Jerry Eugene Pournelle was an American science-fiction writer, essayist and journalist. A lesser known fact about him is that he was a polymath too, with degrees in statistics, systems engineering, psychology and political science. He started writing non-science fiction work under the pseudonym of Wade Curtis or J. E. Pournelle. Critics believe that his stories always displayed a strong military theme. Another thing that makes him popular amongst the readers is the various “laws” that he published in his books, the most famous being his Iron Law of Bureaucracy. As a journalist, he earned recognition in the computer industry for his monthly columns called the Computing At Chaos Manor in Byte magazine. His columns were the industry's first and the longest-running monthly column, that were regularly published for a period of more than 20 years. After the termination of his contract he moved the column to his own website. He thoroughly opposed the US strategy regarding the gulf war, as he was of the opinion that the money spent on the war could have been used for developing energy technologies
