This early end is not fate’s malice.
Today inscribed among the ghosts.
Good friends shed tears and stroke my body.
I never had enough to drink.
Official New York Times obituary, published November 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/arts/anne-mccaffrey-dragonriders-author-dies-at-85.html?ref=obituaries
Anne McCaffrey, Author of 'Dragonriders' Fantasies, Dies at 85
by Margalit Fox
Anne McCaffrey, a science-fiction writer widely known as the Dragon Lady for her best-selling series of young-adult novels, “Dragonriders of Pern,” died on Monday in County Wicklow, Ireland. She was 85. The cause was a stroke, her publisher, Random House, told The Associated Press. Ms. McCaffrey, who had lived in Ireland since the 1970s, died at her home, Dragonhold — so named, she liked to say, because it had been paid for by dragons.
The author of scores of books in a spate of different series, Ms. McCaffrey was indisputably best known for “Dragonriders,” written over four decades and comprising more than 20 novels.
That series, which is notable for marrying elements of fantasy to pure science fiction, takes place on the planet Pern, which Earthlings have settled. A utopian idyll at first, Pern has degenerated, after centuries of human habitation, into a tense feudal society.
The greatest threat to Pern is Thread, a type of deadly spore that rains down periodically. To combat these Threadfalls, inhabitants have cultivated a species of large, airborne, telepathic and eminently congenial dragons, whose fiery breath can vanquish the Thread. Throughout the series, Ms. McCaffrey’s protagonists — often young women or children — right all manner of galactic wrongs, stalwart paladins astride their soaring scaly steeds.
The series, which began in 1968 with “Dragonflight,” includes “Dragonquest,” “Dragonsong,” “Dragondrums,” “The Masterharper of Pern” and, most recently, “Dragon’s Time,” written with her son Todd McCaffrey and published this year.
As a stylist, Ms. McCaffrey was not uniformly esteemed. Reviewing “Dragonsdawn” in The New York Times Book Review in 1989, Gerald Jonas wrote of her, “Few are better at mixing elements of high fantasy and hard science in a narrative that disarms skepticism by its open embrace of the joys of wish fulfillment,” but faulted her “awkward similes” and “formulaic descriptions.”
But the immense commercial success of “Dragonriders of Pern” more than outweighed any criticism. The books sold millions of copies and have inspired a cornucopia of Internet fan fiction and a spate of scholarly studies.
The world of Pern became so all-encompassing to those who entered it that it gave rise to a concordance, “The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern,” by Jody Lynn Nye, with Ms. McCaffrey.
Anne Inez McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Mass., on April 1, 1926. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Slavonic languages and literature from Radcliffe, and trained as an actress and opera singer before her writing life transported her to operatic worlds of another kind.
Her first novel, “Restoree,” was published in 1967. A satirical work of science fiction for adults, it lampooned the genre’s portrayal of women as helpless chattel.
The novel’s plot, as summarized in the reference work Authors and Artists for Young Adults, is set in motion when its strong, savvy heroine, Sara, “is snatched from Central Park by a low flying space ship.”
Sara awakens to find herself “restored” — that is, clad in an entirely new body — in a world that combines great technological sophistication with a retrograde social order.
Ms. McCaffrey’s honors include the two loftiest awards of her genre: a Hugo, which she won in 1968 for her novella “Weyr Search,” later incorporated into the Dragonriders series; and a Nebula, for the novella “Dragonriders,” also incorporated into the series.
Her non-Pern books include “The Ship Who Sang”; “PartnerShip,” with Margaret Ball; and “The City Who Fought,” with S. M. Stirling.
Ms. McCaffrey’s marriage to Horace Wright Johnson ended in divorce. Besides her son Todd, she is survived by another son, Alec Johnson; a daughter, Georgeanne Kennedy; and grandchildren.
She was the subject of a biography, “Anne McCaffrey: A Life With Dragons,” by Robin Roberts, published in 2007 by the University Press of Mississippi.
Ms. McCaffrey, an avocational horse breeder, was often asked, Why dragons? “You can get closer to a dragon than you can to a horse,” she said in an interview with National Public Radio in 2007. “Horses are smart within their own boundaries, but dragons are very smart.”
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http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mccaffrey_anne
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
McCaffrey, Anne
(1926-2011) US-born professional horsebreeder and author, in Ireland from the 1970s; mother of Todd McCAFFREY. Most of her output was sf, though tinged with the tone and instruments of FANTASY: much of her main work, the enormous Pern sequence of PLANETARY ROMANCE adventures (see below) is normally experienced as fantasy. She began publishing work of genre interest with "Freedom of the Race" for Hugo GERNSBACK's SCIENCE-FICTION PLUS in 1953, but became active only a decade or so later with her first novel, Restoree (1967), which rather conventionally, though with tongue in cheek, tells the story of a young woman who, after being flayed alive by ALIEN flesh-eaters, is saved and with her skin restored has adventures in another world's high society. Soon McCaffrey began publishing the linked novels and stories that have made her reputation as a writer of romantic, heightened tales of adventure designed to appeal – and to make good sense to – readers who start young and who, over the years, grow into her world.Her major series is set in a long-lost Earth colony, Pern, a world whose first human settlers (> COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS) had modified the native dragonish species "fire lizards" through GENETIC ENGINEERING – the relatively late Dragonsdawn (1988) serves as the relevant origin story – in order to create the romantic empath dragons who dominate the overall sequence. These huge but loyal and sapient creatures have powers of TELEPATHY, TELEPORTATION and TIME TRAVEL – further fantasticated speculation appears in the "nonfiction" A Diversity of Dragons (1997) with Richard Woods – and symbiotically pair-bond at birth like giant ponies with a selected human. Such human/dragon duos, who dominate the many volumes of the sequence, engage (as the founders of the colony had intended) in high adventures while defending civilization and the planet from the deadly fungus-like spores known as Threads that fall at intervals from a neighbouring planet, searing human flesh and destroying the native ECOLOGY. In the process of exfoliating the series, McCaffery and her collaborators and successors have, perhaps inevitably, allowed a touchy-feely YOUNG ADULTWOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SF), and her remarkable nuts-and-bolts attentiveness to the problems of living and gaining career success in Pern. glow to soften the impact of its first volumes, losing in the process the clarity of her focus on strong women protagonists (>
The series is complexly organized, with considerable retrofitting evident in later volumes; in a sequence that was in production for more than forty years, it is perhaps inevitable that the early volumes are the freshest. The first portion of the overall sequence, which contains the heart of Pern, comprises Dragonflight (fixup 1968) (containing the 1968 HUGO-winner "Weyr Search" [October 1967 ANALOG] and the 1968 NEBULA-winner "Dragonrider" [December 1967-January 1968 ANALOG]), Dragonquest (1971) and The White Dragon (1978), all being assembled as The Dragonriders of Pern (omni 1978). A second sequence – Dragonsong1976), Dragonsinger (1977) and Dragondrums (1979), assembled as The Harper Hall of Pern (omni 1979) – comprises YOUNG ADULT tales calved off from the Main; Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern (1983 UK; exp 1983 US) and Nerilka's Story (1986) are closely connected. Further titles include Dragonsdawn (1988), a prequel to the overall sequence (see above), which is followed by The Renegades of Pern (1989), All the Weyrs of Pern (1991), The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (coll of linked stories 1993), The Girl Who Heard Dragons (coll 1994), The Dolphin's Bell (1994), The Dolphins of Pern (1994) and other titles down to The Skies of Pern (2001), after which point Todd McCAFFREY was listed as collaborator in various continuation projects. A Time When: Being a Tale of Young Lord Jaxom, his White Dragon Ruth, and Various Fire-Lizards (1975 chap) is connected to the series; Dragonflight (graph 1991) was the first of a projected series of graphic-novel versions of the material. The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern (1989) with Jody Lynn NYE and Todd McCAFFREY may be of assistance to readers.
There are several further series, whose first volumes are sometimes by McCaffrey solo, though most were carried on with collaborators. Entirely solo is the first, the Pegasus sequence comprising To Ride Pegasus (fixup 1973) – which deals with a corps of parapsychological investigators in the near future and is notable for its political conservatism – and Pegasus in Flight (1990), both assembled as Wings of Pegasus (omni 1991), plus Pegasus in Space2000). The Ireta sequence – Dinosaur Planet (1978 UK) and Dinosaur Planet Survivors1984), both being assembled as The Ireta Adventure (omni 1985; vt The Dinosaur Planet Omnibus 2001 UK) – is also listed as solo, as are the Killashandra tales: The Crystal SingerContinuum 1, anth 1974, to Continuum 4, anth 1975, ed Roger ELWOOD; fixup 1982 UK), Killashandra (1985), and Crystal Line (1992), all assembled as The Crystal Singer Trilogy (omni 1996). Further series, some solo, some collaborative, include the Planet Pirates books beginning with Sassinak (1990) with Elizabeth MOON; the Rowan sequence beginning with The Rowan (1990), featuring a powerful female telepath who engages in adventures and much sex with an even more powerful male telepath named Jeff Raven; the Petaybee sequence, about a sentient planet (see LIVING WORLDS), beginning with Powers That Be (1993) with Elizabeth Ann SCARBOROUGH; and the Catteni sequence beginning with Freedom's Landing (1995), in which humans fight back against an ALIEN conquest of Earth; the Acorna sequence beginning with Acorna: The Unicorn Girl (1997) with Margaret Ball. For further details on all these, see Checklist. ( ( (stories in
The effect of McCaffrey's early singletons, which include some strong work, was not strengthened by the comet's tails of further volumes (some so weak that it is possible that they may be described as SEQUELS BY OTHER HANDS). Decision at Doona (1969) was, for instance, disappointingly sequeled much later by Crisis on Doona (1992) with Jody Lynn NYETreaty Planet (1993; vt Treaty at Doona 1994 US), also with Nye. The Ship who Sang1969) is an intriguingly plausible tale in which a deformed girl, grafted into a SPACESHIP (> CYBORGS) as its pilot, in effect becomes the ship; the emotional difficulties facing an conjoint entity of this sort, who understands the universe in terms of MUSIC, are many. The story was influential from the first; but that initial impact was diffused by a succession of sequels, the Brainship collaborations beginning with PartnerShip (1992) with Margaret Ball (1947- ). The two singletons mentioned here, along with Restoree (see beginning of entry above), were assembled as The Worlds of Anne McCaffrey (omni 1981 UK), a volume which, though less popular than Pern, may stand alongside McCaffrey's main sequence as her most significant accomplishment in the field. and (coll of linked stories
Later singletons, like The Coelura (1983 chap) – strangely assembled with Nerilka's StoryPern sequence as Nerilka's Story & The Coelura (coll 1987) – tend to downgrade their sf premises in favour of romance. The best of McCaffrey's relatively infrequent short stories, including some connected work, were collected in Get Off the Unicorn (coll 1977) – the title, originally "Get Of the Unicorn", was changed either by an ignorant copyeditor, or by someone more senior who thought McCaffrey's readers would not understand "get" as a term used in horsebreeding. Though her work has been criticized as oversentimental, a careful reading of her best work may absolve it of later sins; McCaffrey was deservedly among the most popular writers in her particular subgenre. In 2005 she received the SFWA GRAND MASTER AWARD, and she was inducted into the SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME in 2006. [JC]
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