I always wanted a fire lizard
Nov. 23rd, 2011 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liadnanFor various reasons, mainly living in a tiny house, most of my books live in my room in chambers (which is why I resist becoming involved in room reallocations).
If I spin round in my chair I can see, in a tall pile in the corner, the fantasy and sf books of my childhood I can't bear to part with, ancient corgi editions for the most part. Most of them will probably never be re-read. Life is, I think, possibly too short for another run through Eddings (well, maybe).
But one I have re-read occasionally over the years, most recently only last year, is probably one of the first F/SF novels I read (outside Tolkien and things of which my mother approved, DWJ, Aiken, Cooper and the like): Dragonflight, together with its sequels (up to and including the White Dragon, and there should be a copy of the first prequel somewhere), along with a copy of The Ship Who Sang that I had forgottenborrowing from the library in about 1987 acquiring. The only one that is easily accessible without bringing the stack down is Dragonsong, which appears to be a 1981 reprint: it's likely I bought it with birthday booktokens or the like that year. I have a vague idea I'd first picked up Dragonflight a year or so earlier in Winchester Public Library, on spec and caught by the Michael Whelan cover.
A few commenters on posts have made claims that she was a fantastic writer, she wasn't, at least not in the sense I would use that term. But I loved and love those books and characters, and I'm fairly confident that some day when I'm feeling glum I'll pull them out again. I don't think I'd say the same about, for instance The Colour of Magic which I must have read (including brilliant affectionate parody of the Pern novels) not long after.
And from reading her, so much else followed (more than from reading Tolkien, DWJ & co I think, though I don't think McCaffrey is, objectively, as good as any of those).
One of the first women, alongside Andre Norton and a few others (May?) to make much headway in SF&F too, and given how mysogynistic the genre can still be now (eg Harlan Ellison) I wonder how much worse it was then.
Farewell Anne McCaffrey, and thanks for 30 years of reading habits.
If I spin round in my chair I can see, in a tall pile in the corner, the fantasy and sf books of my childhood I can't bear to part with, ancient corgi editions for the most part. Most of them will probably never be re-read. Life is, I think, possibly too short for another run through Eddings (well, maybe).
But one I have re-read occasionally over the years, most recently only last year, is probably one of the first F/SF novels I read (outside Tolkien and things of which my mother approved, DWJ, Aiken, Cooper and the like): Dragonflight, together with its sequels (up to and including the White Dragon, and there should be a copy of the first prequel somewhere), along with a copy of The Ship Who Sang that I had forgotten
A few commenters on posts have made claims that she was a fantastic writer, she wasn't, at least not in the sense I would use that term. But I loved and love those books and characters, and I'm fairly confident that some day when I'm feeling glum I'll pull them out again. I don't think I'd say the same about, for instance The Colour of Magic which I must have read (including brilliant affectionate parody of the Pern novels) not long after.
And from reading her, so much else followed (more than from reading Tolkien, DWJ & co I think, though I don't think McCaffrey is, objectively, as good as any of those).
One of the first women, alongside Andre Norton and a few others (May?) to make much headway in SF&F too, and given how mysogynistic the genre can still be now (eg Harlan Ellison) I wonder how much worse it was then.
Farewell Anne McCaffrey, and thanks for 30 years of reading habits.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-23 02:28 pm (UTC)I also tumbled into Pern backwards, via Menolly, so I sort of missed the whole Queen dragon stuff at the outset (though, to be honest, I doubt I'd have batted an eyelid at the time)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-23 02:37 pm (UTC)The Ship Who Sang is, of those I remember reading, probably the book in which she had most Important Stuff to say. And I agree, that is a really good opening.
Was thinking on the way back from lunch about how there is actually quite a lot of trope subverting going on in her books. Eg that Lessa is actually the Long-Lost Queen who defeats the usurper in the first part of Dragonflight (orig a sequence of short stories I learn)... but then buggers off leaving the usurper's child to take over Benden Hold.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-23 06:25 pm (UTC)In some ways I think she was more successful with her romance novels because they were less ambitious than the SFnal ones; it's easier to see how nearly everyone in a story can be Irish American when the story is set in the US South than when it's set in the future. :P But I loved Get Off the Unicorn and Dragonsinger when I met them, aged 12-13.