We’ve lost another big name in SF. I liked Jerry Pournelle’s collaborations with Larry Niven a great deal.
The Mote in God’s Eye is (in my opinion) the best piece of hard SF to come out of the 70s. [Screws eyes shut and thinks hard]. Yup. Ringworld was pretty damned good, but it hasn’t aged well, and Stand on Zanzibar and Dune were published in the 1960s, so Mote it is. It’s a fantastically well crafted first-contact novel.
Here’s a bit, I believe written by Pournelle, describing how the two authors built Mote.
I agree, I read and enjoyed many of their books. Pournelles column in Byte was always a treat. The Moties and the puppeteers are my favorite aliens.