DUBLIN — Anne McCaffrey, a science-fiction writer widely known for her best-selling series of the “Dragonriders of Pern,” died Monday in County Wicklow, Ireland. She was 85.
The cause was a stroke, her publisher, Random House, told The Associated Press.
McCaffrey, who had lived in Ireland since the 1970s, died at her home, Dragonhold — so named, she liked to say, because it had been paid for by dragons.
The author of scores of books in different series, McCaffrey was best known for “Dragonriders,” written over four decades and comprising more than 20 novels. The books sold millions of copies and have inspired a cornucopia of Internet fan fiction and a spate of scholarly studies.
Anne Inez McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Mass., on April 1, 1926. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Slavonic languages and literature from Rad cliffe and trained as an actress and opera singer before her writing life transported her to operatic worlds of another kind.
Her first novel, “Restoree,” was published in 1967. McCaffrey’s honors include the two loftiest awards of her genre: a Hugo, which she won in 1968 for her novella “Weyr Search,” later incorporated into the Dragonriders series; and a Nebula, for the novella “Dragonriders,” also incorporated into the series. The New York Times