Celebrating the women authors who shaped science fiction and fantasy

Anne McCaffrey

The dragonriders of Pern have long been a staple of the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Anne McCaffrey is most famous for her Dragonriders of Pern novels, though they were far from the only stories she wrote in her long and prolific career. Her first novel, Dragonflight, was serialized in 1976 in Analog magazine before being collected into a single book. In addition to Pern, McCaffrey wrote numerous other series including her Crystal Singer science fiction romance books, her co-authored Brainship series, and Tower and Hive.

Of course, any conversation about McCaffrey always comes back around to Pern. Over the course of more than 20 novels McCaffrey created a stunningly unique world that influenced many of today’s biggest writers. Pern is notable not just for the dragons and the adventures and the richly poetic storytelling, but also for the fact that they toed the line between science fiction and fantasy in a way that still feels unique decades later.

The books are about a human culture of dragon riders on the distant planet Pern. There are ties to Earth, and McCaffrey did write some novels that fleshed those out. But for the most part, her stories were adventures, equal parts fun and moving.

McCaffrey received numerous awards and honors over the course of her career, including multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. Though she passed away of natural causes in 2011, her son Todd has continued to tell stories set in Pern.

Tamora Pierce

Best known for her books set in the fantasy realm of Tortall, Tamora Pierce has been writing novels for young adults for close to half a century at this point and is still going strong. The first novel in her The Song of the Lioness series, Alanna: The First Adventure, came out in 1983 and introduced readers to its namesake hero, a young girl who wanted to break with tradition and become a knight. Pierce has gone on to write over 18 novels and numerous short stories set in Tortall, including her newest series The Numair Chronicles, which she started in 2018 with Tempests and Slaughter. Beyond Tortall, Pierce has also written 11 books in a different universe called The Circle.

Pierce has been an incredibly inspiring author to many people, and due to the sheer number of series she’s written it’s always fun to meet a Pierce fan and hear about why one particular sequence of the Tortall books captured their imagination. Many of Pierce’s works, such as The Song of the Lioness and the Tricksters books, deal with young women finding their own path in a world that has very specific expectations for them. Pierce’s stories are empowering and heartfelt, and filled with a hope and optimism that give them the feel of immediate classics. (Which isn’t to say things can’t get pretty brutal in them as well.)

Tamora Pierce is still writing and inspiring fans today. She is currently working on book 2 of The Numair Chronicles, though no release date has yet been announced.