NMR structure of the bovine β9-thymosin polypeptide based on the PDB 1HJ0 coordinates.

Thymosins are small proteins present in many animal tissues. They are named thymosins because they were originally isolated from the thymus, but most are now known to be present in many other tissues. Thymosins have diverse biological activities, and two in particular, thymosins α₁ and β₄, have potentially important uses in medicine, some of which have already progressed from the laboratory to the clinic. In relation to diseases, thymosins have been categorized as biological response modifiers.

Discovery[link]

The discovery of thymosins in the mid 1960s emerged from investigations of the role of the thymus in development of the vertebrate immune system. Begun by Allan Goldstein in the Laboratory of Abraham White at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, the work continued at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington D.C. The supposition that the role of the thymus might involve a hormone-like mechanism led to the isolation from thymus tissue of a biologically active preparation. Known as "Thymosin Fraction 5", this was able to restore some aspects of immune function in animals lacking thymus gland. Fraction 5 was found to contain over 40 small peptides (molecular weights ranging from 1000 to 15,000 Da.)^[1], which were named "thymosins" and classified as α, β and γ thymosins on the basis of their behaviour in an electric field. Although found together in Fraction 5, they are now known to be structurally and genetically unrelated. Thymosin β₁ was found to be ubiquitin (truncated by two C-terminal glycine residues)^[2].

When individual thymosins were isolated from Fraction 5 and characterized, they were found to have extremely varied and important biological properties. However they are not truly thymic hormones in that they are not restricted in occurrence to thymus and several are widely distributed throughout many different tissues. ^[1][2][3]

See also[link]

• Thymosin α1
• Beta thymosins

References[link]

External links[link]

• thymosin at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Thomas James "Tom" Snyder (May 12, 1936 – July 29, 2007) was an American television personality, news anchor and radio personality best known for his late night talk shows The Tomorrow Show, on the NBC television network in the 1970s and 1980s, and The Late Late Show, on the CBS Television Network in the 1990s. Snyder was also the pioneer anchor of the primetime NBC News Update, in the 1970s and early 1980s, which was a one-minute capsule of news updates in primetime.^[1]

Early life[link]

Snyder was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to parents Frank and Marie Snyder. He received a Catholic upbringing and attended St. Agnes Elementary School and graduated from Jesuit-run Marquette University High School. He attended Marquette University, after which he had originally planned to study medicine and become a doctor.^[2]

Newscasting career[link]

Snyder had loved radio since he was a child and at some point changed his field of study from pre-med to journalism. He once told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tim Cuprisin that broadcasting became more important to him than attending classes, and he skipped a lot of them.^[3] Snyder began his career as a radio reporter at WRIT (unrelated to the present-day FM station) in Milwaukee and at WKZO in Kalamazoo (where he was fired by John Fetzer) in the 1950s. For a time he worked at Savannah, Georgia AM station WSAV (now WBMQ).

After moving to television in the 1960s, he was a news anchor for KYW-TV in Cleveland (now WKYC-TV) and, after a 1965 station switch, Philadelphia,^[4] and WNBC-TV and WABC-TV in New York City. He talked about driving cross country in an early Corvair from Atlanta to Los Angeles around 1963, where he landed a news job at KTLA, then on to KNBC-TV also in Los Angeles, where from 1970 to 1974 he was an anchor for the 6 p.m. newscast working with KNBC broadcaster Kelly Lange, who was then a weather reporter before serving as a long-time KNBC news anchor. Lange later became Snyder's regular substitute guest host on the Tomorrow program, prior to the hiring of co-host Rona Barrett in the program's last year. Even after attaining fame as host of Tomorrow, Snyder kept his hand in news anchoring with the Sunday broadcasts of NBC Nightly News during 1975 and 1976.

[edit] Tomorrow with Tom Snyder

Snyder gained national fame as the host of Tomorrow with Tom Snyder (more commonly known as The Tomorrow Show), which aired late nights after The Tonight Show on NBC from 1973 to 1982. It was a talk show unlike the usual late-night fare, with Snyder, cigarette in hand, alternating between asking hard-hitting questions and offering personal observations that made the interview closer to a conversation.

Unique one-on-one exchanges were common to the program, notably with author Harlan Ellison, John Lydon of PiL and The Sex Pistols in 1980, John Lennon in 1975, actor and writer Sterling Hayden, convicted serial killer Charles Manson, and author and philosopher Ayn Rand. A one-on-one program with David Brenner as the sole guest revealed that Snyder and Brenner worked together on several documentaries.

An infamous edition of The Tomorrow Show broadcast on October 31, 1979, saw Snyder interview the rock group KISS. During the episode, a visibly irritated Gene Simmons (bass) and Paul Stanley (guitar) tried to contain the bombastic (and drunk) Ace Frehley (lead guitar), whose nonstop laughter and joking overshadowed the conversation taking place between Snyder and the rest of the band. Drummer Peter Criss made repeated references to his large gun collection, to the chagrin of Simmons. Some of the footage from this show was later included on the Kissology – The Ultimate KISS Collection Vol. 2: 1978–1991 (2007) DVD.

When not grilling guests, Snyder would often joke around with offstage crewmen, often breaking out in the distinctively hearty laugh that was the basis of Dan Aykroyd's impersonation of Snyder on Saturday Night Live (12 occasions, 1976–1979 and 1995).^[5] Following a disastrous experiment with turning Tomorrow into a more typical talk show—renaming it Tomorrow Coast to Coast and adding a live audience and co-host, Rona Barrett (all of which Snyder resented)—the show was canceled in 1982 to make way for the up-and-coming young comedian David Letterman.

[edit] After Tomorrow

After Tomorrow was cancelled Snyder returned to news reporting, joining WABC in New York. In September 1982, Snyder and Kaity Tong began anchoring the 5PM Eyewitness News programs for the station. Snyder stayed at WABC for two years, leaving the station in 1984.^[6] In 1985, he returned to the talk format at KABC-TV in Los Angeles with a local afternoon show he had planned to gear up for national syndication the following year; those plans were scratched after Oprah Winfrey's Chicago-based syndicated show entered the market first and took over Snyder's time slot on KABC-TV.

An older, slightly more mellow Snyder returned to virtually the same format on ABC Radio. The show's three-hour format was a natural for Snyder. The first hour was spent chatting with a celebrity guest, during the second hour Snyder engaged someone in the news, and the final hour was consumed chatting with his legion of fans. Occasionally the caller would be a well-known fan like David Letterman or Ted Koppel. One of Snyder's's favorite callers was Sherman Hemsley, the actor who played George Jefferson on the hit television sitcom The Jeffersons. The Tom Snyder Show for ABC Radio Networks went off the air in late 1992, in part due to the rapid rise in popularity of The Rush Limbaugh Show, which aired in the same time slot and which ABC had already been airing on many of its own stations. Snyder returned to television on CNBC in the early 1990s, adding the opportunity for viewers to call in with their own questions for his guests. Snyder nicknamed his show "the Colorcast", reviving an old promotional term NBC-TV used in the early 1960s to hype its color broadcasts. He also continued his trademark of talking to offscreen crew and made frequent reference to the studio, reminding viewers of its location in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

[edit] The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder

Meanwhile, Letterman had moved on to CBS and was given control of creating a new program to follow his at 12:35 am. Letterman, who had idolized Snyder for years, hired Snyder in 1995 as host of The Late Late Show. The idea had actually begun as a running joke on Letterman's show, that Snyder would soon follow him on the air as he had once followed Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show; the unlikely suggestion caught on. As part of the joke, Snyder appeared as himself in 1993 in The Larry Sanders Show episode Life Behind Larry, in which talk-show host Sanders (Gary Shandling) steals Snyder from Letterman to host a talk-show in the slot immediately after his.

The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder aired live in the Eastern and Central Time Zones, and was simulcast to other time zones on radio to allow everyone a chance to call in. Snyder's CNBC show was taken over, largely unchanged in format, by Charles Grodin. One of the many memorable Late Late Show interviews was with Gloria Vanderbilt about her son's suicide, told dramatically over an entire hour. Another was a lengthy interview with Robert Blake very soon before Blake was charged with murder. In 1999 Snyder left The Late Late Show, which was then reformatted for Craig Kilborn. It has since been turned over to Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson.

In February 2000, Snyder hosted two shows of The Late Show Backstage done during the time Letterman was recovering from heart surgery.

Snyder also hosted a video production called A Century of Legendary Lionel Trains, commemorating 100 years of Lionel Trains. Additionally, he hosted another program from the same production company called Celebrity Train Layouts 2: Tom Snyder, featuring his own collection of trains.

Colortini.com[link]

Snyder posted regular messages on his own now-defunct website colortini.com during the early 2000s. A "colortini", according to Snyder in the CNBC era, was the drink you should enjoy while watching the show ("Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."). For the CBS show, he redubbed the mythical drink a "simultini" as his show was also heard on selected radio stations.

On July 28, 2005, Snyder announced he was deleting his website after six years, stating: "The novelty of communicating this way has worn off." On August 1, 2005, his page was abruptly taken offline. The front page was replaced with a white screen with the simple phrase: "Colortini is gone. Thanks for the Memories".^[7] However, some 140 pages have been preserved at web.archive.org. The domain name has since been reused for other purposes.

Final years and death[link]

In April 2005, Snyder revealed that he was battling chronic lymphocytic leukemia, but that his doctors had told him it was "treatable". A year later, in June 2006, Snyder sold his home in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles, where he had lived for almost 30 years, and headed to Belvedere, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he owned a second home.

Snyder died on July 29, 2007, in San Francisco at the age of 71 from complications of leukemia. He had one child, Anne Mari Snyder, who lives in Maui, Hawaii, and two grandchildren.

Biography portal

References[link]

Notes

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

External links[link]

• Tom Snyder at the Internet Movie Database
• Tom Snyder at Find a Grave
• Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia: Tom Snyder
• Tom Snyder Radio Show Episodes
• Tom Snyder's trains
• David Hinckley's tribute to Tom Snyder in the New York Daily News

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (November 2010)

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw. (Discuss) Proposed since August 2010.

Durk Pearson, born in 1943 in Illinois, is best known for coauthoring a series of books on longevity, beginning with Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach.

Early life[link]

While a student at MIT, he was a member of the MIT Science Fiction Society and one of the writers for the early underground comic God Comics. Pearson graduated from MIT with a triple major in physics, biology, and psychology.^[1]

Career[link]

Pearson has patents in the area of oil shale and tar sands recovery,^[2] lasers, holography and supplement formulations.^[3] Pearson assisted with equipment design and experiments for NASA's Space Shuttle.^[4] Pearson is also an International Society for Testing and Failure Analysis honoree.^[5]

Publications[link]

Pearson and Sandy Shaw are the coauthors of Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach^[6] (ISBN 0-446-51229-X, Warner Books, 1982), The Life Extension Companion^[7] (Warner Books), The Life Extension Weight Loss Manual, and Freedom of Informed Choice: FDA v. Nutrient Supplements, (Common Sense Press, 1993). He and Sandy Shaw have co-authored numerous articles on Life extension, cognitive enhancement, Anti-aging, Weight loss, and other aspects of nutrition.

Television, film, and video[link]

Pearson and Shaw wrote, designed the stunts, and acted as technical advisors for a 1978 episode of The Wonderful World of Disney, called "Black Holes, Monsters That Eat Space and Time."^[8] They acted as scientific and technical advisors and received screen credits for the Clint Eastwood movie Firefox.^[9] They received screen credits for acting as technical advisors for Douglas Trumbull's movie Brainstorm, starring Natalie Wood.^[10] In 1988 Steve Sharon, Pearson and Shaw authored the thriller The Dead Pool, which was later sold to Warner Bros. and made into a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry film.^[11] Pearson and Shaw make a cameo appearance in the funeral scene^{[citation needed]}.

Court case on dietary supplements[link]

Pearson and Shaw in a civil action challenged the constitutional validity of several U.S. Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") regulations that require sellers of dietary supplements to obtain FDA authorization before labeling such supplements with "health claims". In ruling against the FDA, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the supplement health claims were constitutionally protected free speech. ^[12]

See also[link]

• Life extension
• Sandy Shaw

References[link]

External links[link]

• Durk Pearson-Libertarian
• Truth, Freedom, and the FDA: An Interview with Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw
• Maintain your Brain the Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw Way (Interview)

v t e Life extension Issues Anti-oxidants · Calorie restriction · Cryonics · Exercise · Free-radical theory · Gerontology · Glycation · Indefinite lifespan · Index of life extension-related articles · Longevity · Mind uploading · Rejuvenation · Senescence · Stem cell treatments · Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence · Suspended animation People Bill Andrews · Aubrey de Grey · Terry Grossman · Leonard Hayflick · Denham Harman · Saul Kent · Ray Kurzweil · Marios Kyriazis · Durk Pearson · Sandy Shaw · Roy Walford · Michael D. West Organizations Alcor Life Extension Foundation · Alliance for Aging Research · American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine · American Aging Association · American Cryonics Society · Cryonics Institute · Cryonics Society · Immortalist Society · Immortality Institute · KrioRus · Life Extension Foundation · Methuselah Foundation · SENS Foundation · Sierra Sciences Books Life Extension (1982) · The First Immortal (1998) · Fantastic Voyage (2004) · Ending Aging (2007) Categories Life extension

Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Pournelle at the 2005 NASFiC
Born	(1933-08-07) August 7, 1933 (age 78) Shreveport, Louisiana
Pen name	"Wade Curtis" (early work)
Occupation	Novelist, Journalist, Essayist
Nationality	American
Genres	Science fiction
Influences Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, A. E. van Vogt, John W. Campbell, Russell Kirk
Influenced James Wesley Rawles
www.jerrypournelle.com

Jerry Eugene Pournelle (born August 7, 1933) is 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.^[1]

Biography[link]

Pournelle was born in Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish in northwestern Louisiana, and educated in Capleville, Tennessee.^[2] He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. Afterwards, he obtained advanced degrees: M.S. degrees in both experimental statistics and systems engineering, and Ph.D.'s in both psychology and political science, all from the University of Washington. His political science thesis was titled "The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political 'isms'" and is dated 1964.^[3]

He served as campaign research director for the mayoral primary campaign of 1969 for Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (Dem.), working under campaign director Henry Salvatori.^[4] After the primary he was named Executive Assistant to the Mayor in charge of research in September, 1969, but resigned from the position after two weeks.^[5] 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.^[6]

Pournelle was an intellectual protege of Russell Kirk (Kenneth C. Cole, Pournelle's mentor at the University of Washington, was co-founder with Kirk of Modern Age) and Stefan T. Possony. Pournelle wrote numerous publications with Possony, including The Strategy of Technology (1970). 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.^[7]

Pournelle's work in the aerospace industry includes time he worked at Boeing in the late-1950s. While there, he worked on Project Thor, conceiving of "hypervelocity rod bundles," also known as "rods from God."^[8] He edited Project 75, a 1964 study of 1975 defense requirements.^[9] He worked in operations research at The Aerospace Corporation, and North American Rockwell Space Division, and 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.^[10]

During the 1970s and 1980s he also published articles on military tactics and wargamming in the military simulations industry in Avalon Hill's magazine The General. That led him into correspondences with some of the early figures in D&D and other FRPGs.^[11]

In 1994, Pournelle's friendly relationship with Newt Gingrich led to Gingrich securing a government job for Pournelle's son, Richard.^[12] At the time, Pournelle and Gingrich were reported to be collaborating on, "a science fiction political thriller."^[12] Pournelle's relationship with Gingrich was long established even then, as Pournelle had written the preface to Gingrich's book, Window of Opportunity (1985).^[13]

In 1985, Footfall, in which Robert A. Heinlein was a thinly veiled minor character, reached the number one spot on The New York Times bestseller list. Another bestseller, Lucifer's Hammer (1977), reached number two.

As of early 2008, Pournelle has been battling a brain tumor, which appears to be responding favorably to radiation treatment.^[14] As of 28 August 2008 he is cancer-free according to a report on his weblog.

Fiction[link]

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 copyright owner of the Piper estate. Pournelle did work for some years on a sequel to Space Viking but seems to have abandoned this in the early 1990s.

Pseudonyms and collaborations[link]

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 by "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 Flynn, and Steven Barnes, and collaborated as an editor on an anthology series with John F. Carr.

Journalism[link]

Pournelle wrote the "Chaos Manor" column in the print version of Byte, beginning in January 1982. In the column, Pournelle described his experiences with computer hardware and software, some purchased and some sent by vendors for his review. 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.

In the 1980s, Pournelle was an editor and columnist for Survive, a survivalist magazine.^[15]

Since 1998, Pournelle has maintained a website with a daily online journal, "View from Chaos Manor", a blog dating from before the use of that term. This is a continuation of his 1980s blog-like online journal on GEnie. He says he resists using the term blog because he considers the word ugly and because he maintains that his "View" is primarily a vehicle for writing rather than a collection of links.

Humorist Dave Barry gives accolades to Pournelle's guru column in Byte magazine in Dave Barry in Cyberspace.

Politics[link]

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. [2] 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". [3] The Council's first report [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.

He is sometimes quoted as describing his politics as "somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan".

Pournelle opposed both Gulf Wars, maintaining that the money would be better spent developing energy technologies for the United States. He is quoted as saying "with what we spent in Iraq we could build nuclear power plants and space solar power satellites and tell the Arabs to drink their oil." His web site is critical of the Iraq War, but demands support of troops committed there. "Once you send the troops in, you have no choice but to give them what they need until you bring them home."

Pournelle is also known for his Pournelle chart, a 2-dimensional coordinate system used to distinguish political ideologies. It is similar to the Nolan chart, except that 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 planning, bottom being its total lack).

Iron Law of Bureaucracy[link]

Pournelle has suggested several "laws". His first use of the term "Pournelle's law" appears to be for the expression "one user, one CPU." He has also used "Pournelle's law" to apply to the importance of checking cables connections when diagnosing computer problems. 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 has 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."

Politics in fiction[link]

In The Mercenary, later integrated into Falkenberg's Legion, the newly-independent planet Hadley is threatened with economic collapse, famine, and resulting mass death. This can only be avoided by having a large part of its city population relocated to the countryside and assigned to work in agriculture (a socialist solution which is very reminiscent of Mao's "cultural revolution"). This solution is unpopular, and the leading Freedom Party won't hear of it. The party uses bloody, violent means to force the planet's President to resign and get themselves into power. The story's protagonist, mercenary commander John Christian Falkenberg, finds what he considers a brutal but unavoidable solution: in order to force the city people to move to the countryside, the Freedom Party must be completely crushed, in however bloody a way - as the other alternative is a total economic collapse in which at least a third of the population would perish. Accordingly, he gets his soldiers into the stadium where the Freedom Party holds its rally, catching its members by complete surprise. His men break the disorganized resistance and proceed to systematically kill the armed militants and party leaders. Mission completed, Falkenberg hands over power to a well-meaning liberal who hitherto could only wring his hands in despair, and departs the planet. Falkenberg freely offers to use himself and his men as scapegoats, since "nobody is going to forget what happened today".

The climax and perhaps some of the politics are borrowed from Fletcher Pratt's The Battles That Changed History, specifically "Fighting in the Streets and the Future of Order." Justinian the Great suppressed a revolt in Constantinople by seeming to capitulate, and then sending in Belisarius with reliable mercenaries to butcher the celebrating faction in the Hippodrome together with their leaders. This incident is formally known as the Nika riots.

In Footfall, elephant-like alien invaders seize a foothold in Kansas. Unable to dislodge them with conventional weapons, the US government finally resorts to annihilating Kansas with nuclear weapons—killing aliens and humans alike. Later, when the aliens continue their offensive, the President authorizes the construction of a spaceship powered by nuclear explosions; the dangerous technology is presented as the only viable technology available to humans for powering a space warship. Safety, environmental and civil rights protections are suspended in the construction area. An investigative journalist discovers the Orion ship. Wrestling with whether to reveal the scoop of the century to the world (and therefore alerting the alien invaders as well), he confides the secret to an environmental activist. Although he does this as protection against being arrested by the government and had not definitively decided to publish, the activist kills him to protect the secret.

After the human ship fights the alien mothership to the brink of destruction, the aliens finally attempt to negotiate a surrender. The President expresses his willingness to accept a peaceful settlement. Unwilling to spare the enemy mothership for a mere promise from the alien leader, the National Security Advisor seizes control of the government and refuses the alien's terms. The aliens immediately turn their ship over to human control and offer their unconditional surrender.

In Lucifer's Hammer, the world is thrown into total chaos by the disastrous strike of a comet. In the wreckage of central California, a coalition of US Army deserters, Black Power activists, militant environmentalists, and evangelical religious fanatics take up cannibalism and pursue an anti-technological crusade against the remaining enclaves of civilization. When a farming community is attacked by this group, the settlers are forced to counter the invading army's superior numbers, fanaticism and weapons with home-brewed chemical weapons (mustard gas). The farmers successfully use this weapon of mass destruction to annihilate their enemies, enslaving the survivors.

Bibliography[link]

Non-fiction[link]

• Stability and National Security (Air Force Directorate of Doctrines, Concepts and Objectives) (1968), available at [4] (.PDF file)
• The Strategy of Technology with Stephan T. Possony, Ph.D. and Francis X. Kane, Ph.D. (1970), available at [5]
• 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[link]

• 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 (1972–1975)
• Birth of Fire (1976)
• West of Honor (1976)
• The Mercenary (1977)
• Exiles to Glory (1977)
• Janissaries (1979)
• Men of War (1993)
• Prince of Mercenaries (2002)
• Starswarm (2003)
• Janissaries IV: Mamelukes (Unpublished; working title)

Collaborations[link]

With Larry Niven[link]

• The Mote in God's Eye (1975) (with Larry Niven)
• Inferno (1976) (with Larry Niven)
• Oath of Fealty (1982) (with Larry Niven)
• Lucifer's Hammer (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)

With others[link]

• 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 second and third Janissaries novels)

Series[link]

• Heorot
• CoDominium
• Janissaries series

Other media[link]

• This Week in Tech - Dr. Pournelle has appeared a number of times as one of the panelists on the podcast This Week in Tech.

Anthology (as editor)[link]

• Black Holes (1981)
• 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)
• There Will be War (anthology series edited with John F. Carr), Vols I-IX

Awards[link]

• Bronze Medal, American Security Council, 1964
• John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of 1973
• Prometheus Award for Fallen Angels 1992
• Heinlein Society Award (with frequent co-author Larry Niven) 2005^[16]
• Seiun Award for Foreign Novel (in Japanese translation): 1998, Fallen Angels

References[link]

1. ^ The SFWA Grand Masters, Vol. One edited by Frederik Pohl, 1999, NY, NY, pg. 12
2. ^ The View from Chaos Manor, June 20, 2003
3. ^ The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political "isms." listing, University of Washington Libraries
4. ^ "Yorty Campaign Reorganized; Henry Salvatori Takes Charge," KENNETH REICH, Los Angeles Times, Apr 15, 1969
5. ^ "Key Assistant to Yorty Quits After 2 Weeks," Los Angeles Times, Sep 30, 1969
6. ^ "UTLA Captures 6 of 9 Positions on Teacher Council," HARRY BERNSTEIN, Los Angeles Times, Oct 29, 1970
7. ^ "The First Essential of Airpower: The Case for Air Force Laboratories," Air & Space Power Journal, Maj Daniel E. Bullock, 9/29/1999
8. ^ "Rods From God," The New York Times, JONATHAN SHAININ, 10 December 2006
9. ^ "Deep Impact," Dr Dobb's Journal, Jerry Pournelle, October 2005. I'm reluctant to use Pournelle himself as a source, but he goes into some detail, and the study was classified. [1]
10. ^ "TEST OF TAIL-FIRST LANDING / Science Fiction Gives Rocket a Boost," Charles Petit, 17 June 1993, The San Francisco Chronicle
11. ^ The General Vol. 7, No. 6
12. ^ ^{a b} "HOT TOPICS," Jon Bream, 2 May 1995, Star-Tribune Newspaper of the Twin Cities Mpls.-St. Paul
13. ^ "The Truth Is Out There," Alexander Star, 9 August 1998, The New York Times
14. ^ View 502 January 21 - 27, 2008
15. ^ Notes from a Survival Sage
16. ^ Heinlein Society 2005 Heinlein Award

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jerry Pournelle

• Chaos Manor Musings, a blog by Jerry Pournelle
• Jerry Pournelle Facebook group
• Jerry Pournelle Byte column parody
• Jerry Pournelle at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Jerry Pournelle (May 11, 2007). West of Honour. Baen Free Library. http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0671653474/0671653474.htm. 
• Jerry Pournelle at 1999 NASFiC website where he was GoH
• How Jerry Pournelle got kicked off the ARPANET
• Jerry Pournelle Interview at AMCtv.com