Windows Into New Worlds

“That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.” – Anne McCaffrey

An actress and singer for 15 years before she started writing, McCaffrey's first short story was published in the late 1950s and her first novel in 1967 after her three children were off to school each day and she made more time for her writing.   That first novel, Restoree, was written as a protest against what she termed “absurd and unrealistic portrayals of women in science fiction novels in the ‘50s and early ‘60s.”  It is, however, in the handling of broader themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly the two series The Ship Who Sang and the 14 novels about the Dragonriders of Pern that her talents as a storyteller are best displayed.  Her 1978 novel The White Dragon was one of the first sci-fi books to ever appear on the New York Times Best Seller list. 

      Born in April 1926, McCaffrey died in 2011, shortly after being honored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as a “Grand Master” and being inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

  

 “(My worlds) contain scary things,” she said at the time. “They have problems, but also a sense of rightness that makes them alive and makes us want to live there.”

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