(no subject)

So, Anne McCaffrey died this week. You know you are getting older, when you think, 85 isn't that old and damn, my Dad is about ten years away. Anne outlived the woman who introduced her books to me and science fiction/fantasy as well. My Aunt Audrey - a librarian for a school made up of only the 6th Grade. Yep, there is a school out there somewhere made up of only 6th graders. It's in Las Vegas. She sent me books for Christmas and birthdays. And gave me the Dragon Rider's of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. She also gave JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and numerous Andre Norton novels, Zelphia Keatley Snyder - who she also contacted on my behalf and provided me with the opportunity to interview by snail mail (no internet back then. My beloved Aunt showed me that sci-fi did not equal monsters or men with guns. It wasn't Space 1999 or Star Trek or even just Star Wars...it was dragons on a planet in outer-space, and a female ship who sang, it was made up of magic and wonder and women, lovely wonderful women who kicked ass. My Aunt died of a blood clot when she was 55 years of age, in 2000. I remember receiving the phone call and the grief hitting me like a mac truck. I bawled for hours. Sloppy tears. And at my parents home that Christmas, I re-read the first novel she'd lent of Anne McCaffrey's - Restoree - a story about a women who is taken as meat by aliens, and then restored on an alien world.

My Aunt the frustrated science fiction and western writer, who told my mother as they were growing up, sharing a double bed, stories. Long detailed stories. Who adored books. And stayed a virgin until she met and married her husband, at the age of 39. Who taught me to bead. And lived inside her mind. Having no children of her own...in a way I think she thought of me, much as I think of my little neice, as her own.

Whenever I think of Anne McCaffrey, I think of my Aunt...who introduced me to genre fiction - sci-fi and fantasy. And of course, dragons.