
RIP, Anne McCaffrey - DiabloD3
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/11/anne-mccaffrey-in-remembrance?utm_source=Feedburner%3A+Frontpage+Partial+RSS+Feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torcom%2FFrontpage_Partial+%28Tor.com+Frontpage+Partial+-+Blog+and+Stories%29
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unalone
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.

~~~
jonnathanson
_"I've grown to see it as a kind of hack genre..."_

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.

~~~
sampsonjs
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.

~~~
sliverstorm
Yeah, I was quite confused by his comment for a few minutes, what with calling
it a hack genre and praising it, all in the same comment!

------
michaelpinto
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.

------
caela_ielle
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.

May she rest in peace.

------
libraryatnight
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.

------
spatten
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.

RIP, Anne McCaffrey.

------
mikeryan
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.

------
halostatue
I was never a _fan_ the way I am with other authors, but she was a deeply
influential author. RIP.

------
jongraehl
Dragonsong (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonsong> \- and the rest of the
trilogy) was my favorite as a kid. I'd recommend it today.

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.

------
premchai21
_polyphonic radio croon in imitation of her dragons' death-recognition calls_

(I'm not Pernese myself, though I am a drake. But it seems fitting.)

~~~
sliverstorm
Your parents are ducks?

~~~
premchai21
I was deliberately using the now-mostly-archaic sense of the noun referring to
dragons. It puns nicely on my given name, among other reasons.

~~~
sliverstorm
I know, which is why I was using the almost-as-archaic sense of the noun :)

------
iandanforth
Having never read her work, can someone recommend the one or two books I
really shouldn't miss out on?

~~~
hartror
For hackers _The Ship Who Sang_ is probably the seminal work. Trans-humanist
before its time (1969).

------
edomain
I spent a good part of my youth reading Anne McCaffrey (and part of my
adulthood too) RIP

------
cyanbane
Bummer, loved Pern Novels as a kid.

~~~
thebooktocome
Pern itself will probably continue through her son and various ghostwriters.

~~~
cyanbane
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.

------
Codayus
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.

RIP Anne McCaffrey.

~~~
Symmetry
Similar thoughts here. That I've grown beyond her stories is something I have
to give her stories some credit for.

