When I was about 14, I saw a Bakka flyer downtown advertising that Anne McCaffrey would be making an in-store appearance. I think it might have been stapled to a telephone pole, although by then I was making regular trips to the store. Well! You might as well have announced that the Queen was visiting. I knew that Anne McCaffrey lived in Ireland--it said so on the inside of the back covers of all her books--so I had never dreamed she would cross the pond. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity--and it turns out, it was.
I never got into the Dragonriders books--I guess I never identified with Lessa--but I adored the Harper Hall trilogy. Who wouldn't want a pet fire lizard? My sister, however, had read and re-read pretty much everything McCaffrey had written so far.
We got to the store early. There was already a lineup out the door and along the street. This was the old Queen West location (West, not West West), back before the brand-name clothing stores began to move in. Back before they put in the Spadina streetcar; we would have had to take the bus.
It was summer. The store had no AC. I don't think we waited that long since we had been early. I had secondhand copies of Dragonflight and Dragonsong, the pre-Michael Whelan ones with the beautiful 60s-70s cover paintings. My sister had a McCaffrey-endorsed book of some artist's paintings of all the Pern characters--People of Pern, I think it was called. She was more excited than I was.
Ms. McCaffrey looked pretty much like her author photo. She signed our books. My sister might have said something fannish; I don't remember. I felt a little discombobulated; the author I'd only known as a name and photo was a Real Person. We hopped back on the TTC, and went home.
In later years, my sister bemoaned the steady stream of additional Pern novels. "She's just writing them for the money now," she complained. I agreed. Now that I know that writers don't make a lot of money, though, I don't begrudge her (or others) this. This is the curse of having a successful series; I'm guessing it's easier to sell something with a good track record to a publisher than to submit something new.
But although I haven't known anyone to be excited about a new McCaffrey novel for years, both men and women in my social stream, like myself, are reminiscing that her books were the first SF they read--and are, in fact, responsible for getting them into SF. That's an impressive legacy. She will be missed and looked upon fondly.
