[Codayus]

Objectively, her work is not that great. She wrote simple stories with repetitive plots and cardboard characters. And yet...

It's tempting to try and compare one of her books to, say, one of Louis McMaster Bujold's works, and sneer that McCaffrey was just a hack. And perhaps she was, but that rather misses the point. Bujold started writing in a world that already had McCaffrey in it (and McCaffrey blurbed some of Bujold's early work very positively too).

McCaffrey was a pioneer. No, she wasn't the first, but she was one OF the first, and one of the first to be widely popular, and certainly one of the first female authors to be widely popular. All of which are major achievements.

I couldn't begin to imagine how many kids got their first taste of sci-fi/fantasy because their local library had a pile of McCaffrey's Dragonrider books. And if many of them went on to "better books" later in life, and have barely gave McCaffrey's work another thought in the years since, well...it doesn't change McCaffrey's contribution. There's a non-zero number of readers (and, come to that, authors) who wouldn't be around reading (and writing) if it wasn't for McCaffrey.

RIP Anne McCaffrey.

[Symmetry]

Similar thoughts here. That I've grown beyond her stories is something I have to give her stories some credit for.

[Eliezer]

Dragonflight was the first grownup-book I ever read, long long ago.

[keenerd]

There would be more video games though. I have avoided all of her books just because she shut down the fan-made Pernband.