Sad to hear. Massive stroke, gone the next day. She was an active woman physically and mentally, and a kind woman who loved her readers and her friends and most all of the world around her. To those who never met her, you’d have liked her. If you like at least something of horses and poetry, tall tales, the future, the past, heroes, and the green earth, you’d and she’d have found something in common and you could have talked for hours.
Anne McCaffrey has left us….
by CJ | Nov 22, 2011 | Journal | 27 comments
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We are all lessened by her leaving.
I just saw the news elsewhere. Fans are beginning to spread the sad news. I have a couple of her Pern / Dragonrider books and (I hope) The Ship Who Sang in storage. I haven’t read the latter, but my mom really enjoyed it and recommended it.
We fans and readers may not always remember to say it, but we really love the books and the writers who’ve fired our imaginations over the years. Those, along with TV and movies, are often what inspired us as kids, and what led to techie, science, or engineering careers as adults.
As a boy, Mom and Dad made sure I had regular trips to the library and bookstore, and a lot of my allowance often went into the SF&F section at the bookstore (B. Dalton’s or Waldenbooks, back then). The list of authors would be pretty long. I wore the cover off Bjo Trimble’s Star Trek Concordance. There are still plenty of authors and books I haven’t read, but I read a lot. (I should’ve had some more time with other genres, by the way, but I loved science fiction and fantasy.) Yes, in elementary, I told my science teacher I wanted to be a paleontologist, and I could spell it too. 🙂 (There was a great series of dinosaur books and nature books out for kids in the 70’s, How To or Golden or some series; I wish I still had them, but I think a friend’s kids got most of them. I’m not exactly sure where my first steps toward language and alphabet interest were, but that was early on. Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and his Just So and Jungle Book stories probably had something to do with cluing in my parents. From there, I was lucky to have a couple of fantastic foreign language teachers and some other fine teachers too. My high school algebra teacher is the one who got a so-so math student to see why math could be both useful and interesting, and he was a recovered addict, a really good guy.
But I’d say SF&F books are one of the things that kept me interested and going, when kids at school were bad. (Senior high school was much better, though.) Those books had worlds of imagination, “what if,” a sense of wonder, some weird new ideas at times, all sorts of things to excite a young reader whose reading level was already near college level.
So — Those of us who read and watch and listen to SF and fantasy really enjoy the folks who create the stuff. Some of us even get the notion to try writing it too. — OK, David Gerrold and Stephen Whitfield’s Star Trek books might have helped in that too.
What sad news! I remember devouring her books – Restoree, The Ship Who sang, and of course all the Pern books when I was younger!
I hadn’t realised she was such as trail-blazer – the first woman to win the Hugo award AND the first woman to win a Nebula award. Her son has taken on the Pern series – but it is a sad loss to lose such a great lady.
I really enjoyed her books. She’ll be missed and well remembered.
Oh…oh dear… So very sad to hear this.
For she was the Dragon-Writer of Pern!
Anne McCaffrey invariably ended the Pern books with an exclamatory statement. So we should honor her too.
So sad to hear the news, thanks for letting us know. Dragonflight was possibly the first book I selected for myself at the bookstore, and I followed/read just about everything she put out until the conclusion of the Pern/Threadfall series. Most of those books are still on my shelf. Major influence on me? Well, my father died right before my son was born. His name was Jack (originally Jackson, but he didn’t like that, didn’t have a birth certificate until his 40’s, so he registered himself as Jack). He made it very clear he wanted NO Jack, Jack Jr, or Jackson named after him. So my son is named Jaxom. And yeah, I made him read the Dragonflight series. She will be Greatly Missed.
Who could ever forget the dragons of Pern? She will be remembered and missed.
I loved Restoree and Crystal Singer. She was the first writer with whom I explored “more adult content” though by today’s standards her books were very tame. I can attest that a young adult would not be corrupted by reading her books. ReadyDaughter expressed dismay at hearing the news, and immediately starting rummaging for her books to give them a re-read. She grew up with the Pern books in hand.
Her worlds shaped mine. In an adolescence marked by severe depression and anxiety, she gave me an escape and a reason not to perform the unthinkable. I’m deeply saddened.
I first saw this on Tamora Pierce’s journal. Finding Dragonflight in 3rd grade is what pulled me from the remedial reading class in 2nd grade to the top reading group in 4th grade. It was the first sci fi/fantasy book I read by myself, and I can’t overstate how much of an impact McCaffrey had on me personally.
I hope her books continue to have that power for generations to come.
Very sad news indeed. Her Talent series (To Ride Pegasus, ..) and the Tower & Hive series were my favourite telepathy stories. Nobody has mentioned them yet. – Actually, I just poked over to her books site http://www.annemccaffrey.org/books/index.html and was startled by how many series she has done, and how many of her books I have read, and still, how many I have missed. She had a long and wonderful career, and leaves a great legacy.
RIP
It’s oh, so sad.
I enjoyed all her books – I mean all, I believe I own or have borrowed them all – but for me, even above the Pern books, the ones I loved most were her “Crystal Singer” books. Killashandra was an amazing character in such an amazing setting.
But it’s for her Pern books that she’ll be most remembered. Now that she’s gone Between, I’m sure she has a fair of fire-lizards all of her own.
When I saw this news yesterday, I was so sad, and I still feel the loss. All the dragons are keening and all her fans are mourning.
[raises Yarran beer] Here’s to her, and all the books of her’s I’ve read over the years…
In the early ’70’s I came across “Weyr Search” in a short-story anthology I was reading. The story stuck in my mind long afterwards–but of course, the author’s name didn’t. A year or two later (I think), browsing the F&SF section in a college bookstore (where I worked at the time) I spotted “Dragonflight.” As I started leafing through it, I recognized “Weyr Search”–and was ecstatic. I’ve loved her stories ever since. Godspeed, Anne McCaffrey!
As I wrote on my blog (http://readingandraytracing.blogspot.com/2011/11/mal-mon-adolescence.html) my inner YA aches so much over her death…
Along with Asimov, Leiber, Moorcock, and before I discovered Cherryh, she has been one of the leading authors in my SciFi/Fantasy discovery.
How sad to lose another icon. Anne McCaffrey, C.J.Cherryh, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jo Clayton, Tanith Lee, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown (shorts), David Brin, Thomas Burnett Swann and Robert Silverberg were the primary authors that lured me into sci-fi. I especially love the authors that create new worlds/cultures and entice us to dive in through multiple volumes.
In her stories she will be with us for ever. I love her stories, my favorites are the brain ships and Pern. I’ ll always remember the dolphins, one of the most beautiful books, and Moreta.
One of my earliest introductions to sci-fi in any form, in the late eighties or early nineties. Another of the originals gone, requiescat in pace.