Farewell to Anne McCaffrey

[lifini]

I was very saddened to hear today of writer Anne McCaffrey's death. (link to article) On the FAQ on her website she recommends the YW books, saying, "I actually appear in one of them" (which seems to be Nita's Aunt Annie, as discussed elsewhere on this forumDragonsongThe White Dragon

[Lazy Leopard]

I first read a book by Anne McCaffrey when I was at university. There was a reasonable F&SF section in one of the branches of Heffers that was on my walking route between college and the Earth Sciences department at which I had most of my lectures, and I spent a bit of money there from time to time. Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragonflight, Dragonquest, Dragondrums, The White Dragon, Get off the Unicorn and Decision at Doona all found their way onto my shelves back then, and I've kept on reading her books ever since. She's one of the authors for whom I can more easily measure bookshelf space than count books; six feet or so, at a guess. I met her briefly a couple of times, and have a couple of signed copies to show for it, but I was too late getting myself involved in SF fandom to be at many cons she attended; I think the 2005 Glasgow Worldcon was probably the only one. Now she's gone, but she's left behind a fine collection of stories which have brightened the lives of many. RIP

I'm not sure if she and DD had a further connection

Take a look at this post by Peter Morwood.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Thanks for the pointer to that Morwood post, LL - it was a special read.

I found Anne McCaffrey's books long before Diane's -- I think the first one was Dragonsong, which I found one day in my high school's library. I lost my taste for them about 10 books into the Pern series, but I loved them at the time.

[Kathy Li]

Another link: Neil Gaiman's journal entry on remembering Anne McCaffrey.

As Neil Gaiman said, Anne McCaffrey was the first writer who proved it was ok to write like a girl while writing SF. Prior to that, most of the female SF writers, much as we loved them, wrote SF like their guy compatriots, and there's nothing wrong with that. But Restoree was a big ol' romance novel. And in some ways, so was The Ship Who Sang. And if you ever ventured outside the SF arena for her books, you found, like many a girl, she enjoyed gothic romances (of the Mary Stewart variety) and horses.

I was enough of a McCaffrey fan to have found The Mark of Merlin ("the dog one") and The Lady ("the horse one").

I also eventually lost interest in the Pern series (I think it was how nobody really acted like themselves in Masterharper of Pern that did it), but I eventually went back to it a few years ago, and found myself having a blast with The Dolphins of Pern telling me what happened to Alemi (Menolly's brother) from the Harper Hall trilogy.

But what I see more and more these days, as writers who were raised on the Harper Hall trilogy and the Dragonrider original trilogy are becoming writers and getting published, is that there's now an entire generation of writers who were inspired by her in their own creations. Her works have woven themselves into the DNA of the current generation. Whether it's Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, or Louise Marley's Nevya series, or Sharon Shinn's Samaria series (look. Archangel? It's Dragonflight, only with angels instead of dragons), they all owe a big debt to Anne McCaffrey.

I only "met" Anne McCaffrey once. It wasn't really a meeting. I barely talked to her. I was in a signing line at Worldcon, and her handler asked if she could cut in front of me, as she needed to be at a panel soon. I happily agreed, and watched Anne McCaffrey completely bowl over Naomi Novik, by getting her to sign a copy of His Majesty's Dragon.

I really loved seeing that.

[lifini]

Ahhh, thank you Lazy Leopard/Rick, I had no idea.
*tears*