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These days, Niven may still be the bigger star in SF but, with his long-running column in Byte and his involvement in the computer industry, Pournelle may actually be known to more people.

Certainly, Niven was way better known when they first started to collaborate, so Pournelle was borrowing his reputation, but they each brought there own strengths to the collaborations. At first, at least, the partnership really was one of those cases where the whole was more than the sum of its parts. Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall both made it to the best-seller list.

Later, the partnership began to fade and became just a money-making enterprise. After they brought in Steven Barnes to work with them on The Legacy of Heorot they started trying to farm out the books.

A friend of mine had sold a number of short stories and wanted to go into writing full time. His style and subject matter was pretty close the work by Niven and Pournelle. He told me he had received a letter from an editor, along with a contract. Niven and Pournelle were proposing that he meet with them for a couple of weeks and iron out a story outline. Then he would write the whole thing and they would do some editing for the final draft. He said from his understanding of the contract it would essentially be work for hire. He would get a set amount up front, but would not get any of the royalties.

He told me he was willing to do that just to get his name linked with Niven and Pournelle, who were the biggest thing in SF at the time. He wrote back that he would be happy to do it, but he wanted to run the contract by his agent first. Apparently, "agent" was a magic word, because he immediately got back a very rude letter saying to forget the whole thing.

Still, if you ignore their later books, the first three or four hold up pretty well.