It is very hard not to say ‘Anne McCaffrey’ and ‘The Dragonriders Of Pern’ in the same sentence. Most Science Fiction readers of my generation got hooked to her books through ‘Dragonflight’, the first in the ‘Pern Chronicles’ and read her other books waiting for the next book in the series.

1st April 1926 – 21st November 2011.

A remembrance by: GF Willmetts

It is very hard not to say ‘Anne McCaffrey’ and ‘The Dragonriders Of Pern’ in the same sentence. Most Science Fiction readers of my generation got hooked to her books through ‘Dragonflight’, the first in the ‘Pern Chronicles’ and read her other books waiting for the next book in the series. For me, this ended up with ‘The Ship Who Sang’ which was brilliant, ‘Restoree’, which was more space opera and ‘To Ride Pegasus’, an examination of practical ESP, a little more mixed in feelings. There are more series but by and large, I was more a Pern man. Who wouldn’t want to have a giant flying and teleporting dragon as a personal friend?



I think the appeal of the Pern novels was because McCaffrey brought dragons into Science Fiction in a plausible way. Not as monsters to be slain by medieval knights but empathic creatures linked to humans to burn an alien spore thread on a colonised world. About the only other dragon I’d read before then was Adzel in Poul Anderson’s ‘Satan’s World’. McCaffrey’s Pern was full of the creatures and as she quite rightly pointed out, wouldn’t any of you out there want your closest friend to be a dragon? Even she realised the implication of that.

What made McCaffrey’s novels work so well is how she brought her characters to life so you understood them and their situation. It made the likes of Helva, the cyborg paraplegic of ‘The Ship Who Sang’, come to life on the page. However, to my mind, her greatest triumph was Robinton, masterharper of Pern. He started off really as a secondary character but as McCaffrey expanded her exploration of the world, Robinton kept coming up and as he was getting older, there had to come a time when he died. There was not a dry eye with how McCaffrey dealt with this let alone doing a book devoted to telling his own story. How many secondary characters in any SF book series has that ever been done before or since? Exactly. It is the level of her character creation and skill that could do such a thing. She brought passion and care to her stories.

None of this would work without the creation of great names. A couple have been mentioned above but let’s not forget names like Menolly, Lessa, F’lar, Menora and all the dragons that ended in ‘th’ like Mnementh and Ramoth although white dragon, Ruth, sounds a bit more normal. The fact that I can recall and how to spell them from memory is a testimony how chord-like they are. Close to normal but far enough different to give them an off-world or future sounding names. It is a less that few SF writers have equalled in such quantity. A lesson to all novice SF writers.

The same could be said for the detail of the Pern colonisers, living without modern luxuries, over the generations they forget their origins and a lot of things get renamed. In fact, it isn’t until she wrote ‘Dragonsdawn’, covering how the first generation got there do we see where the place names come from and later the significance of names like agenothree for nitric acid and even klah and the various people like Benden who ended up becoming place names. We guessed but only confirmed then. Another lesson in world-building. Again, never really equalled.

There are very few women Science Fiction writers and few who have made such an impact as Anne McCaffrey. Now, at the age of eighty-five, the world has lost her unique voice. One can only hope her dragons wailed in her passing. She’ll be sorely missed.

GF Willmetts