Gone, Yet Still With Me

Anne McCaffrey, one of my very favorite authors, passed away back in November.  When my brother told me the news, I remember tears filling my eyes—I couldn’t believe that she was no longer with us, writing her incredible tales.  She really was—and is—the Queen of Science Fiction.  Anne has transformed the SciFi genre into something completely new and exciting by creating worlds and characters that both men and women can relate to and love as if they are real places and people.

When I was in seventh grade, Grandpa bought me Anne’s Dragonflight, the first novel in her Dragonriders of Pern series.  I was instantly captivated by the cover which depicts a huge, golden dragon soaring across a vibrant green sky with a glowing red planet seemingly pulsing in the background.  I remember wondering who the dragon and the young woman riding it were so I eagerly turned to the first page and was instantly transported to a world unlike any other I had ever visited before:

A lush and beautiful world called Pern where gold, bronze, brown, blue and green dragons live in rapport with the women and men they bond with.  I had never read a story before where dragons, when they are born, choose a man or woman to be theirs, and once they have chosen, their minds are so profoundly linked with their humans’ that they can communicate mentally with them and feel everything the other feels.  And when the female dragons (gold and green) rise to mate with the males (bronze, brown and blue)…well, let me tell you (one romantic to another) it gets pretty darn steamy since their humans are linked mentally with them down on the ground, experiencing what they are experiencing…it’s enough to make me blush.  The Pernese men and women and their dragons share and experience everything together.  It’s like they are two halves of one soul, or two souls made one—one cannot live without the other once the bond is made at the dragon’s birth, and once the bond is made, it cannot be undone.  I had never read a story before where the dragons are always the “good guys,” battling a constant threat in the form of deadly spores that rain down from the sky—silvery, deadly spores that burn and absorb anything organic they touch, turning vegetation to barren wastelands—by using their ability to breathe fire, searing them from the sky before they can reach the ground.  I had never read a story before where dragons could teleport not just between places but between times as well (yes, I said time travel).  I had never read a story before that combined elements of both fantasy and science fiction so effortlessly that it created an entirely new genre of its own.  And, come to think of it, I had never read a story before where I actually forgot I was reading because the world of Pern, its dragons and its characters became so real to me—and are still so very real to me to this day.

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
The golden dragon is Ramoth and her rider is Lessa
Painting by Michael Whelan

I have lived and breathed this series that spans seventeen novels and many short stories for years.  Every time I read it it’s like I’m visiting old friends.  I have collected all of the novels in hardcover and softcover.  I own all of the Collector’s and Book Club editions of the novels.  I met Anne in person quite a few years ago and she signed the well-read and well-loved copy of Dragonflight Grandpa gave me.  Because Anne is the inspirational woman that she is, in middle school I began dabbling in creative writing by inventing my own dragonrider characters, penning down their stories and making illustrations to go along with them (sadly I can’t find those stories but I still have many of the drawings).  When I was in high school I joined an online Pern-based writing club—one of the few that had been officially approved by Anne herself—and created, very thoroughly I might add, my own dragonrider characters and wrote their stories alongside many other talented and devoted fans.  I poured my heart and soul into many of the storylines I created with the other club members, and like Anne’s characters, my own became just as real.  (I hope to return to the club and my characters one day!) 

When you love a fictional—and yet real—world like Pern with all your heart and when you devote so much creative energy to play in that world…it’s hard to describe just how much it becomes a part of you.  To know that the creator of Pern is no longer with us is very sad and my heart ached when my brother told me she had passed on.  However, I really can’t be too sad because she lives on in her novels and short stories, and because I know that her soul is certainly in a much better place now—and she is probably blissfully soaring across the astral heavens on her own golden dragon even as I write this.

Anne McCaffrey

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