Author Profile · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Anne McCaffrey
1926–2011 · American-Irish
Who was Anne McCaffrey?
A Radcliffe graduate who sang opera, raised three children and wrote her way out of an unhappy marriage to an Irish estate called Dragonhold — named for the creatures that paid for it. Pern, her great creation, looks like fantasy (dragons, holds, harpers) and is constructed like SF (a lost colony, genetically engineered fire-breathers, a spore menace on an orbital timetable), a hybrid that infuriated purists and enchanted millions. The first woman to win a Hugo for fiction and the first to win a Nebula, she was also a pioneer of the SF bestseller: The White Dragon put dragons on the New York Times list when the smart money said impossible.
Why they matter
The bridge between SF and fantasy readerships and the genre's great gateway author for young readers — particularly girls, whom the field had largely ignored. The telepathic-companion-animal bond she perfected is now a genre fixture from Pernese dragons to every dragon-rider romantasy on the current bestseller lists.
Essential books — and where to start
Dragonflight
1968 · The Dragonriders of Pern, book 1 · Science Fiction · Science Fantasy, Planetary Romance
Pern has forgotten it is a colony; the dragons remain. Lessa, drudge and secret survivor of a murdered bloodline, Impresses the queen dragon Ramoth and becomes Weyrwoman just as the Red Star swings back into range and Thread — the mindless spore that devours all organic matter — begins to fall on a world that no longer believes in it, with one Weyr of dragonriders surviving where six once flew. Her solution involves the dragons' second, less advertised talent and a gamble across four hundred years. Fantasy's furniture, SF's architecture, and a heroine with no patience whatsoever.
The Ship Who Sang
1969 · Science Fiction · Space Opera, Social SF
Born with a lethal body and a splendid mind, Helva is raised as a 'shell person': her brain wired into a scout ship's titanium column, her childhood a conservatory training, her adulthood a working partnership with a series of mobile human 'brawns'. The linked stories follow her grief for the first and dearest of them, Jennan, through missions, mourning and an eventual second finding of love — Helva singing all the while, the ship who performs arias through her hull speakers. Sentimental in the strict sense and unembarrassed about it; McCaffrey said she wrote her father's death into it and wept at the keyboard.
The White Dragon
1978 · The Dragonriders of Pern, book 3 · Science Fiction · Science Fantasy, Planetary Romance, Children's & YA Fantasy
Jaxom, boy Lord Holder of Ruatha, accidentally Impresses Ruth — a white dragon, undersized, sport-coloured and reckoned a freak who won't live a year. Ruth lives, thrives and proves to have the surest time-sense of any dragon on Pern, while his rider chafes between two destinies (lords don't ride dragons; dragonriders don't hold lands) and stumbles, with the rest of the Benden leadership, onto the southern continent's buried secrets: the colony ships, the original settlement, the means perhaps to end Thread forever. The series' pivot from survival to rediscovery.
Series
1916–2013 · American
The genre's supreme stylist and a double founder: of the Dying Earth subgenre (Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is its godchild) and of anthropological planetary adventure.
1875–1950 · American
The father of planetary romance.
1912–2005 · American
Quietly one of the most influential figures in the field: she trained the readership.
