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Anne McCaffrey Passes Away At 85
JSC writes "Anne McCaffrey died Monday at her home after suffering a stroke. 'In the late 1960s she became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for a work of fiction and the first woman to win a Nebula Award. She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2006.' She will be missed by Dragons and their Riders the world over."
I'm sad that she's gone, but she did spend her entire life doing what she loved (writing), and we will always have her legacy to enjoy. Farewell, Dragonrider!
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She has passed for all time between; we accord her a dragon tribute. May she always sing the black, and cut well.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Out of life, and into legend. Even Arthur C Clarke had a soft spot for her.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Thanks, Anne McCaffrey, for introducing generations of slashdotters to the joys of Pern.
Thanks to her, my reading ability at 11 was that of a 16 year old (with plenty of credit to my grade one teacher too, of course). Her Pern books still have a special place in my heart (hear hear! to the dragon tribute).
Well, may she forever fly with Moreta.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
While Anne had a tendency to romanticize her stories and characters, there's no doubt that she had a great imagination. I'll always have a soft spot for the Harper Hall trilogy (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums). One of my favourite series, and I thoroughly recommend them to anyone of any age. Her music training in life really showed through her writing, and she wrote it well.
Her Dragonriders of Pern were one of my first Fantasy Novels )i dicovered them in the 80's) and had a huge impact on my reading behavior since then..
I will dearly miss her.
Martin
I remember the countless times on her website and on the newsgroups (which she also posted to by the way) she was always asked about doing a movie. She had been approached countless times. But it always fell through because she didn't want the series butchered and she wanted creative control. Of course as the 2 or 3 times we heard the news of talks of a movie fall through, us on the newsgroup and on her website were sad but also happy that some 2-bit director wouldn't horribly butcher her magnum opus.
I know her son has been continuing the pern saga the last few years with Anne's blessing. But it just don't feel like Anne when reading the newer stuff. Although good, it's hard to explain.
I am saddened, but very glad and honored to have been able to come across and fall in love with her books so many years ago, which included a rereading of the Pern beginnings as my son got little older and I started reading him Pern as a bedtime story.
Never ends your light
But forever is the night
Where flies your spirit.
And in the cold of Between
Shall our hearts forever keen.
I always loved the poems she put at the beginning of the chapters in many of her dragon books. I hope she likes it.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Being a geeky kid at school I often sought sanctuary in the library where someone cool wanted us to have an alternative to the same dry stuff and regularly donated great boxes of sci-fi and fantasy. These helped me through that era of life far more than anything else. The Dragonriders were and still are a favourite that I look forward to sharing with my kids. Rest IN Peace Anne.
According to her blog, she had serious heart problems in mid August. It's hard to say if her stroke now is related, but it wouldn't surprise me.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Thats two of my top three Authors gone *sigh*
I started on Anne McCaffery's works with a older hard cover of Dragonsdawn, and then went straight to the library a few days later and got out the rest one book at a time, and the good old internet alerted me to Red star rising coming out soon.. To fill in the time I started on The crystal singer series, when I finished that it was onto 'The tower and the hive'.
I am not ashamed to admit that the opening Paragraph of 'The Rowan' still makes me cry, even the first time I read it, weird, and thus the 'Tower and the hive' became my favorite series, and Damia is my favorite book of the lot.,
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I spent a lot of time as a youngster at the public library. Fortunately my mom was a big reader and took me there often (it was too far from our house for me to ride my bike or walk.) In grade school I'd already figured out that Science Fiction and Fantasy were my favorites. I don't remember what year it was exactly but it doesn't seem like it took me too long to read through everything interesting in the kids section and I moved over to the regular Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelves.
I do remember clearly pulling the White Dragon off the shelf one day and there on the cover was a guy, sitting on a dragon, with little dragons around them both. Well, that was it. I grabbed it and I tore through it.
I still chuckle because my parents were rather conservative and some of the content in that book would have made them flip out. I just loved every bit of it, and then went back to the library to actually read through the series in order. The Pern books became lifelong friends, from that introduction as an adolescent, to bringing Masterharper of Pern with me on my honeymoon (read it on the flight) and today I still am reading the books. Not too many authors have that kind of long term impact.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
There are two Heinleins;
Early Heinlein (his thinner) novels are good examples of early Sci-Fi - I thoroughly recommend 'The Door into Summer' as a good starting point.
Later Heinlein (fatter more rambling books) were all written during and after his mental breakdown - from that set I recommend working through the Lazarus Long stuff initially:
1. Time Enough for Love
2. The Number of the Beast
3. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
4. To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Additionally the novel 'Friday' is a good stand-alone easy to read Heinlein.
Enjoy.
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Honestly, McCaffrey's probably generally for younger readers. Her books are imaginative, but her character development and such are probably a bit shallow for more mature tastes. She's definitely on the softer side of sci-fi than Heinlein - which I don't mind, but some people only like the hard stuff.
Dragonsdawn is the first of the books chronologically, and Dragonflight the first in order of writing - choose whichever you wish, it works both ways. There are (semi) standalone books (Dolphins of Pern, the Harper Hall trilogy), but they generally all presuppose the readers have a general knowledge of the series.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I grew up before video games and even though I wasted far too much time in front of the TV I still found time to lose myself in the works of authors like McCaffery, Zelazny, Tolkein, Maxwell and others. In college I could read for half an hour between classes. Sometimes it was classwork but towards the end of the day I needed entertainment. I still remember the day I found the first two Pern books on the shelf of a used bookstore. The cover art sold them. I wore them out reading them and wanted more but had to wait until the first book of the Harper Hall series was released.
She has had a full life doing what she loved. I loved her work, it is a legacy that will live on. The world is a sadder place without her. Thank you for the stories.
The comment about the cover art for the Pern books reminds me of how great they were. I'd imagine that alot of us here have Michael Whelan to thank for in getting us started on many great books. Thanks Anne and Micheal for the great memories.
I quite liked Moon is a Harsh Mistress/em of Heinlein's. Stand-alone, good read. Not as obviously pushing his sexual agenda as in some of his other books, although still quite present, obviously.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
And PernMUSH was one of the first of them, starting just a couple years after TinyMUD. All text of course. The "book and imagination" analogue to the 3D MMOs we have today.
McCaffrey's love scenes, wooing, and relationships were very different from typical SF fare. Typical for a romance novel, perhaps? (I wouldn't know, don't read that genre.) Some people don't care for that in their SF, but I enjoyed the novelty.
Most SF leans towards casual, kinky sex, like Niven's interspecies sex on the Ringworld. Treats it all technically and distantly, or as a tool for manipulation or sealing deals. In Star Trek, seems the crew is often getting drugged with strange fluids, hit with plant spores, tempted with sexy robots, shapeshifting aliens, holodeck creations, or otherwise being enticed or forced into some sort of quickie, cheapie when they are busy with other matters. Sex as a mere plot device, and love as an impediment that could interfere with your duties, an inconvenient holdover from primitive times that has little place in modern life. Worst of all, you always knew almost all the changes in relationships would be rebooted for the next episode. True, the dragons of Pern imposed upon human sex life. However, McCaffrey cared enough about it not to do stuff like reboots.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I was never a huge fan of her works, just a matter of taste -- yet I appreciated her creation of female protagonists, and her depiction of dragons as allies of man.
All about me
The Heinlein books I'd recommend:
_Space Cadet_ (just don't get the Tor ebook from the Sony store --- it has so many errors it's unreadable)
_Have Spacesuit Will Travel_
_The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ (for those over 16 --- agree w/ your sexual agenda comment)
Optional for those who agree w/ or are not put off by his politics, or want to have their own challenged:
_Starship Troopers_
_Friday_
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I've been reading Anne McCaffrey since I first found "Dragonsong" and "To Ride Pegasus" in my school library in year 8 (~13 years old) - some 25 years ago. To this day Dragonsong is still my favourite of the Pern books. I spent the next few years hunting down and buying (with my very limited money at the time) every Anne McCaffrey book I could get my hands on. I still have all of them - I love seeing "RRP: $3.75" ... I don't have every one of her books - I've missed some of each of the Ship books, Tower and Hive series, Peetaybee and Acorna. One of these days I need to fill in my collection, but with the price of books these days ...
"Restoree" is possibly my favourite of her books. It's her first, and it has a rawness to it that I find very appealing. You can see the genesis of many of of the ideas that appeared in her later stories - for example the inhuman aliens that are so evident in several series.
Interestingly, I've been re-reading a random selection of her books the last few days - "Red Star Rising"; "Dragonsdawn"; "Dolphins of Pern" and "Pegasus in Space". It's one of the things I love about her writing - if you know the worlds she's built, you can pick up nearly any of her books and enjoy it in isolation. Less so for a tight series like "The Crystal Singer" though.
The Dragonlady has gone between.
One of my favorite storytellers! I still enjoy reading her stories over and over again.
I "first" discovered her stories when The White Dragon came out. But, a number of years later, I remembered that I had read one of her short stories--The Smallest Dragonboy--back when it was first published. At my age then, the story strongly resonated with me. It's probably why I enjoyed The White Dragon so much. After reading The White Dragon, I bought the other books in the series that were then available. I loved how in the HarperHall Trilogy, she took the commoners point of view in the daily life of Pern.
I loved how she brought many of her series of stories to create a single cohesive universe. The Brainship series and the Crystal Singer series came together nicely. I also enjoyed how Dragonriders went from a fantasy setting to hard science fiction as the history of Pern was slowly revealed. I always wondered if ever McCaffrey was going to have Pern rediscovered by a Brainship and re-enter galactic society? I guess that one is for our collective imaginations or for Todd to pursue, if within Anne's canon.
Whew! This water sure is cold!
Have Spacesuit Will Travel is also a great introduction to Sci-Fi for any age. It's a bit more readable than Verne, but still has that old-time feel when you run across phrases along the lines of "slide rules were the greatest invention since girls." It also hits a lot of problems relevant to modern space exploration that most authors just assume technology has addressed the issue (such as thermal buildup in space) so if you give it to a young adult to read you might just encourage their science or engineering interests.
Heinlein: While his earlier works differ from his later works considerably, they are all very readable with decent plots. My personal favourite has always been The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I absolutely love that book, and reread it every few years. I suggest you consider reading that one first. There were rumours of a movie but I haven't heard anything since. It would do well as a movie I think. "Stranger in a Strange Land" is also a classic worth reading.
McAffrey: well everyone will say the Pern books but I didn't like them and stopped reading them after the first few. Your mileage may vary of course. I *love* the Ship Who Sang though, excellent read.
Since you are looking at new SF writers, allow me to recommend VERY HIGHLY: John Scalzi and his book "Old Man's War" and subsequent volumes. He is very much like Heinlein at his best. OMW is nothing short of fantastic, and would definitely make a great miniseries or movie IMHO.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Anne was one of the first female authors that I managed to find in the SF&F field. She was one of the first authors I read that had really great, strong female characters. She helped teach me that you don't have to be a man to be smart, strong, successful, that you don't have to be a man to be a hero. Her fiction helped shape my perspective, along with authors like Andre Norton and eventually (scoff if you will) Mercedes Lackey. Thank you, Anne McCaffrey.
I gave a hard-back copy of one of Anne's books to the very bright ten year old girl across the street. Her mom was having trouble finding books that she would read that weren't full of the wrong messages. I looked in my library shelf and Anne McCaffrey's book caught my eye. I don't know if she has read it... but Anne's books always had the right messages. Thanks, Anne. RIP.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
He challenges no one politics. It's a story written in a different set of politics. He gives no argument for any politics, only a setting.
It's like Saying JK Rawling Challenges your belief in wizards.
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