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Anne McCaffrey
The same year as Ursula K. Le Guin published "A Wizard of Earthsea", Anne McCaffrey's (1926-) first book in the series about Pern was released.McCaffrey studied literature and slavonic languages at the Radcliffe College. After college she worked as an actress and studied voice for several years, and became interested in operas.
Her most famous novels are the ones about Pern. The stories about Pern is a mix of fantasy and SF and about the relation between humans and telepathic dragons. The dragons were created by the humans a long time ago to protect the planet from the threads, lethal spores which goes through space and threatens all life. The world of Pern is her most famous series and starts with "Dragonflight" (1968). On the Internet there are hundreds of websites devoted to the work of McCaffrey, as well as different MUSH,MOO, MuD etc. Try searching for "pern" in any searchengine and you will get lot's of hits. Unfortunatly this popularity has it's drawbacks, since some people don't respect the copyright and uses the name Pern without permission.
The tales about Pern shall become a tv-series and will be launched sometime in the year 2000, the year of the Dragon. Her son Todd McCaffrey is also involved in the writings of Pern.
Anne McCaffrey published her first short story 1953. The story was called "Freedom of the Race" and were published in the magazine Science Fiction Plus, of which Sam Moskowitz were editor. She had never really knew what science fiction was about, she had of course read books by for example Edgar Rice Burrougs. It was when she read Edmund Hamilton's Star Kings that she really got into the genre. Before she published her first novel, she was already a fulltime writer, supported by the many short stories she wrote.
Restoree was the name of her first novel, it was published 1967 and were a protest on the way women were described in 50s and 60s science fiction stories. The idea for writing about dragons popped up when she thought about how dragons were seen as a threat within western culture, but were creatures of good fortune in the eastern culture. She decided to try to shape up the dragons reputation in the west. Her favorite author is Rudyard Kipling, although Austin Tappan Wright is the author that has influenced her the most. Anne McCaffrey lives by the Wicklow mountains in Ireland in a farm called Dragonhold Underhill. She arrived to Ireland 29 years ago because of several different things, a painful divorce, Irelands good school system and that writers were tax exempt. By that time she was very broke, but those days are long gone now, and her books have been sold in several million copies. She still writes novels, and despite suffering arthritis she keeps on writing. Her opinion is that the proper way for a writer to die is by the keyboard.
- A bibliography over Anne McCaffreys' books
Related books at Amazon UK:
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey Restoree by Anne McCaffrey
Related books at Amazon USA:
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey Restoree by Anne McCaffrey
Related books at Amazon Canada:
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey Restoree by Anne McCaffrey
Related books at Amazon Deutschland:
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey Restoree by Anne McCaffrey