I just saw the news that fantasy writer Anne McCaffrey, whose stories about dragons and dragon-riders dominated bookstore shelves in my 1980s-era youth, has mounted her own ethereal dragon and flown off to a different plane of existence. I never read a single one of her books (about the only female SFF writer I read back then was Madeleine L'Engle), but I recall being fascinated by both the titles and the cover art.
Tributes to McCaffrey have sprung up over the past few hours and are now legion; simply Google to find them. Even as a non-reader, I think it's safe to say she had a major hand in shaping the fantasy writing of today.
I wonder whether she ever wrote about East Asian-style dragons (see here and, more recently, here).
_
I read her books and enjoyed them. As a teenage boy in the '80's, it was her short stories that excited me. I mean that literally; they were science fiction soft-core (and not that soft) pornography.
ReplyDeleteI reread her "The White Dragon" and it has aged fairly well. I wonder if I could read L'Engle again. Arm of the Starfish was a pretty cool espionage novel as I remember it.