n.y.t.

For those busily-engaged elsewhere during his zenith:

Dr. Pournelle, whose several degrees included a Ph.D. in political science, worked in the aerospace industry for years and advised the federal government on military matters and space exploration. But science fiction fans knew him as the author of novels like “Janissaries” (1979), about soldiers abducted by space aliens, and “Starswarm” (1998), about a boy being raised on a remote planet by an uncle and a computer program named Gwen, which his dead mother had left behind.

Dr. Pournelle also wrote numerous books with other authors. Larry Niven was a favorite collaborator. Their works included “The Mote in God’s Eye” (1975), an outer-space saga; “Lucifer’s Hammer” (1977), about humanity’s attempt to regroup after a cataclysm; “Inferno” (1976) and “Escape From Hell” (2009), related stories inspired by the hell envisioned by Dante; and “Footfall,” which made it to the top of The New York Times’s paperback best-seller list in May 1986.

A Literary History of Word Processing DEC. 25, 2011
Dr. Pournelle was also known to many through lively columns for Byte magazine in which, beginning early in the home-computing age, he talked about personal computers and the software for them. Much of any given column was about his own experiences at “Chaos Manor” — his name for his home, and for the column — trying out new software products and wrestling with bugs, glitches and viruses.

[. . .]

[er, *cough* for some of us he was also a Noted proponent for a near-magical "contact enhancer", in which a long-chain-polymer proved capable of Reducing Resistance™! between adjacent conductors (where a certain amount of pressure could be exerted..) called Tweek™ ... I had the distict-privilege (and egotistical-pleasure) of handing him his first sample-bottle of the elixir at some sorta -Con in S.F. This in early '85; he promptly elevated it to a Product of the Year. Etc.]
This was a good-enough Heh-du-jour ... but nowhere on Scale of the perfectly-timed encounter with

the then-Unknown Audrey (Hepburn) just a handful of days before: she (The Movie) forever invaded the consciousness of the Charmed-millions. (On her demise I donated the signed Program for the play, Gigi to UNICEF: to auction-off in a fund-raising (as would have pleased the Little Sweetie, also too moi.)

Jeez, all celebrities encountered whenever ..seem to be dying off, lately... harbingers of Doom or of my elevation to Immortality?
Sic Transit (all that which perfectly evades ..becoming carrion, eh?)