ANNE McCAFFREY: THE SCIENCE fiction and fantasy writer Anne McCaffrey, who has died aged 85, achieved worldwide fame with her best-selling series of novels for young adults Dragonriders of Pern.
One of more than a dozen series penned by her, it was written over four decades and comprises more than 20 novels.
The series, combining elements of fantasy with pure science fiction, is set on the planet Pern which has been settled by humans. However, what was once a utopian idyll has become a tense feudal society.
The tension stems from Thread, a type of deadly spore that rains down periodically. In response, Pern’s human inhabitants have cultivated a species of airborne dragons whose fiery breath can annihilate the Thread. Each dragon operates in tandem with a rider bonded symbiotically from the moment of the human’s birth.
The series, from Weyr Search(1967), the opening story of the series and which became part of the novel Dragonflight(1968), to the most recent Dragon's Time, published this year, became a smash hit.
“I suddenly wondered, ‘what if dragons were the good guys?’ Then I had to develop a planet which needed a renewable air force against some unknown menace and came up with Pern, dragons, Thread and humans, who impressed a hatchling in a lifelong symbiotic relationship,” McCaffrey wrote, recalling how she began the series.
"Rather wonderful to have an intelligent partner that loves you unconditionally. Who wouldn't like a 40ft telepathic dragon as their best friend? By the time my (then) children got home from school, I knew how it would all start: 'Lessa woke, cold.' I finished Weyr Searchby summer."
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1926, she was one of three children of George Herbert McCaffrey and his wife Anne Dorothy (née McElroy). Her father was a US army colonel. All her antecedents were of Irish origin except for “one little English Perkins who had the good sense to marry good stock”.
"My grandfather was the last honest Irish-born cop in Boston," she told The Irish Timesin 1979. "He arrested Honey Fitz."
Having arrested the prominent politician and maternal grandfather of President John F Kennedy, for canvassing votes too close to polling booths, her grandfather “pounded the beat for the rest of his career”.
She earned a bachelor's degree in Slavonic languages and literature from Radcliffe College. Having trained as an actor and opera singer she produced and performed in the first US production of Carl Orff's Ludus de Nato Infante Mirificus. She also worked as an interpreter, copywriter and layout artist, and for Helena Rubenstein.
In 1950 she married Horace Wright Johnson with whom she had three children. His job with DuPont took him to various US cities and briefly to Germany, and his wife and children travelled with him.
It was while she was ill with bronchitis that she took to reading pulp science fiction magazines.
“It was a new world. I read it like it was going out of style.”
She tried her hand at the genre and in 1954 sold a story to Science Fiction Plus. Her second published story, in 1959, was praised by leading science fiction writer Judy Merrill.
Young women and children are to the fore in her work. In 1989 she recalled her first novel Restoree.
“I was tired of the heroine screaming while her boyfriend was being whacked to death by something alien. The critics took it seriously and slammed me for using clichés. How did it do? . . . it’s still in print. And doing very well.”
After she and her husband divorced, McCaffrey moved in 1970 to Ireland with her children. “The [artists and writers] tax exemption wasn’t a major factor in bringing me here. The relaxed ambience suits me. I couldn’t live in peace in America. American fans want to possess their celebrities. When I go to conventions there I have to have a minder.”
She and her children lived in rented accommodation in Dublin until 1976 when she bought a house in Kilquade, Co. Wicklow. She named her new home Dragonhold because, she said, it had been paid for by dragons.
The author of approximately 100 books, she began collaborating on the Dragonridersseries with her son Todd in 2003. Collaborators on other series include SM Stirling, Elizabeth Moon, Mercedes Lackey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.
A recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards, in 2006 she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
An active US Democrat, in 1968 she withdrew from politics following the assassination of Bobby Kennedy whom she had known in her student days. Here, she helped to revitalise the Irish branch of PEN.
An accomplished horsewoman, she also enjoyed fencing and playing bridge. She was a naturalised Irish citizen.
Her daughter Georgeanne and sons Alec and Todd survive her.
Anne Inez McCaffrey: born April 1st, 1926; died November 21st, 2011.