It is hard to over-praise this collection of articles on the latest developments in science, or their author. But I'm going to try.
All of these pieces appeared originally in Galaxy, a major science fiction magazine. When the first one was printed in the April 1974, Galaxy, I was motivated to write the following letter to Jim Baen:
Dear Editor:
I was pleasantly surprised -when I finally opened your latest issue—the April—and saw Jerry Pournelle had done a science article for Galaxy. This is sf magazine science fact really moving up in the world. Of all the people I have met in my life, Jerry is one of the most colossally educated in science. He had advanced training in systems engineering, psychology, physics, mathematics, logic, and political science. He is the only science degree person I have ever known who was able to explain coherently the entire Velikovsky controversy, an hour later do the same for the Atlantean legend, and then, in a major talk, describe the new, dynamic, holographic view of the structure of the brain. Jerry has Isaac Asimov's memory in a younger body, and it comes out by instant association in a similar electrifying voice. Several sentences in his article referred to new developments in aerospace and energy science that were hitherto unknown to me—and I try to keep up. After reading that, the future already looks brighter to me. Scientifically oriented readers will now have to add Galaxy to their list of publications they need to keep up with what's going on.
That was published in the July 1974, issue. Now, here we are more than four years later. During the interval, Jerry has not only written a science article for every issue of Galaxy; he has also become a major visiting science lecturer at universities, and has gone up in the sf literary world to become—hear this!—one of the half dozen authors in the field who have received advances of more than a hundred thousand dollars. In 1973 he Avon the John W. Campbell, Jr. award as the most promising new sf writer of the year. In 1977, he and his collaborator, Larry Niven, were paid an advance of $236,500 for the paperback rights of their sf novel, LUCIFER'S HAMMER.
In these articles you will find that the author is pro-technology, pro-space program, pro-interstellar exploration. And he supports these and other pro-science projects for a strange reason. He can prove that they and they alone will accomplish what the anti-science proponents want. Without space colonies, the third world is dead. Without meteorite mining, people on welfare will presently get nothing.
Read Jerry's SURVIVAL WITH STYLE and A BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVAL. We have (according to Jerry Pournelle) a hundred years to get out into space and save ourselves. After that, because of the depletion of the necessary resources down here on the surface of the planet-necessary, that is, for getting us off and up—the opportunity will never occur again for the human race.
A science article by Jerry Pournelle has an astonishing amount of writing energy in it. Like Isaac Asimov, Jerry puts himself out where you can see who's doing the reporting. Like Isaac he knows the facts and has the formal training to evaluate and present the data.
Another comment on that training: Jerry's mother once told a group of us that as the years went by, and there -was Jerry still in college, taking this degree and that degree, and that training, and that one, and that, and that . . . the family began to be worried.
As they, and we, may see, he came out of it all right. And not only as a brain. Jerry has a tall, lean, tough body which, in its time, served in Korea, achieved a high level of skill in the graceful, muscular art of fencing, and acquired the enduring heart and lung power that comes from hiking in the mountains.
Jerry has been an aide to a mayor of Los Angeles, a practicing PhD psychologist, president (the same year winning that Campbell award) of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and other achievements.
As you have now seen, I've tried to over-praise Jerry Pournelle and what he has written in this book But it can't be done.