Anne McCaffrey

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Anne Inez McCaffrey (born in 1926 – 21 November 2011) was an American-born writer who migrated to Ireland and was best known for Pern's Pern science fiction book series The Dragonriders.

She became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for writing and the first woman to win a Nebula Award early in McCaffrey's 46-year career as a writer.

The White Dragon, Sarah's 1978 book, became one of the first science-fiction books to be on the New York Times Best Seller list. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey as its 22nd Grand Master in 2005, an annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction.

On June 17, 2006, she was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

She was also given the Robert A. Heinlein Award for her 2007 work.

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Life and career

Anne McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the second of three children of Anne Dorothy (née McElroy) and Col. George Herbert McCaffrey. Hugh ("Mac") died 1988) and Kevin Richard McCaffrey ("Kevie") were twins. Her father was of Irish and English descent, and her mother was of Irish descent. She attended Stuart Hall (a girls' boarding school in Staunton, Virginia) and graduated from Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey. She earned a degree in Slavonic languages and Literature from Radcliffe College in 1947.

Horace Wright Johnson (died 2009) married Horace Wright Johnson, who expressed her passions in opera, opera, and ballet in 1950. Alec Anthony, 1952; Todd, 1956; and Georgeanne ("Gigi," Georgeanne Kennedy), who was born 1959, had three children.

Except for a brief time in Düsseldorf, the family lived in Wilmington, Delaware, for the most part. McCaffrey became a full-time writer when they moved to Sea Cliff, Long Island, in 1965.

McCaffrey served as secretary-treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1968 to 1970. In addition to handcrafting the Nebula Award trophies, her Nebula Award responsibilities included the publishing of two monthly newsletters and their distribution by mail to the members.

McCaffrey and her two younger children immigrated to Ireland in 1970, just weeks after filing for divorce. Ireland had recently barred resident artists from paying income tax, a chance that fellow science fiction author Harry Harrison had immediately taken and helped promote. McCaffrey's mother arrived in Dublin shortly after being accepted by the family. McCaffrey was guest of honor at her first British science-fiction convention in the spring (Eastercon 22, 1971). She met British reproductive biologist Jack Cohen, who would be a Pern consultant, while Pern's scientist David Cohen was there.

During the 1950s, McCaffrey had two short stories published. In 1952, when she was pregnant with her son Alec, she wrote the first ("Freedom of the Race" about women impregnated by aliens. It earned a $100 reward in Science-Fiction Plus. Editor Robert P. Mills' second book, "The Lady in the Tower," was released in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction by editor Robert P. Mills and then republished by editor Judith Merril in The Year's Greatest Science Fiction. "She thought of the story when wishing herself alone, like a lady in an ivory tower," McCaffrey said.

Judith Merril matched McCaffrey with her long-time literary agent Virginia Kidd and welcomed her to the Milford Writer's Workshop, where participants each brought a story to be critiqued. She appeared on "The Ship Who Sang" at her first Milford workshop in 1959, the tale that sparked the Brain & Brawn Ship series. The spaceship Helva sings "Taps" for her human companion at the end of the tale. Todd McCaffrey's son Todd said it was "almost an elegy to her father" a decade later. In interviews between 1994 and 2004, she considered it her best story and her favorite. "I brought a lot of myself and the frustrations I had in accepting my father's death [1954] and a difficult marriage."

McCaffrey wrote two more "Ship" stories and began her first book. Regarding her enthusiasm for Restored (1967), her son recalled her saying, "I was so sick of all the poor women screaming in the corner while their boyfriends were beating off the aliens." I wouldn't have been able to tell them that I was not there swinging with something or kicking them as hard as I could." McCaffrey said that it did not need a sequel; it "served the purpose of an intelligent, survivor-type woman as the protagonist of a s-f story."

Of course, she was referring to Todd Johnson in her 1969 decision at Doona (which she dedicated "To Todd Johnson." "(Once his mother was in the auditorium, her son recalls that he was ordered to lower his voice in his fourth-grade school performance." That inspired Doona's story, which opens on "an overcrowded planet in which just speaking too loud made you a social outcast." The boy talker has a priceless talent as a settler on Doona.

McCaffrey got off to a rocky start in Ireland, completing with Dragonquest and two Gothic novels for Dell, The Mark of Merlin, and The Ring of Fear in 1971. With a contract for The White Dragon (which would complete the "original trilogy" with Ballantine), she stalled. During the next few years, the family moved several times in Dublin, Ireland, and often failed to make ends meet, mainly because of child-care subsidies and meager royalties.

The young-adult book market was a crucial market for a novelist. Editor Roger Elwood needed short articles for anthologies, and McCaffrey started the Pern story of Menolly. For $14, she wrote "The Little Dragonboy" and four stories, which later became The Crystal Singer. Futura Publications in London has hired her to write books about dinosaurs for children. Atheneum Books' editor Jean E. Karl hoped to bring more female readers to science fiction, and the publisher asked "a tale for young women in a different part of Pern." McCaffrey wrote Menolly's tale as Dragonsong and contracted for a sequel before its publication in 1976. Menolly's adventures are continuing in Dragonsinger: Harper of Pern and Dragondrums as the "Harper Hall Trilogy." With a Atheneum job, she was able to buy a house (the dragons' names "Dragonhold" for the dragons that bought it). "First set dragons free on Pern, and then she was released by her dragons," her son wrote 20 years later.

"Weyr Hunt," John W. Campbell's first Pern story, was published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1967. It was nominated for best novella by participants in the annual World Science Fiction Convention in 1968. The second Pern story, "Dragonrider," received the 1969 Nebula Award for best novella, which is voted annually by the Science Fiction Writers of America. So she was both the first woman to win a Hugo for fiction and the first woman to win a Nebula.

The "Weyr Search" explores the selection of a young woman, Lessa, to form a telepathic link with a queen dragon at its hatching, transforming her into a dragonrider and the head of a Weyr clan. The growth of the queen dragon Ramoth and the preparation of Lessa and Ramoth are explored on "Dragonrider." Editor Campbell requested "to see dragons running thread [the threat from space] [the threat from space] [the threat from space]]" and also suggested time travel; McCaffrey included both options. The third story, "Crack Dust, Black Dust," was not published separately, but the first Pern book (Dragonflight, published by Ballantine Books in 1968) was a fix-up of all three.

Agent Virginia Kidd and editor Betty Ballantine gave Dragonquest's advice and assistance. It was almost complete (and there was another sequel signed) before the 1970 move to Ireland. Both Ballantine and fellow writer Andre Norton had a vision for the mutant white dragon.

The original trilogy's readers waited a long time for its completion. Progress was not made until 1974-1975, when the New England Science Fiction Association welcomed McCaffrey as guest of honor (Boskone) (which also included the printing of a novella on-site). A Time When, which would be the first part of The White Dragon, was written by Sheryl A.

With new editions of the first two Pern books and cover art illustrated by Michael Whelan, the White Dragon was introduced. It was the first science-fiction book by a woman on the New York Times best-seller list, and Whelan's cover painting is still in print. The artists give credit for their comebacks.

"While I would dearly like to tell a tale on my own, I can honestly say that I am not ably represented by my collaborations," McCaffrey said of her son Todd McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. She was mainly "making suggestions or being a sounding board" in the Pern collaboration with Todd. Todd and his sister Gigi were also given permission by McCaffrey to write their own stories set in the Pern universe.

McCaffrey and four others wrote The Ship Who Searched, the third book in McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang series, as well as Lackey's. She also wrote for Elizabeth Moon for the series 'The Planet Pirates,' (3 volumes).

McCaffrey died on November 21, 2011 at her home in Ireland, after suffering a stroke.

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