I've always loved fantasy literature. I've grown to see it as a kind of hack genre – it can discuss social issues which readers might find boring or even repellent by creating a world so fantastic that the story's tempting anyway. Lazier readers (myself included) who aren't so interested in realism can pick up a book for the cover or the story or the world and walk away with a lot of thoughts about a lot of things. There's truly a magic to fantasy writing.
Sad that slowly the writers I loved as a kid are dying. Last year was Diana Wynne Jones, who wasn't as popular as McCaffrey but whom I always loved the most. Now this. I couldn't often get into McCaffrey's style but she influenced many of the authors I loved, to the point where I can't think of dragons without thinking of her.
I hope that her life was joyful and her passing was peaceful.
Be careful with the word "hack" in this case, though; it means something very different in the literary world than it does in the tech world! :)
But I agree with you. Generally speaking, the best fantasy and sci-fi writing can raise and tackle real-world issues in very bold ways -- ways that, in almost any other genre, would be considered too ballsy, or too crazy, or too preachy to address.
Indeed, it actually is widely viewed as a genre for 'hacks', so much so that I assumed he was using the old, non-stupid connotation of the word. See: last Sunday's episode of the Simpsons, which mercilessly mocked Harry Potter and its imitators. That being said, I enjoyed McCaffrey back in the day.
Wow, thank you for mentioning Diana. I read some of her books a long time ago, and they are on a very short list of books that have stuck in the back of my mind. I just couldn't remember the author or the titles, until now.
Every genre is a hack genre. Thrillers, Romances, Fantasy, Sci Fi, Detective, Chic Lit; you name it. The exceptions are the genres so unpopular that it's not economic for the hacks to get into (such as Poetry, or Magical Realism, or Travel Writing), and then you simply get the wannabes instead.
Like Mozart, she created a lot of works that she and her fans really loved.
"Hack" as in "Hacker" rather than in "that writer is such a hack". Sorry for the ambiguity. :-)
Although speaking as a poet, poetry is absolutely a hack genre, and so's magical realism and travel writing. Poetry: uses line breaks to create tension within individual sentences using enjambment, creates a visual structure that helps guide the reader from line to line, stanza to stanza. Magical realism: similar to surrealism in that it breaks the confines of reality to make a deeper, "truer" statement. Travel writing: literally hacks the world by creating a map of information (if you meant travel guides) and emotion (if you meant travel literature) which connects with the world around it. A way of bringing people to the rest of the world without the cost of gas/plane tickets/a horse/oxen.
You have to give Anne a double dose of respect: Firstly she was a very talented writer, but secondly when she wrote her early work science fiction and fantasy was very much a "boys club" and she was one of those who broke down the door.
I love Dragonriders of Pern the way I love Redwall. The plot(s) are predictable beyond belief, but the easy readability and sheer volume of the series fed my ongoing obsession with science fiction and fantasy through childhood and sharpened my love of reading. I owe a lot to the good storytelling of people such as McCaffrey.
As a kid, being an absolute dragon nut, but not particularly enjoying her brand of fantasy, it drove me mad that searching around for dragon stuff usually yielded tons of books by her. Now I simply remember it as a sign of a prolific writer with many loving fans.
It's sad to see an author die, but wonderful to know that McCaffrey is popular enough to live on for a very long time.
One of the things I'm looking forward to is, in a few years, handing my worn copy of the Harper Hall series to my daughter and introducing her to the world of Pern.
I think I got my copy when the Science Fiction book club sent it to me because something else I had ordered wasn't in stock. I thought "sure, I'll give it a shot" and I was hooked.
Is it great literature? No. But it was one of the first fantasy series I ever read, and I still read through them every few years.
In fact, I think I'm going to start it again tonight.
One of the first fantasy authors that I really got sucked into, though I don't remember reading of much of hers later.
But man when I was young but the dragon riders series was the first one which really gave me that escapism I was looking for as a kid. Those, the Belgariad by Eddings - and (of all things) the Tin Tin series. Ah fond memories.
Now its more China Mieville, John Courtenay Grimwood and even sometimes that Stross fellow.
Her work had become merely formulaic to me as I grew, with a few exceptions. But before I knew what those formulas were - wow. Some poignant and dramatic stuff. I felt for her characters.
I just went back and looked and I have read Dragon's Blood which I attributed to Anne McCaffery, but it looks like it was written by Todd McCaffery (son you mentioned). I enjoyed the book and I agree it looks like she left the series in good hands.
Objectively, her work is not that great. She wrote simple stories with repetitive plots and cardboard characters. And yet...
It's tempting to try and compare one of her books to, say, one of Louis McMaster Bujold's works, and sneer that McCaffrey was just a hack. And perhaps she was, but that rather misses the point. Bujold started writing in a world that already had McCaffrey in it (and McCaffrey blurbed some of Bujold's early work very positively too).
McCaffrey was a pioneer. No, she wasn't the first, but she was one OF the first, and one of the first to be widely popular, and certainly one of the first female authors to be widely popular. All of which are major achievements.
I couldn't begin to imagine how many kids got their first taste of sci-fi/fantasy because their local library had a pile of McCaffrey's Dragonrider books. And if many of them went on to "better books" later in life, and have barely gave McCaffrey's work another thought in the years since, well...it doesn't change McCaffrey's contribution. There's a non-zero number of readers (and, come to that, authors) who wouldn't be around reading (and writing) if it wasn't for McCaffrey.
Sad that slowly the writers I loved as a kid are dying. Last year was Diana Wynne Jones, who wasn't as popular as McCaffrey but whom I always loved the most. Now this. I couldn't often get into McCaffrey's style but she influenced many of the authors I loved, to the point where I can't think of dragons without thinking of her.
I hope that her life was joyful and her passing was peaceful.