These huge but loyal and sapient creatures have powers of Telepathy, Teleportation and Time Travel – further fantasticated speculation appears in the 'nonfiction' A Diversity of Dragons ( 1997) with Richard Woods – and symbiotically pair-bond at birth like giant ponies with a selected human. Her major series is set in a long-lost Earth colony, Pern, a world whose first human settlers (see Colonization of Other Worlds) had modified the native dragonish species 'fire lizards' through Genetic Engineering – the relatively late Dragonsdawn ( 1988) serves as the relevant origin story – in order to create the romantic empath dragons who dominate the overall sequence.

Soon McCaffrey began publishing the linked novels and stories that have made her reputation as a writer of romantic, heightened tales of adventure designed to appeal – and to make good sense to – readers who start young and who, over the years, grow into her world. She began publishing work of genre interest with 'Freedom of the Race' for Hugo Gernsback's Science-Fiction Plus in 1953, becoming well-known a decade or so later with her first novel, Restoree ( 1967), which rather conventionally, though with tongue in cheek, tells the story of a young woman who, after being flayed alive by Alien flesh-eaters, is saved and with her skin restored has adventures in another world's high society.

Most of her output was sf, though tinged with the tone and instruments of Fantasy: much of her main work, the enormous Pern sequence of Planetary Romance adventures (see below) is normally experienced as fantasy. (1926-2011) US-born professional horsebreeder and author, in Ireland from the 1970s mother of Gigi McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey.

The Survivors by Anne Edwards