The Girl Who Heard Dragons

Pern #8.5

by Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey's dragons are the stuff of which SF/fantasy legends are made. All of her dragon books for many years have been national bestsellers. She is one of the most popular writers ever in fantasy and science fiction.

The Girl Who Heard Dragons is a feast for McCaffrey fans and for all readers - a big, satisfying compilation of her fiction never before collected in book form. Best of all, it opens with an original short novel of Pern, "The Girl Who Heard Dragons." In addition, the book contains 24 beautiful black and white drawings by award-winning artist Michael Whelan.

Romance, humor, colorful description and affecting characters are Anne McCaffrey's hallmarks and the fifteen stories herein have these virtues in abundance. No wonder the Chicago Sun-Times described her as a "master of the well-told tale."

"The Girl Who Heard Dragons" is the story of Aramina, a teenage girl of Pern who hears dragons - a skill which does not seem likely to help solve her family's problems. They are "holdless," and must constantly roam the land, trying to hide from bandits. Aramina's mother fears losing her daughter completely to the life of a dragonrider, but McCaffrey has another fate in mind for her young heroine.

The fourteen other stories - all just as good - are:

Velvet Fields
Euterpe on a Fling
Duty Calls
A Sleeping Humpty Dumpty Beauty
The Mandalay Cure
A Flock of Geese
The Greatest Love
A Quiet One
If Madam Likes You...
Zulei, Grace, Nimshi and the Damnyankee
Cinderella Switch
Habit Is an Old Horse
Lady-in-Waiting
The Bones Do Lie

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Anne McCaffrey was born on April 1st, 1926, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Her parents were George Herbert McCaffrey, BA, MA PhD (Harvard), Colonel USA Army (retired), and Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey, estate agent. She had two brothers: Hugh McCaffrey (deceased 1988), Major US Army, and Kevin Richard McCaffrey, still living.

Anne was educated at Stuart Hall in Staunton Virginia, Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey, and graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, majoring in Slavonic Languages and Literatures.

Her working career included Liberty Music Shops and Helena Rubinstein (1947-1952). She married in 1950 and had three children: Alec Anthony, b. 1952, Todd, b.1956, and Georgeanne, b.1959.

Anne McCaffrey’s first story was published by Sam Moskowitz in Science Fiction + Magazine and her first novel was published by Ballantine Books in 1967. By the time the three children of her marriage were comfortably in school most of the day, she had already achieved enough success with short stories to devote full time to writing. Her first novel, Restoree, was written as a protest against the absurd and unrealistic portrayals of women in s-f novels in the 50s and early 60s. It is, however, in the handling of broader themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly the two series The Ship Who Sang and the fourteen novels about the Dragonriders of Pern that Ms. McCaffrey’s talents as a story-teller are best displayed.

She died at the age of 85, after suffering a massive stroke on 21 November 2011.

Obituaries: Locus, GalleyCat.