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Anne McCaffrey, 1926-2011
Well, damn.
I have no idea how old I was when I started reading Anne McCaffrey. At some point in my childhood, I went from reading my own books with dragons on the front to raiding Mum's shelves for books with dragons on the front. And I started on the original two Pern trilogies, with the Corgi covers that had those bizarre, multi-frilled dragons, utterly unsupported by the descriptions within the books. And from there I picked up her copies of To Ride Pegasus, The Ship Who Sang, Decision at Doona...
I have a memory of telling her I'd seen a McCaffrey novel in the shops that she didn't have, and therefore she should buy it. For herself, obviously. I think it was Pegasus In Flight. And then in my teens I started getting her McCaffrey novels for her birthday or Christmas, with the understanding that I'd read them second. (Fair enough; she gets me Discworld novels on the same basis.)
The book I best remember getting for her when I was a kid was A Diversity of Dragons. This is a gorgeous illustrated book which uses a fictional frame story to let McCaffrey give a bit of a lecture about dragons, from mythology, though Smaug, to The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson. But one of the dragons she particularly likes is Errol, the swamp dragon in Guards! Guards! It's worth remembering at this point that Discworld dragons were introduced in the third section of The Colour of Magic, which featured dragonriders with exclamation marks in their names ruled by a woman named Liessa Wyrmbidder.
And that's how I'll remember Anne McCaffrey. Someone who not only loved dragons, but had the sense of humour to celebrate dragons that had originally been created as a parody of her own. She'll be missed.
I have no idea how old I was when I started reading Anne McCaffrey. At some point in my childhood, I went from reading my own books with dragons on the front to raiding Mum's shelves for books with dragons on the front. And I started on the original two Pern trilogies, with the Corgi covers that had those bizarre, multi-frilled dragons, utterly unsupported by the descriptions within the books. And from there I picked up her copies of To Ride Pegasus, The Ship Who Sang, Decision at Doona...
I have a memory of telling her I'd seen a McCaffrey novel in the shops that she didn't have, and therefore she should buy it. For herself, obviously. I think it was Pegasus In Flight. And then in my teens I started getting her McCaffrey novels for her birthday or Christmas, with the understanding that I'd read them second. (Fair enough; she gets me Discworld novels on the same basis.)
The book I best remember getting for her when I was a kid was A Diversity of Dragons. This is a gorgeous illustrated book which uses a fictional frame story to let McCaffrey give a bit of a lecture about dragons, from mythology, though Smaug, to The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson. But one of the dragons she particularly likes is Errol, the swamp dragon in Guards! Guards! It's worth remembering at this point that Discworld dragons were introduced in the third section of The Colour of Magic, which featured dragonriders with exclamation marks in their names ruled by a woman named Liessa Wyrmbidder.
And that's how I'll remember Anne McCaffrey. Someone who not only loved dragons, but had the sense of humour to celebrate dragons that had originally been created as a parody of her own. She'll be missed.