Farewell, Anne McCaffrey. Until a couple of weeks ago, she was still answering fans' questions on her site.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Dragon Swansong
Farewell, Anne McCaffrey. Until a couple of weeks ago, she was still answering fans' questions on her site.
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This has really driven home how much I've lost track of time; my mental image of McCaffrey was that of a middle aged woman approaching her sixties and writing less frequently, mediating her time between supervising a Pern franchise and occasionally contemplating new work or being asked to panel discussions or judge competitions of younger writers. She was established, she had 'arrived', as had Bradbury or Pohl. The reports I've read today were that she died at 85 years.
ReplyDeleteIf it wasn't for the timing, with a holiday weekend imminent, I'd drag out the Dreamcast "Dragonriders of Pern" game. She appears in the game as a scullery maid who tells your Dragonrider character how much she wishes she could fly with the dragons as well. In a sense, she now has and that new mental image may be what many of us will have left of her for some time.
Thanks for your comment, pblfsda and glad to see you on the blog - things have been a bit quiet at the DP end of things, given DC Comics' recent excursion into the far reaches of madness.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree about McCaffrey, it brought home to me how much time has passed. I read all the books at one point, long long ago. But perhaps because their stories are timeless, the people who pen them in some vague way to be untouched by time as well. Sadly, it isn't so.
Some of the images and turns of phrase McCaffrey used in the Dragon books still stay with me, as well as the richness of Pern - I remember her writing as being complex and vivid.