Science fiction author Anne McCaffrey died Tuesday, November 22, at age 85. She was the author of the Dragonriders of Pern series, as well as the Ship Who Sang series, the Talents series, and other very enjoyable SF books. I had the pleasure of meeting her once and found her to be a delightful person, with interesting stories to tell about her home and her writing.

McCaffrey's work has had a profound impact on my life because through it, I found Pern writing fandom and some of the very best friends ever. I have been a member of one Pern club or another since 1985. I have written numerous stories about my Weyrhealer, Aerden, at StarRise Weyr, and my brownrider, D'mir, at Fort Weyr. I have other characters, but those two are among the dearest to my heart.

Pern fans are some of the nicest, most creative people you will ever meet, and we all love to write, whether it be about Pern or our own original fiction. Sometimes, the fan stories become more real-feeling than the canon novels, simply because the fan stories are immediate, and they're about characters you have come to know and love through mutual development of them. I can't wait for NaNoWriMo to be over, so I can resume writing Pern fiction. I have missed Aerden this month; my brain has been taken over by the main character of my NaNo novel.

Anne, you will be greatly missed, but your wonderful stories and the fandom inventions will live on, and I cannot thank you enough for that.

My husband Mark has written an article about her passing. Members of StarRise Weyr might notice a familiar link.

PS: I hope you all who live in the US had a happy Thanksgiving! I'm stuffed. When I can figure out how to upload a picture from my cellphone to the computer, I'll post a photo my sister Lisa took of her rough-coat German shepherd, Samson. He's a beauty!