PORT TOWNSEND — The death of Science Fiction Hall of Fame author Anne McCaffrey on Nov. 21 at her home in Ireland sent out shock waves through the science fiction community that reached Port Townsend author Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.
“So many people were influenced by her,” said Scarborough, 64, a Nebula Award winner who co-wrote more than 10 books with McCaffrey.
McCaffrey died of a massive stroke at the age of 85.
It wasn’t only science fiction authors and fans, Scarborough said, but also singers such as Neil Diamond and artists from other disciplines who spoke of her influence on their work and lives when McCaffrey was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005.
“Anne was a good person,” Scarborough said.
McCaffrey’s personality shone through her books, and her relationships with other authors and fans supported their good opinion of the “Dragonlady,” she said.
“She was always bewildered as to why everyone loved her,” she said.
A world called Pern
McCaffrey is best known for creating, during four decades of work, a world called Pern, a planet colonized by Earth whose descendents fly bioengineered dragons to fight a spaceborne plague called Thread as it falls to the world’s surface.
Scarborough said her partnership with McCaffrey began in the early 1990s, when her second and third books were on hold, and McCaffrey invited the new author to her home in County Wicklow, Ireland — which she named Dragonhold because it had been paid for by dragons — to write a book together.
Scarborough — who won a Nebula Award in 1989 for her novel The Healer’s War and who has written more than a dozen other novels — eventually co-wrote more than 10 books with McCaffrey in three science fiction series.
The series were about Acorna, tales of an alien girl who resembles a unicorn; the Petaybee series, about a sentient planet and its inhabitants; and Barque Cat series, about a highly intelligent, spacefaring species of cat bred to warn spaceship crews of air leaks.
Many of the stories they wrote together were equally shared efforts, but later books were mostly Scarborough’s works with McCaffrey’s guidance, Scarborough said.
Writing with McCaffrey could be intimidating, she said, even though the senior author was known to be wonderful to work with.
‘Big boots’
“She had big boots to fit into,” she said.
McCaffrey, who was born April 1, 1926, in Cambridge, Mass., collapsed and died in the arms of family members, her son, Todd McCaffrey, said on her website, The Worlds of Anne McCaffrey, on Nov. 23
“Annie always said she would die at age 85,” Scarborough said.
“That’s the age her mother died.”
McCaffrey’s first short story, “Freedom of the Race,” was published in Science Fiction Plus magazine in 1953, and her first book, Restoree, a science fiction adventure with a female protagonist, came out in 1963.
Her heroine in Restoree is the rescuer of a man in distress, a quick-thinking woman with an endless supply of skills who saves him in narrow escapes and navigates through political intrigue.
McCaffrey was tired of women being depicted as “the dumb blonde,” used as a plot advancement, someone for the hero explain things to, Scarborough said.
In another story, Dinosaur Planet, McCaffrey turned the tables on the old trope, having the blond woman explain things to the “hero” of the story, she said.
Human relationships
McCaffrey also was responsible for inserting more character development and human relationships into science fiction writing, Scarborough said.
“Before that, science fiction was clanky,” Scarborough said, being about machines and adventure but not much about human interaction.
“What she brought to science fiction was emotion,” Scarborough said.
At the time, there were only three female authors in the genre: McCaffrey, Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley, Scarborough said.
“That was about it,” she said.
In 1967, McCaffrey received the Hugo Award for best novella, presented annually by readers at the World Science Fiction Convention, for her first foray into the world of Pern in Weyr Search.
The next year, she won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award for the second Pern novella, Dragonrider, making her the first woman to win both of science fiction’s highest awards of the time.
In July 1968, McCaffrey combined her two award-winning novellas and wrote additional material to create Dragonflight, the first of what would become a worldwide best-selling series of 15 books and 11 short stories featuring the world of Pern.
In the second Pern book, Dragonquest, she added gay men to her Pern novels as heroic military characters — Pern’s equivalent of fighter pilots — 40 years before they were allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military.
“Annie treated everyone the way she wanted to be treated, unless they were bad people,” Scarborough said.
In 1978, McCaffrey became the first female science fiction author to have a book on The New York Times’ best-seller list. That was The White Dragon, the third book in the series.
She was writing a 16th and final Pern novel in the series at the time of her death.
In 2005, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey a Grand Master of Science Fiction, the 22nd science fiction writer to earn the distinction.
A big-screen adaptation of Dragonflight is in the works for a 2013 release, with a screenplay by David Hayter (“Spiderman,” “X-Men”) and executive producer Don Murphy (“Transformers,” “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”).
“I hope they’re faithful to her story,” Scarborough said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.