| Anne McCaffrey | |
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| Born | Anne Inez McCaffrey 1 April 1926 Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Died | 21 November 2011 (aged 85) Dragonhold-Underhill, County Wicklow, Ireland |
| Occupation | writer |
| Nationality | Irish (naturalized citizen) |
| Period | 1965–2011 |
| Genres | Science Fiction, Romance |
| Notable work(s) | Restoree, Dragonriders of Pern, The Ship Who Sang |
| Spouse(s) | Horace Wright Johnson (divorced) |
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Anne Inez McCaffrey (1 April 1926 – 21 November 2011)[1][2] was an American-born Irish writer, best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series. Over the course of her 46 year career she won a Hugo Award[3] and a Nebula Award.[4] Her book The White Dragon became one of the first science fiction novels ever to land on the New York Times Best Seller List.
The Science Fiction Writers of America in 2005 named her the 22nd Grand Master, a now-annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction.[5] The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted her on 17 June 2006.[6]
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Anne Inez McCaffrey was the second of three children born to Colonel George Herbert McCaffrey and Anne Dorothy McElroy. She had two brothers: Hugh ("Mac", deceased 1988) and Kevin Richard McCaffrey ("Kevie").[7][8] She attended Stuart Hall, a girls boarding school in Staunton, Virginia,[9] but graduated from Montclair High School. In 1947 she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College with a degree in Slavonic Languages and Literature.[7]
In 1950 she married Horace Wright Johnson (deceased 2009),[10] who shared her interests in music, opera, and ballet.[11] They had three children: Alec Anthony, born 1952; Todd, born 1956; and Georgeanne ("Gigi", Georgeanne Kennedy), born 1959.[7]
Except for a short term in Düsseldorf, the family lived most of a decade in Wilmington, Delaware. They moved to Sea Cliff, Long Island in 1965, and McCaffrey became a full-time author.[12]
At this stage in her career McCaffrey served a term as Secretary-Treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America, 1968–1970. Beside handcrafting the Nebula Award trophies, the responsibilities covered production of two monthly newsletters and their distribution by mail to the members.[13]
Anne McCaffrey emigrated to Ireland with her two younger children in 1970, only weeks after filing for divorce. Ireland had recently exempted resident artists from income taxes, an opportunity that fellow science fiction author Harry Harrison had promptly taken and helped to promote. Anne's mother soon joined the family in Dublin.[14] The following Spring, McCaffrey was Guest of Honor at her first British national science fiction convention (Eastercon 22, 1971). There she met the British reproductive biologist Jack Cohen.[15] He would be an important consultant regarding the science of Pern, not only its flora and fauna.[16]
Many experiences from her own life became sources of inspiration for her writing.[17]
McCaffrey had had two short stories published during the 1950s. The first was written in 1952 while she was pregnant with her son Alec, "Freedom of the Race" about women impregnated by aliens. It earned a $100 prize in Science-Fiction Plus.[18] Her second story "The Lady in the Tower" was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction by editor Robert P. Mills and purchased again by editor Judith Merril for The Year's Greatest Science Fiction.[19] McCaffrey said, "she thought of the story when wishing herself alone, like a lady in an ivory tower".[20]
Judy Merril matched McCaffrey with her long-time literary agent Virginia Kidd (deceased 2003) and invited her to the Milford Writer's Workshop, where everyone brought a story and joined in intense criticism. She returned many times.[21] After her first "Milford" in 1959 she worked on "The Ship Who Sang", the story that started the so-called Brain & Brawn Ship series. In the end, the spaceship Helva sings "Taps" for her human partner. Decades later son Todd called it "almost an elegy to her father".[22] She considers it her best story and her favorite (1994 to 2004).[23][24][25][26] "I put much of myself into it: myself and the troubles I had in accepting my father's death [1954] and a troubled marriage."[24]
McCaffrey then wrote two more "Ship" stories and started her first novel. Regarding one motivation for Restoree (1967), her son quotes "I was so tired of all the weak women screaming in the corner while their boyfriends were beating off the aliens. I wouldn't have been—I'd've been in there swinging with something or kicking them as hard as I could."[27] Recently she explained that it doesn't need a sequel: it "served its purpose of an intelligent, survivor-type woman as the protagonist of an S-F story".[28]
Regarding Decision at Doona (1969), which she dedicated "To Todd Johnson—of course!", her son says that he was directed to lower his voice as an actor in the fourth-grade school play, with his mother in the auditorium. That was the inspiration for Doona, "an overcrowded planet where just talking too loud made you a social outcast".[29]
McCaffrey made a fast start in Ireland, completing for 1971 publication the works in progress Dragonquest and two Gothic novels for Dell, The Mark of Merlin and The Ring of Fear.[30][31] With a contract for The White Dragon, which would complete the "original trilogy" with Ballantine, her writing stalled. During the next few years the family moved several times in the vicinity of Dublin and struggled to make ends meet, supported largely by child care payments and meager royalties.[32]
The market for young adults provided crucial opportunities. Editor Roger Elwood sought contributions of short work to anthologies. McCaffrey started the Pern story of Menolly. She delivered "The Smallest Dragonboy" for $154 and four stories that later became The Crystal Singer.[33] Futura Publications (London) signed her to write books about dinosaurs for children.[34] Editor Jean E. Karl at Atheneum Books sought to attract more female readers to science fiction and solicited "a story for young women in a different part of Pern". McCaffrey completed Menolly's story as Dragonsong and contracted for a sequel before it was out in 1976.[35]
Having the arrangements with Atheneum in writing, she was able to shop for a mortgage and buy a home, to be called 'Dragonhold' for the dragons who bought it.[36]
Twenty years later her son wrote that she "first set dragons free on Pern and then was herself freed by her dragons."[37]
Some time after the move to Long Island, Todd McCaffrey recalls, his mother asked him what he thought of dragons. She was brainstorming about their "bad press all these years". The result was a "technologically regressed survival planet" whose people were united against a threat from space, in contrast to America divided by the Vietnam War. "The dragons became the biologically renewable air force, and their riders 'the few' who, like the RAF pilots in World War Two, fought against incredible odds day in, day out—and won."[38]
The first Pern story, "Weyr Search", was published 1967 by John W. Campbell in Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It won the 1968 Hugo Award for best novella, voted by participants in the annual World Science Fiction Convention. The second Pern story "Dragonrider" won the 1969 Nebula Award for best novella, voted annually by the Science Fiction Writers of America. McCaffrey was the first woman to win any Nebula and the first woman to win a Hugo for a work of fiction.[39][40]
"Weyr Search" covers the recruitment of a young woman named Lessa to establish a telepathic bond with a queen dragon at its hatching, and thus to become a dragonrider and the leader of a Weyr community. "Dragonrider" covers the growth of queen dragon Ramoth and the training of Lessa and Ramoth. Editor Campbell requested "to see dragons fighting Thread", the menace from space; he also suggested time travel. McCaffrey put it all together. The third story "Crack Dust, Black Dust" was not separately published but provided material to fix-up all as the first Pern novel, Dragonflight (Ballantine Books, 1968).[41]
If John Campbell was the midwife to Dragonflight, with its major components published as award-winning novellas, agent Virginia Kidd and editor Betty Ballantine provided crucial advice and assistance in the struggle with a sequel, Dragonquest. It was almost complete and the contract for another sequel was signed before the 1970 move to Ireland. Both Ballantine and fellow writer Andre Norton made suggestions for the mutant white dragon.[42]
Readers waited a long time for the completion of the original trilogy. It did not progress until 1974/75, when the New England Science Fiction Association invited McCaffrey to its annual convention Boskone as Guest of Honor, which included the special publication of a novella for sale on site. She wrote A Time When which would become the first part of The White Dragon[43]
Finally The White Dragon was released beside new editions of the first two Pern books, with cover art illustrated by Michael Whelan. It was the first science fiction book by a woman on The New York Times Best Seller list and the cover painting is still in print from Whelan. The artists share some credit for their career breakthroughs.[44][45]
She said of collaboration with Todd and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, "while I would dearly love to have the energy to tell a tale all on my own, I really cannot say that I am not ably represented with my collaborations." Doing Pern with Todd she was mainly "making suggestions or being a sounding board."[10] According to Todd, she said that three people may write in her universe, her children Todd and Gigi, and Ceara, her granddaughter by Todd.
Anne McCaffrey died aged 85 on 21 November 2011 at her home in Ireland after suffering a stroke.[46]
Locus: The magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field (August 1987) ranked two of the eight extant Pern novels among the 33 "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", based on a poll of subscribers: Dragonflight #9 and The White Dragon #23.[47] Commenting on the Locus list, David Pringle calls them "arguably science fiction rather than fantasy proper"[48] and names McCaffrey one "leading practitioner" of the planetary romance type of science fiction.[49][lower-alpha 1]
The author considered most of her work science fiction and enjoyed "cutting them short when they call me a 'fantasy' writer." All the Pern books are science fiction because dragons were genetically engineered by the Pern colonists. Regarding science she said, "I don't keep up with developments, but I do find an expert in any field in which I must explain myself and the science involved."[23] Astronomer Steven Beard often helped with science questions[50] and she acknowledged the reproductive biologist Jack Cohen several times.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame citation of Anne McCaffrey summarizes her genre as "science fiction, though tinged with the tone and instruments of fantasy" and her reputation as "a writer of romantic, heightened tales of adventure explicitly designed to appeal—and to make good sense to—a predominantly female adolescent audience."[5]
McCaffrey said in 2000 that, "There are no demographics on my books which indicate the readers are predominately of an age or sex group. Dragons have a universal appeal!"[24] Formerly it was another matter:
I started writing s-f in the late 50's/early 60's, when readership was predominantly male. And their attitudes unreconstructed. [... Women] began reading s-f and fantasy—and, by preference, women writers. My stories had themes and heroines they could, and did, relate to. I never had any trouble with editors and publishers. I had trouble getting male readers to believe I was serious, and a good enough writer to interest them.
The American Library Association in 1999 gave McCaffrey the 11th Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults, citing The Ship Who Sang (1969) and the first six Pern books[51]—those sometimes called the "original trilogy" and the "Harper Hall trilogy".
McCaffrey's first novel was Restoree, published by Ballantine Books in 1967. Unlike most science fiction books of the era, Restoree's heroine is a strong willed, intelligent woman who is willing and able to think for herself and act on her own initiative. McCaffrey was widely quoted as saying that Restoree was intended as a "jab" at how women were usually portrayed in science fiction.[52]
Several of McCaffrey's series and more than half her books are set in a universe governed by the "Federated Sentient Planets" or "Federation" or "FSP". Though Pern's history is strongly connected to the Federation, McCaffrey only used the Federation as a background for storytelling, and did not consider her different 'worlds' to be part of the same universe.
McCaffrey's most famous works are the Dragonriders of Pern series. These are set on a planet known as Pern, settled by colonists from Earth. The advanced technology of their ancestors has been lost, so the inhabitants of Pern have reverted to a society similar to Earth's medieval times. However, before the loss of this advanced technology, the original colonists produced genetically engineered dragons. These dragons are now flown by elite "dragonriders", who communicate telepathically with their dragons. Together they defend Pern against pernicious "thread" which cross space periodically from a nearby planet (the so-called "red star") and threaten to destroy all vegetation on Pern.
The Brain & Brawn Ship series comprises seven novels. Only the first was written by Anne McCaffrey alone, a fix-up of five previously published stories.[53]
The stories of this series deal with the various adventures of 'shell-people' who, as infants, due to illness or birth defects (genetic or developmental), have had to be hard-wired into a life support system. With sensory input and motor nerves tied into a computer, they serve as starship pilots or colony administrators, seeing and feeling the colony or ship as an extension of their own body. They perform this job to pay off their debt for education and hardware, and then in whatever capacity they choose once the debt is paid, as free agents.
It is generally considered impossible for a person to make the necessary adjustments to become a shell unless it is done at a very early age (under 2–3 years old). A notable exception is in The Ship Who Searched where the Shell-person was 7 at the time she became quadriplegic.
The Ship books are set in the same universe as the Crystal Singer books, as Brainship-Brawn pairings were characters in the second and third volumes of that series.
The Crystal universe is the setting for five books including the Crystal Singer trilogy. The first book, and first of the trilogy, The Crystal Singer (1982) is a fix-up of four stories published in 1974/1975.[54]
The Crystal Singer series revolves around the planet Ballybran. Under a permanent biohazard travel restriction, Ballybran is home to one of the FSP's wealthiest, yet most reclusive organizations—the Heptite Guild. Source of invaluable crystals vital to various industries, the Heptite Guild is known to require absolute, perfect pitch in hearing and voice for all applicants, especially those seeking to mine crystal by song. The second and third books feature brainships that were not main characters in the Brain & Brawn Ship series.
The Ireta series, as catalogued by the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, comprises five novels, two "Dinosaur Planets" by Anne McCaffrey 1978 and 1984, and three "Planet Pirates" written with co-authors in the 1990s.[55]
They share a fictional premise and some characters and some events overlap. "Dinosaur Planets" follow the Exploration and Evaluation Corps team on the planet Ireta, who did not expect to find dinosaurs. In "Planet Pirates", all is not well in the FSP: pirates attack the spacelanes. Survivors on Ireta and survivors of space pirate attacks join forces.
"The Talents Universe", as catalogued by the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, comprises two series: "Talent" and "The Tower and Hive". They share one fictional premise. Eight books, all by Anne McCaffrey alone, are rooted in her second story (1959) and three stories published in 1969.[56]
The Talents universe involves a society built around the Talents of telepathic, telekinetic individuals who become integral to the connectivity of interstellar society.
This series covers the origin of the barque cats in the Tower and Hive series.
Two civilizations in near-identical circumstances – an overlarge, lethargic population and a tragic history with sentient aliens – end up attempting to colonize the same planet by accident. What the humans don't know is that the people they've misidentified as nomadic natives are actually more technically advanced than themselves – and under no such illusions regarding them. The books are set in the time of "Amalgamated Worlds" but a sentence in chapter ten of Crisis at Doona hints that there is "a desire to form a Federation of Sentient Planets". This sets the books just prior to the FSP universe of much of the author's work.
The Petaybee universe comprises two trilogies, "Powers" and "The Twins of Petaybee" by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.[57]
The Freedom series or "Catteni Sequence" comprises one 1970 short story and four Freedom novels written 1995 to 2002.[58]
The "Acorna Universe series" comprises ten novels published 1997 to 2007, seven sometimes called Acorna and three sometimes called Acorna's Children. The first two were written by Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball, the rest by McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.[59]
McCaffrey has also published two short story collections, several romances and young adult fantasies.
Her nonfiction includes two cookery books and a book about dragons.
She collaborated closely with musicians Tania Opland and Mike Freeman in the creation of two CDs: "The Masterharper of Pern" and "Sunset's Gold," based on her own lyrics and the music described in her Pern novels.
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