Award-winning fantasy fiction author Anne McCaffrey passed away Monday at the age of 85. The first woman to win the Hugo and the Nebula prizes for science fiction writing, McCaffrey was made famous by her “Dragonriders of Pern” series.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, McCaffrey’s publisher, Random House, issued a statement saying that the author died of a stroke in her home south of Dublin where she had lived for the past 40 years.
McCaffrey was notable as one of the first women to make a name for herself in the heavily male world of science fiction. Her distinctive emotional style marked her writing and helped boost her to fame.
“I have always used emotion as a writing tool,” McCaffrey said of her prose in a 2004 interview with Locus magazine. “The thing is, emotion—if it’s visibly felt by the writer—will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.”
After winning the Hugo award in 1968 and the Nebula in 1969, McCaffrey rose to prominence in 1978 with the publication of “The White Dragon.” The LA Times noted that it was her only novel of the 24 that broke the New York Times best-seller list.
McCaffrey leaves behind a daughter and two sons, one of whom helped co-author five of her Pern-based novels. The last in the series, “Sky Dragons,” is due for publication in 2012.
