The Best of Jerry Pournelle

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.

For the better part of five decades, Jerry Pournelle's name has been synonymous with hard-hitting science fiction. His Falkenberg's Legion stories and Janissaries series helped define the military sf genre, as did his work as editor on the There Will Be War series of anthologies. With frequent collaborator Larry Niven, he co-wrote the genre-defining first contact novel The Mote in God's Eye, which was praised by Robert A. Heinlein as "possibly the greatest science fiction novel I have ever read."

Now, for the first time, all of Pournelle's best short work has been collected in a single volume. Herein you will find over a dozen short stories, each with a new introduction by editor and longtime Pournelle assistant John F. Carr, as well as essays and remembrances by Pournelle collaborators and admirers.

Cover Art by Stephen Hickman

Paperback

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First Baen printing, November 2019

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 978-1-9821-2417-5
eISBN: 978-1-62579-743-8

Copyright © 2019 by John F. Carr

Introduction copyright © 2019 by John F. Carr. “Ecology Now!” © 1971 by Jerry Pournelle, first appeared in Analog, December 1971; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “Survival with Style,” © 2019 Estate of Jerry Pournelle, first appeared in Galaxy, March 1976; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “Peace with Honor,” © 1971 by Jerry Pournelle, first appeared in Analog, May 1971; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “Jerry Pournelle’s Future History,” © 2019 by Larry King. (This essay was written for this book and had never appeared anywhere else.) “The Mercenary,”© 1972 by Jerry Pournelle, first appear in Analog, July 1972; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “The Hospital Visit,” © 2019 by David Gerrold. “Manual of Operations,” © 1974 by Jerry Pournelle; first appeared in Vertex, April 1974; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “There Will Be War, Volume I: Preface,” © 1983 by Jerry Pournelle; first appeared in There Will Be War, Volume I (Tor, 1983); reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “Consort,” © 1975 by Jerry Pournelle; first appeared in Analog, August 1975; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “First Patrol,” © 2019 by the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “Retrospective,” © 2019 by Larry Niven; “Spirals,” © 1979 by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, first appeared in Destinies, April-June 1979; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry and Larry Niven. “Discovery,” © 2010 by Jerry Pournelle; first appeared in War World: Discovery (Pequod Press, 2010); reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “The Science and Technology of Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium/Empire of Man Universe,” © 2019 by Doug McElwain. “Reflex,” © 1983 by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven; first appeared in There Will Be War, Volume 1 (Tor, 1983); reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. “Kenyons to the Keep,” © 1990 by Jerry Pournelle; first appeared in After Armageddon (Tor, 1990); reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “He Fell Into a Dark Hole,” © 1973 by Jerry Pournelle; first appeared in Analog, March 1973; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “The Secret of Black Ship Island,” © 2012 by Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes; first appeared as The Secret of Black Ship Island (Spectrum Literary Agency Ebook, 2012); reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, and Steven Barnes. “Remembering a Master of Excellence,” © 2019 by Steven Barnes. “The Last Shot,” © 2019 by the Estate of Jerry Pournelle. “Story Night at the Stronghold,” © 2016 by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven; first appeared in Analog, July/August 2016; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. “The Man Who Owned the Future,” © 2019 by Robert Gleason.

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