Jerry Pournelle Parody

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Mon Aug 3 10:45:35 1998

At 06:19 PM 7/31/98 -0700, Kai wrote:
>I just had to pass this on to the list.
>http://shell.rmi.net/~bslatner/humor/pournell.html

The parody mentions his kids - week before last, I bumped into
Alex Pournelle walking around in one of the computer history
exhibits (where one of my Teraks was on display) at the
ACM SIGGRAPH computer graphics convention in Orlando.

For many years while I was working as a freelance writer, I'd see
Jerry in person at press events at computer shows, and I knew many
of his assistants / toadies. Ugh. It was frightening what he was
given, and how little time he spent with it, and how little he
understood it.

Alex has certainly inherited or adopted many of his father's traits,
including the condescending dismissal and endless bumming of
software and hardware. He and another writer are working on
a WinNT "studio" book, and are gathering all the 3D and video
stuff they can find - but of course, many writers do all that.

Where does it all go? It depends. The more pricey the toy,
the less likely someone gets to keep it forever. Software
often has no value on this spectrum, and stays in the hands of
the reviewer, who might keep it or even resell it.

(I was once appalled by the brisk cash gathered by a "reviewer"
of books for a newsletter for librarians, who'd turn a bagful
of new books into cash each week at the nearest used book store,
after dismissing each with barely a paragraph "review".)

For someone of Poor-Nelly-ian magnitude, you've ultimately
got to *hire* someone to be in charge of returning and
donating all the stuff that arrives. Keep in mind, a great
deal arrives unsolicited.

I note that the parody was written by Ed DeJesus, an actual
editor at Byte, who oversaw my first and last Byte article (see
<http://www.byte.com/art/9507/sec8/art5.htm>.

I recently saw a summary of the mindset of the Pournellian branch
of science fiction as "Space is like Texas, only bigger."

- John
Received on Mon Aug 03 1998 - 10:45:35 BST

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