The science fiction world has lost a legend. Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s son Alex informed the world yesterday that his dad passed away after attending DragonCon, from which he apparently contracted a cold and the flu, according to his September 7 blog entry.

This is a tremendous loss for science fiction fans, writers, and anyone to whom Dr. Pournelle was a mentor and an inspiration.

Jerry Pournelle wasn’t just an outstanding author, who wrote on his own and collaborated with others, most notably Larry Niven, with whom he wrote, among other things, The Mote in God’s Eye, Inferno and Lucifer’s Hammer. He also consulted on space technologies, served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, and worked to contribute to the computer magazine Byte.

Most notably, for me, Dr. Pournelle was an inspiration to generations of readers, who spent their formative years drinking up his stirring prose and being entranced by his enchanting storytelling, and scores of authors to whom he was a mentor, a friend, and a source of insight and vision.