Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey was an American-born, Ireland-based author best known for the Dragonriders of Pern series, one of science fiction's most enduring franchises, launched with the 1968 novella Weyr Search. Pern's telepathically bonded, fire-breathing dragons and their riders, defending a lost human colony against a periodic organic menace called Thread, made McCaffrey the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction and the first to win a Nebula Award, establishing her as a foundational figure for women writing in a genre then dominated by men. Beyond Pern, McCaffrey created several other long-running series, including The Ship Who Sang and its Brainship spin-offs (about disabled children whose minds are integrated into starship or city computers), the Talent series beginning with The Rowan, and the Petaybee and Acorna series, both written in extensive collaboration with co-authors including Elizabeth Ann Scarborough and Margaret Ball. In later decades she increasingly worked with her son Todd McCaffrey, who continued Pern after her death, extending the series' internal chronology and eventually taking over its stewardship. McCaffrey died in 2011, but Pern remains in print worldwide and continues to draw new readers into one of fantasy and science fiction's most beloved shared worlds.