Loss of a friend

[joflasher]

Today I learned that the world lost a light.  Anne McCaffrey has died.   I never met actually had the pleasure of meeting her but if you lived & breathed her work like I used to, then the news comes as a blow.  Anne taught me so much.  She wrote the books that introduced me to fantasy & sci fi.  Literally, her stuff was the first real genre work I read.  She was my spring board into Dragon Lance, Robin McKinley, Foundation, you name it.  It all started with her dragons.   Dragon Song is still one of those books that I break out ever other year or so & re-read.

She wrote female leads that didn't need saving and male leads that I could relate too.  She introduced me to the concept of homosexuality in a way that made total sense at the time and felt completely natural to the world*.  She was THE absolute best author  for years and years.  Anytime I learned a new book had come out, I'd ask for it, in hard cover, at the next nearest holiday, even knowing that getting a hard cover most likely meant I was only getting the one gift**.   Her books were responsible for me meeting the girl who would be my best friend for over a decade.  We used to spend HOURS sitting around, talking about our dragons, pretending to fly on the swing set.  Sure, as we got older, we moved on to Jane Yolen and her dark sisters, the Pinis and their elves but Anne still introduced us and gave us our first playground.

I wish she had written more. 
I wish she'd lived long enough to see her dragons make it to the big screen. 
I wish I was twelve years old again, on a swing set with my arms out flying. 

I wish I hadn't had to eventually wake up to a world without Anne McCaffrey in it.

*Yes I'm choosing to ignore her later years pseudo-science of impression & gays here.
** Hey, we were dirt poor for most of my childhood.  Wearing my cousin's multi-iteration hand me downs and eating poached game to survive poor.  A hardcover was expensive.  Sure, I always got socks & underwear but "real" gifts tended to be in short supply.

Comments

[nixjim13.livejournal.com]

I think there's a lot of women readers that feel the same (and a lot of us seemed to have found her at about 12-13 years). I tuned out about 10 years ago when she started going down the co-author path (after Petaybee series I think). But Restoree, the Rowan, Crystal Singer and Dragonflight were all kind of epic books that moved me in some way - spoke to me. There was science, but there was humanity too. There didn't need to be masses of violence spilled out in bloody gore, yet there could still be horror and sorrow. She wrote characters that you cared for.

BTW, she also introduced me to Michael Whelan, Rowena Morrill and Romas through the covers for which I will always be eternally grateful