Someone yesterday told me that I had been Tuckerized by Jerry Pournelle in Prince of Mercenaries. A little quick research found that that book has been included in a larger volume called The Prince. Both books are out of print, I don't think I own either, and in any case am currently something over two thousand miles from my library.
Is there anyone reading this blog who has one of the versions of the book and can check to see if my name appears, linked to one of the characters? I don't think the novel I'm currently working on has a space for a character named J. Pournelle, Destitute Nelly, or anything close, but perhaps one of the scenarios in my current nonfiction project ... .
9 comments:
Don't recall reading this one, but pulling it off the shelf I do see in it in a quick scan a character, "David I, the Freedman king".
OK, scanning further I'd say it's a pretty definite yes:
"On the other hand. David Freedman always looks like that when we have to increase taxes. The Freedman kings had been economics professors of a very laissez-faire bent..."
I may have to stop and read this one soon, I don't actually remember buying it.
Since the question has been answered, I would point out it is quite a good read, but a classic example of how there is nothing so dated as a vision of the future, given it is from the US-Soviet CoDominion universe.
In general I second Lorenzo's comment, but would state it as, if you like military SF then it is quite a good read.
They may be out of print in paper, but all of the Falkenberg's Legion books are available in electronic form on Webscriptions.
I always assumed you knew about the Freedman Kings, given the fairly obvious allusion. I don't know if it's a true Tuckerizaiton, though, as that David Freedman may very well be your descendant. (In that alternative universe, they spell their name differently.)
I always assumed that Pournelle was thinking of Milton Friedman as the original of his "Freedmans". MF's writings at that time would have resounded politically with a conservative JEP (probably more so than DF's). I vaguely recall a reference to Tyranny of the Status Quo ( I think) in one of JEP's nonfiction pieces. The choice of David as a name may have been coincidental (or not, of course). So it's maybe a case of indirect or inherited tuckerisation!
I've known Jerry for a long time and contributed non-fiction pieces to (I think) two of his collections, so the name "David" is not a coincidence.
But I haven't thought of any plausible way of slipping either a variant of or a play on his name into anything I'm writing.
Lonely Perjurer?
Short stories making up its "universe" go back to the 1970s and these stories are set in the 2060s on so I suspect it is not so much you personally as the Friedman family being invoked, David being quite a likely name to reappear. Jerry also has his spaceships powered by the Forward Drive.
There is a character in Lucifer's Hammer (sorry can't remember the name) who is a science writer and transparently him (as Tim Hammer is transparently Niven) whom it might be amusing to slip in.
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