Anne McCaffrey is one of the most prominent writers of science fiction today. Her special contribution has been to make emotion and love respectable subjects in science fiction. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Anne Inez McCaffrey was awarded a B.A. in 1947 at Radcliffe College where she wrote her senior thesis on Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (1924) and George Orwell's 1984 (1949). She worked as a copywriter from 1947 to 1952, studied theater and voice, and directed operas and operettas. She was married to H. Wright Johnson from 1950 to 1970 and has three children. Her first story was published in 1953, but she prefers to acknowledge her 1959 novella The Lady in the Tower (published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) as her first. Now living in Ireland, she says that she imagines interesting people or concepts to write about and then finds conflicts for them. Major themes include adjustment to change, love, and maturation. She...