April 1st 2026 marks the 100th birthday of Anne McCaffrey (1926 – 2011). Although she wrote many wonderful novels and series, I’d like to devote the month of April to taking a closer look at her Dragonriders Of Pern series, which easily my favourite of all her books.
I’ve mentioned the series here before but what I’m planning to do is talk about all of the novels and short stories over the course of the month. Every day in April (except for Sundays) will feature a post talking about her work in this setting. It will just be the ones that she wrote by herself: I haven’t read all the books by her son Todd, but I will be mentioning the continuation at some point.
I think she’s an important writer and I think that the Dragonriders are an important series, if only to measure how a series can change its focus and ideas over the course of its run as well as looking at the style of the author and how that changed over time. I’ll also be looking at how the themes of the books have reflected ideas in our own society and just how McCaffrey went from being considered progressive to old-fashioned (at the very least!) over the lifetime of the series.
I’ll be introducing the series on March 31st and Dragonflight on April 1st. I’m looking forward to seeing you there as well.
