A Studio City home owned by the late science-fiction author Jerry Pournelle is for sale at $1.825 million.
Pournelle, who died in 2017 at 84, wrote bestsellers alone and with Larry Niven — think the post-apocalyptic “Lucifer’s Hammer” and the first contact epic “The Mote in God’s Eye,” published in the mid to late-1970s. He wrote all his science fiction novels at home in the Silver Triangle neighborhood south of Ventura Boulevard.
Marketed as a “fixer with lots of potential,” it includes five bedrooms, three bathrooms and two stories of workspace within 3,141 square feet of living space thanks to several permitted additions.
Pournelle bought the circa-1933 house in 1967 for $33,000, public records show, and expanded it over the years into the place he nicknamed “Chaos Manor.”
“When they first got it, it was one of those little bungalows like all of the other homes along Laurel Terrace (Drive),” said Victor Currie of Douglas Elliman, the listing agent. “Because they had a big family, they added two bedrooms upstairs in the back and then a completely different upstairs front wing.”
The latter addition makes up the brick exterior that from Laurel Terrace Drive recalls a library. Inside, it contains an extensive library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a study and a separate storage area.
Trees surround a large balcony enjoyed by Pournelle and his wife, Roberta. She died in August 2020 at 85.
“For my parents, that view was as much about watching the hawks and birds as it was the hillside,” said the couple’s eldest son, Alex. He has three brothers and an older half-sister.
And then there were books.
Now empty, bookcases line other areas of the house. That includes the hallway near the primary suite with the pink and mint tiled bathroom.
Elsewhere, there’s a formal living room with interior French doors that open to a music room. A wall separates the music room from the formal dining room.
Off the kitchen is a breakfast nook with a built-in china cabinet.
In the backyard, there’s a swimming pool and spa.
Pournelle was an aerospace engineer, prolific novelist and columnist. He was the first author to write a book entirely on a computer, a Cremonaco he named Ezekial, now in the Smithsonian. His first drafts, working notes and other papers are at UC Riverside Library’s Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
In addition to fiction, he penned the long-runnning “Computing at Chaos Manor” column for Byte magazine.
