club and sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it.” Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.
