Anne McCaffrey passed away yesterday, Nov. 21st in Ireland. My heart aches knowing that she will never again produce a brilliant story about dragons or crystalline magic, or selkies...
As announced in the Locus' website, Anne McCaffrey was the first woman to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards. One of her Pern novels was the first hardcover science fiction novel to make the New York Times Bestseller List. She was in a word, EPIC.
What this article does not have, though, is the human touch. A real story of how Anne McCaffrey touched someone's life. Well, here's mine:
Anne McCaffrey's three Pern novellas for children, Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums, are literally the first three real books that I can remember reading. Technically, I wasn't even reading them originally. My mom would read them to me as bedtime stories. I literally bonded with my mom and grew up on Anne McCaffrey's earliest Pern stories. (*This is also where I first originally decreed that I must have a little dragon to cling to my shoulder with its tail wrapped around my neck!! Years before I read anything by G.R.R.M.)
As I got older, I got hooked on McCaffrey's Crystal Singer, The Tower and the Hive, and Petaybee series. I loved each in different ways. I loved them all because they were written by Anne McCaffrey.
Her work will truly be missed by the world, and by me.
Oh no, that is so sad. I have loved her books for years, falling in love with Dragonsong when I was eleven.
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