Oh No! I Missed "Talk Like A Pirate" Day! But There's Still Great Pirate Tales of SFF …

Avast thar me 'earties—I can't believe I've missed International Talk Like A Pirate Day! September 19 was "the day" and of course that was when I was reflecting on the joys of spring equinox and looking ahead—and so completely missed this Very Important Annual Event.

So I've decided to celebrate it to today, anyway!

Last year I celebrated by listing some favourite pirate reads, including Margaret Mahy's The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate,  Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island, and Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood.

Today—and in the spirit of NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week—I thought I'd talk specifically about pirate tales in the SFF genre.

First off the blocks is easy-peasy: it has to be William Goldman's The Princess Bride!

And then there's Tom Powers' On Stranger Tides, which is being used as the basis for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. (More Captain Jack Sparrow—not to be confused with the Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood fame—yes, please! Actually, that would be "yes, please" to both!)

And the classic kids' story, JM Barrie's Peter Pan. And more recently, Kage Baker's The Hotel Under the Sand. (Both of which I mentioned last year—how not?)

But you know, after that I kind of got to scratching my head, trying to think of SFF books that were specifically about pirates, or featured a main pirate character—not just with a background mention of pirates, as with the Blackbeard incident in Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, but actually, specifically, about pirates.

I did think about CJ Cherryh's Rimrunners, where former space marine Bet Yeager falls in with a "spook" ship, but that is not quite the same thing as pirates—and although the Earth fleet in Cherryh's "Downbelow" 'verse has effectively taken to behaving like pirates, they don't see themselves as such …

So you might have to help me out here—what are some other great SFF novels either based specifically around pirates, or featuring a pirate as a major character?