Betty White died on December 31, 2021, at the age of 99, just 17 days before her 100th

 Betty White was an American actress and comedian with an entertainment career that spanned eight decades. White made her radio programming debut as a guest caller at the age of eight in 1930, and spent several years as a teenager working as a radio personality in Los Angeles under the guidance of disc jockey Al Jarvis. After leaving radio, White transitioned to television and became known as "the first lady of game shows." She was the first woman to receive the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host for the show Just Men! in 1983.

White's most notable roles include Sue Ann Nivens on the CBS sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–1977), Rose Nylund on the NBC sitcom The Golden Girls (1985–1992), and Elka Ostrovsky on the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015). White became the first woman to produce a sitcom with her show Life with Elizabeth. In 1955, she was named honorary Mayor of Hollywood.

Betty White and Alan Ladd

White received numerous accolades throughout her career. She earned eight Emmy Awards, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was a 1985 Television Hall of Fame inductee. White worked longer in television than anyone and earned a spot in the Guinness World Record in 2018.

Betty White died on December 31, 2021, at the age of 99, just 17 days before her 100th birthday. Her net worth was estimated to be $75 million. With her passing, she became the last surviving member of the Golden Girls cast. White will always be remembered for her impressive contributions to the entertainment industry and for being a beloved icon to fans around the world.

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Betty Hutton, American singer/actress (The Miracle of Morgan's Creek), died from complications from colon cancer she was , 86

Betty Hutton (born Elizabeth June Thornburg; ^[1] was an American stage, film, and television actress, comedian, dancer, and singer.died from complications from colon cancer she was , 86

(February 26, 1921 – March 12, 2007)

Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg in Battle Creek, Michigan. She was the daughter of a railroad foreman, Percy E. Thornburg (1896–1937^[2]) and his wife, Mabel Lum (1901–1967).^[3] While she was very young, her father abandoned the family for another woman. They did not hear of him again until they received a telegram in 1937, informing them of his suicide. Along with her older sister Marion, Betty was raised by her alcoholic mother, who took the surname Hutton and was later billed as the actress Sissy Jones.

The three started singing in the family's speakeasy when Betty was 3 years old. Troubles with the police kept the family on the move. They eventually landed in Detroit, where she attended Foch Intermediate School.^[4]

On one occasion, when Betty, preceded by a police escort, arrived at the premiere of Let's Dance (1950), her mother, arriving with her, quipped, "At least this time the police are in front of us!" Hutton sang in several local bands as a teenager, and at one point visited New York City hoping to perform on Broadway, where she was rejected.

A few years later, she was scouted by orchestra leader Vincent Lopez, who gave Hutton her entry into the entertainment business. In 1939, she appeared in several musical shorts for Warner Bros., and appeared in a supporting role on Broadway in Panama Hattie^[5] (starring Ethel Merman, who demanded on opening night that Hutton's musical numbers be cut from the show) and Two for the Show,^[6] both produced by Buddy DeSylva.

When DeSylva became a producer at Paramount Pictures, Hutton was signed to a featured role in The Fleet's In (1942), starring Paramount's number-one female star Dorothy Lamour. Hutton was an instant hit with the moviegoing public. Paramount did not immediately promote her to major stardom, however, but did give her second leads in a Mary Martin film musical, Star Spangled Rhythm (1943), and another Lamour film. In 1943, she was given co-star billing with Bob Hope in Let's Face It. During that year, she made $1250 per week.^[7]

In 1942, writer-director Preston Sturges cast Betty as the dopey but endearing small-town girl who gives local troops a happy send-off and wakes up married and pregnant, but with no memory of who her husband is, except that a few "z's" were in his name. This film, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, was delayed by Hays Office objections and Sturges' prolific output and was finally released early in 1944. The film made Hutton a major star; Preston Sturges was nominated for a Best Writing Oscar, the film was named on the National Film Board's Top Ten films for the year, the National Board of Review nominated the film for Best Picture of 1944, and awarded Betty Hutton the award for Best Acting for her performance in the film. The New York Times named it as one of the 10 Best Films of 1942-1944.

Critic James Agee noted that "the Hays office must have been raped in its sleep"^{[citation needed]} to allow the film to be released. And although the Hays Office received many letters of protest because of the film's subject matter, it was Paramount's highest-grossing film of 1944, playing to standing-room-only audiences in some theatres. On the strength of its success, she signed a recording contract with the newly formed Capitol Records (she was one of the earliest artists to do so). Buddy DeSylva, one of Capitol's founders, also co-produced her next hit, the musical Incendiary Blonde, directed by veteran comedy director George Marshall and released in 1945, by which time Hutton had replaced Lamour as Paramount's top female box-office attraction. Marshall also directed Hutton in the hugely popular The Perils of Pauline in 1947, where she sang a Frank Loesser song that was nominated for an Oscar: "I Wish I Didn't Love You So."

Hutton in 1952

She was billed above Fred Astaire in the 1950 musical Let's Dance. Her next screen triumph came in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which hired her to replace an exhausted Judy Garland in the role of Annie Oakley. The film, with the leading role retooled for Hutton, was a smash hit, with the biggest critical praise going to Hutton. Among her lesser-known roles were an unbilled cameo in Sailor Beware (1952) with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, in which she portrayed Dean's girlfriend, Hetty Button.

Altogether, Hutton made 19 films from 1942 to 1952. Her career as a Hollywood star ended due to a contract dispute with Paramount following the Oscar-winning The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and Somebody Loves Me (1952), a biography of singer Blossom Seeley. The New York Times reported that the dispute resulted from her insistence that her husband at the time, choreographer Charles O'Curran, direct her next film. This is not as outrageous as it now sounds, since many famous female stars, from Greta Garbo to Alexander Korda's first wife, silent movie star María Corda, often demanded directing gigs for their unknown husbands as the price of their next film.

However, beset by the erosion of their audience to television, the dismemberment of their theater chains and the rise of McCarthyism, the studio declined, and Hutton broke her contract. Hutton's last completed film was a small one, Spring Reunion, released in 1957, a drama in which she gave an understated, sensitive performance. Unfortunately, box-office receipts indicated the public did not want to see a subdued Hutton. She also became disillusioned with Capitol's management and moved to RCA Victor.

Hutton got work in radio, appeared in Las Vegas and in nightclubs, then tried her luck in the new medium of television. In 1954, TV producer Max Liebman, of comedian Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, fashioned his first "Color Spectacular" as an original musical written especially for Hutton, Satins and Spurs.^[8] It was a flop with the public and critics, probably because Hutton had an outsized personality that didn't work well on "the small screen." Its viewers also probably expected to see color on their black and white sets, and when they did not, switched to something else.^{[citation needed]}

In 1957, she appeared on a Dinah Shore show on NBC that also featured Boris Karloff; the program has been preserved on a kinescope. Lucille Ball (another female star who had clearly pushed her husband to a lucrative career) and Desi Arnaz took a chance on Hutton in 1959, with their company Desilu Productions giving her a CBS sitcom, The Betty Hutton Show. Hutton hired the still-blacklisted and future film composer Jerry Fielding to direct her series.^[9] They had met over the years in Las Vegas when he was blacklisted from TV and radio and could get no other work, and her Hollywood career was also fading. It was Fielding's first network job since losing his post as musical director of Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life in 1953 after hostile questioning by HUAC. The Betty Hutton Show faded quickly.

She guest-starred in the 1965 Gunsmoke episode "Bad Lady from Brookline". Her character takes a job singing in a saloon, while developing her shooting skills sufficiently to kill Matt Dillon for murdering her husband. The impression is that the show was written specifically to showcase Hutton's talents.^{[citation needed]}

Hutton continued headlining in Las Vegas and touring across the country. She returned to Broadway briefly in 1964 when she temporarily replaced a hospitalized Carol Burnett in the show Fade Out – Fade In.^[10] In 1967, she was signed to star in two low-budget Westerns for Paramount, but was fired shortly after the projects began. In 1980, she took over the role of Miss Hannigan during the original Broadway production of Annie while Alice Ghostley was on vacation. Ghostley replaced the original Miss Hannigan actress, Dorothy Loudon (who won a Tony Award for the role).

Hutton's first marriage was to camera manufacturer Ted Briskin on September 3, 1945. The marriage ended in divorce in 1950. Two daughters were born to the couple:

• Lindsay Diane Briskin, born in Barcelona, Spain on March 1, 1946
• Candice Elizabeth Briskin, born in Havana, Cuba on December 3, 1947

Hutton's second marriage in 1952 was to choreographer Charles O'Curran. They divorced in 1955. He died in 1984.

She married for the third time in 1955. Husband Alan W. Livingston, an executive with Capitol Records, was the creator of Bozo the Clown. They divorced five years later, although some accounts refer to the union as a nine-month marriage.

Her fourth and final marriage in 1960 was to jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli, a brother of Conte Candoli. Hutton and Candoli had one child:

• Carolyn Candoli, born on March 9, 1961

They divorced in 1967.

Hutton was once engaged to the head of the Warner Bros. makeup department, makeup artist Perc Westmore, in 1942,^[11] but broke off the engagement, saying it was because he bored her.^[12]

After the 1967 death of her mother in a house fire and the collapse of her last marriage, Hutton's depression and pill addictions escalated. She divorced her fourth husband, jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli, and declared bankruptcy. Hutton had a nervous breakdown and later attempted suicide after losing her singing voice in 1970. After regaining control of her life through rehabilitation, and the mentorship of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Peter Maguire, Hutton converted to Roman Catholicism and took a job as a cook at a rectory in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. She made national headlines when it was revealed she was working in a rectory.

In 1974, a well-publicized "Love-In for Betty Hutton" was held at New York City's Riverboat Restaurant, emceed by comedian Joey Adams, with several old Hollywood pals on hand. The event raised $10,000 for Hutton and gave her spirits a big boost, but steady work still eluded her.

Hutton appeared in an interview with Mike Douglas and a brief guest appearance in 1975 on Baretta. In 1977, Hutton was featured on The Phil Donahue Show. Hutton was then happily employed as hostess at a Newport, Rhode Island, jai alai arena.

She also appeared on Good Morning America, which led to a 1978 televised reunion with her two daughters. Hutton began living in a shared home with her divorced daughter and grandchildren in California, but returned to the East Coast for a three-week return to the stage. She followed Dorothy Loudon as the evil Miss Hannigan in Annie on Broadway^[13] in 1980. Hutton's rehearsal of the song "Little Girls" was featured on Good Morning America. Hutton's Broadway comeback was also included in a profile that was done about her life, her struggle with pills, and her recovery on CBS News Sunday Morning.

A ninth-grade drop-out, Hutton went back to school and earned a master's degree in psychology from Salve Regina University. During her time at college, Hutton became friends with singer-songwriter Kristin Hersh and attended several early concerts of Hersh's band, Throwing Muses.^[14] Hersh later wrote the song "Elizabeth June" as a tribute to her friend, and wrote about their relationship in further detail in her memoir, Rat Girl.^[15]

Hutton's last known performance, in any medium, was on Jukebox Saturday Night, which aired on PBS in 1983.^[16] Hutton stayed in New England and began teaching comedic acting at Boston's Emerson College. She became estranged again from her daughters.

Betty Hutton's headstone at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California - her epitaph reads "Loved by All".

After the death of her ally, Father Maguire, Hutton returned to California, moving to Palm Springs in 1999, after decades in New England. Hutton hoped to grow closer with her daughters and grandchildren, as she told Robert Osborne on TCM's Private Screenings in April 2000, though her children remained distant. She told Osborne that she understood their hesitancy to accept a now elderly mother. The TCM interview first aired on July 18, 2000. The program was rerun as a memorial on the evening of her death in 2007, and again on July 11, 2008, April 14, 2009, January 26, 2010, and as recently as March 18, 2017.^[17] as part of TCM's memorial tribute for Robert Osborne.

Hutton lived in Palm Springs until her death March 12, 2007, at 86, from colon cancercomplications.^[18][19] She is buried at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.^[

 
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Anne McCaffrey, American fantasy writer (Dragonriders of Pern series), died from a stroke she was 85.

Anne Inez McCaffrey  was an American-born Irish writer, best known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series died from a  stroke she was 85.. Early in McCaffrey's 46-year career as a writer, she became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction and the first to win a Nebula Award died from a  stroke she was 85.. Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science-fiction books to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.
In 2005 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey its 22nd Grand Master, an annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction.^[3][4] She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on 17 June 2006.^[5][6][7]

Life and career

Anne Inez McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the second of three children of Anne Dorothy (née McElroy) and Col. George Herbert McCaffrey. She had two brothers: Hugh ("Mac", died 1988) and Kevin Richard McCaffrey ("Kevie").^[8][9] Her father had Irish and English ancestry, and her mother was of Irish descent.^[10] She attended Stuart Hall (a girls' boarding school in Staunton, Virginia),^[11] and graduated from Montclair High School in New Jersey.^[12] In 1947 she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College with a degree in Slavonic Languages and Literature.^[8]
In 1950 she married Horace Wright Johnson (died 2009),^[13] who shared her interests in music, opera and ballet.^[14] They had three children: Alec Anthony, born 1952; Todd, born 1956 and Georgeanne ("Gigi", Georgeanne Kennedy), born 1959.^[8]
Except for a short time in Düsseldorf, the family lived for most of a decade in Wilmington, Delaware. They moved to Sea Cliff, Long Island in 1965, and McCaffrey became a full-time writer.^[15]
McCaffrey served a term as secretary-treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1968 to 1970. In addition to handcrafting the Nebula Award trophies, her responsibilities included production of two monthly newsletters and their distribution by mail to the membership.^[16]
McCaffrey emigrated to Ireland with her two younger children in 1970, weeks after filing for divorce. Ireland had recently exempted resident artists from income taxes, an opportunity that fellow science-fiction author Harry Harrison had promptly taken and helped to promote. McCaffrey's mother soon joined the family in Dublin.^[17] The following spring, McCaffrey was guest of honor at her first British science-fiction convention (Eastercon 22, 1971). There she met British reproductive biologist Jack Cohen,^[18] who would be a consultant on the science of Pern.^[19]

Writer

McCaffrey had had two short stories published during the 1950s. The first ("Freedom of the Race", about women impregnated by aliens) was written in 1952 when she was pregnant with her son Alec. It earned a $100 prize in Science-Fiction Plus.^[20] Her second story, "The Lady in the Tower", was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction by editor Robert P. Mills and purchased again by editor Judith Merril for The Year's Greatest Science Fiction.^[a] McCaffrey said "she thought of the story when wishing herself alone, like a lady in an ivory tower".^[21]
Judith Merril matched McCaffrey with her long-time literary agent Virginia Kidd (died 2003) and invited her to the Milford Writer's Workshop (to which she returned many times), where participants each brought a story to be critiqued.^[22] After her first Milford workshop in 1959 she worked on "The Ship Who Sang", the story which began the Brain & Brawn Ship series. At the story's end, the spaceship Helva sings "Taps" for her human partner. Decades later, McCaffrey's son Todd called it "almost an elegy to her father".^[23] In interviews between 1994 and 2004, she considered it her best story and her favorite.^{[24][25][26][27]} "I put much of myself into it: myself and the troubles I had in accepting my father's death [1954] and a troubled marriage."^[25]
McCaffrey then wrote two more "Ship" stories and began her first novel. Regarding her motivation for Restoree (1967), her son recalled her saying, "I was so tired of all the weak women screaming in the corner while their boyfriends were beating off the aliens. I wouldn't have been—I'd've been in there swinging with something or kicking them as hard as I could".^[28] McCaffrey explained that it did not require a sequel; it "served its purpose of an intelligent, survivor-type woman as the protagonist of an S-F story".^[29]
Regarding her 1969 Decision at Doona (which she dedicated "To Todd Johnson—of course!"), her son recalled that he was directed to lower his voice in his fourth-grade school play when his mother was in the auditorium. That inspired the Doona story, which opens on "an overcrowded planet where just talking too loud made you a social outcast".^[30] As a settler on Doona, the boy talker has a priceless talent.
McCaffrey made a fast start in Ireland, completing for 1971 publication Dragonquest and two Gothic novels for Dell, The Mark of Merlin and The Ring of Fear.^[31][32] With a contract for The White Dragon (which would complete the "original trilogy" with Ballantine), her writing stalled. During the next few years the family moved several times in the Dublin area and struggled to make ends meet, supported largely by child-care payments and meager royalties.^[33]
The young-adult book market provided a crucial opportunity. Editor Roger Elwood sought short contributions for anthologies, and McCaffrey started the Pern story of Menolly. She delivered "The Smallest Dragonboy" for $154, and four stories which later became The Crystal Singer.^[34] Futura Publications in London signed her to write books about dinosaurs for children.^[35] Editor Jean E. Karl at Atheneum Books sought to attract more female readers to science fiction and solicited "a story for young women in a different part of Pern". McCaffrey completed Menolly's story as Dragonsong and contracted for a sequel before its publication in 1976. The tales of Menolly are continued in Dragonsinger: Harper of Pern, and Dragondrums as the "Harper Hall Trilogy". ^[36] With a contract with Atheneum she was able to buy a home (named "Dragonhold" for the dragons who bought it).^[37] Her son wrote, 20 years later, that she "first set dragons free on Pern and then was herself freed by her dragons."^[38]

Dragons

Some time after their move to Long Island, Todd McCaffrey recalls, his mother asked him what he thought of dragons. She was brainstorming about their "bad press all these years". The result was a "technologically regressed survival planet" whose people were united against a threat from space (in contrast to an America divided by the Vietnam War). "The dragons became the biologically renewable air force, and their riders 'the few' who, like the RAF pilots in World War Two, fought against incredible odds day in, day out—and won."^[39]
The first Pern story, "Weyr Search", was published in 1967 by John W. Campbell in Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It won the 1968 Hugo Award for best novella, voted by participants in the annual World Science Fiction Convention.^[3] The second Pern story, "Dragonrider", won the 1969 Nebula Award for best novella, voted annually by the Science Fiction Writers of America.^[3] Thus she was the first woman to win a Hugo for fiction^[7] and the first to win a Nebula.^{[citation needed]}
"Weyr Search" covers the recruitment of a young woman, Lessa, to establish a telepathic bond with a queen dragon at its hatching, thus becoming a dragonrider and the leader of a Weyr community. "Dragonrider" explores the growth of the queen dragon Ramoth, and the training of Lessa and Ramoth. Editor Campbell requested "to see dragons fighting thread [the menace from space]", and also suggested time travel; McCaffrey incorporated both suggestions. The third story, "Crack Dust, Black Dust", was not separately published, but the first Pern novel (Dragonflight, published by Ballantine Books in 1968) was a fix-up of all three.^[40]
If John Campbell was midwife to Dragonflight (with its major components published as award-winning novellas), agent Virginia Kidd and editor Betty Ballantine provided advice and assistance for its sequel Dragonquest. It was almost complete (and the contract for another sequel signed) before the 1970 move to Ireland. Both Ballantine and fellow writer Andre Norton made suggestions for the mutant white dragon.^[41]
Readers waited a long time for the completion of the original trilogy. Progress was not made until 1974–1975, when the New England Science Fiction Association invited McCaffrey to its annual convention (Boskone) as guest of honor (which included publication of a novella for sale on-site). She wrote A Time When, which would become the first part of The White Dragon.^[b]
The White Dragon was released with new editions of the first two Pern books, with cover art illustrated by Michael Whelan. It was the first science-fiction book by a woman on the New York Times bestseller list, and the cover painting is still in print from Whelan. The artists share credit for their career breakthroughs.^[c][d]

Collaborations

McCaffrey said of her collaborations with Todd and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, "While I would dearly love to have the energy to tell a tale all on my own, I really cannot say that I am not ably represented with my collaborations". In the Pern collaboration with Todd, she was mainly "making suggestions or being a sounding board".^[13] According to Todd, McCaffrey also gave Todd and his sister Gigi permission to write their own stories set in the Pern universe.^{[citation needed]}

Death

McCaffrey died at age 85 on 21 November 2011 at her home in Ireland, following a stroke.^[42]

Books

Classification

In August 1987, Locus: The magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field ranked two of the eight extant Pern novels among the 33 "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", based on a poll of subscribers; Dragonflight was #9 and The White Dragon #23.^[43] Commenting on the Locus list, David Pringle called them "arguably science fiction rather than fantasy proper"^[44] and named McCaffrey a "leading practitioner" of the planetary romance subgenre of science fiction.^[45][e]
McCaffrey considered most of her work science fiction and enjoyed "cutting them short when they call me a 'fantasy' writer". All the Pern books may be considered science fiction, since the dragons were genetically engineered by the Pern colonists. Regarding science, she said "I don't keep up with developments, but I do find an expert in any field in which I must explain myself and the science involved".^[24] Astronomer Steven Beard often helped with science questions,^[46] and McCaffrey acknowledged reproductive biologist Jack Cohen several times.^{[example needed]}
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame citation of Anne McCaffrey summarizes her genre as "science fiction, though tinged with the tone and instruments of fantasy", and her reputation as "a writer of romantic, heightened tales of adventure explicitly designed to appeal—and to make good sense to—a predominantly female adolescent audience."^[7]
McCaffrey said in 2000, "There are no demographics on my books which indicate the readers are predominately of an age or sex group. Dragons have a universal appeal"!^[25] Formerly, it was another matter:

I started writing s-f in the late 50's/early 60's, when readership was predominantly male. And their attitudes unreconstructed. [... Women] began reading s-f and fantasy—and, by preference, women writers. My stories had themes and heroines they could, and did, relate to. I never had any trouble with editors and publishers. I had trouble getting male readers to believe I was serious, and a good enough writer to interest them.

In 1999, the American Library Association gave McCaffrey the 11th Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults, citing The Ship Who Sang (1969) and the first six Pern books^[47] (those sometimes called the "original trilogy" and the "Harper Hall trilogy").

Restoree

McCaffrey's first novel was Restoree, published by Ballantine Books in 1967. Unlike most science-fiction books of the era, Restoree's heroine is a strong-willed, intelligent woman who is willing and able to think for herself and act on her own initiative. McCaffrey was widely quoted as saying that Restoree was intended as a "jab" at how women were usually portrayed in science fiction.^[48]

Federated Sentient Planets universe

Several of McCaffrey's series (and more than half her books) are set in a universe governed by the "Federated Sentient Planets" ("Federation" or "FSP"). Although Pern's history is connected to the Federation, McCaffrey only used it as a backdrop for storytelling and did not consider her different "worlds" to be part of the same universe.

Dragonriders of Pern series

Main article: Dragonriders of Pern

See lists in publication order and Pern chronological order

McCaffrey's best-known works are the Dragonriders of Pern series. These are set on a planet known as Pern, settled by colonists from Earth. The advanced technology of their ancestors has been lost, so the inhabitants of Pern have reverted to a society similar to western medieval Earth. However, before the loss of this advanced technology the original colonists produced genetically engineered dragons. These dragons are now flown by elite "dragonriders", who communicate telepathically with them. Together, they defend Pern against pernicious "thread" which cross space periodically from a nearby planet (the "red star") and threaten to destroy all life on Pern.

The Brain & Brawn Ship series

Main article: The Ship Who Sang

See list of books

The Brain & Brawn Ship series comprises seven novels, only the first of which (a fix-up of five previously published stories) was written by McCaffrey alone.^[49] The stories in this series deal with the adventures of "shell-people" or "Brains", who as infants (due to illness or birth defects) have had to be hard-wired into a life-support system. With sensory input and motor nerves tied into a computer they serve as starship pilots (or colony administrators), seeing and feeling the colony or ship as an extension of their own body. They perform this job to pay off their debt for education and hardware, and continue as free agents once the debt is paid. To compensate for the Brains' inability to move within human habitats they are paired with partners known as "Brawns", who are trained in a wide array of skills (including the protection of their Brain counterparts). It was considered impossible for a person to adjust to being a shell after the age of two or three. An exception, in The Ship Who Searched, was a shell-person who was seven when she became quadriplegic.
The Ship books are set in the same universe as the Crystal Singer books; Brainship-Brawn pairings were also characters in the second and third volumes of that series.

The Crystal universe

See list of books

The Crystal universe is the setting for five books, including the Crystal Singer trilogy. The first book (and first of the trilogy), The Crystal Singer (1982) is a fix-up of four stories published in 1974–1975.^[50]
The Crystal Singer series revolves around the planet Ballybran. Under a permanent biohazard travel restriction, Ballybran is home to one of the FSP's wealthiest (and most reclusive) organizations: the Heptite Guild. Source of crystals vital to a number of industries, the Heptite Guild is known to require absolute, perfect pitch in hearing and voice for all applicants (especially those seeking to mine crystal by song). The second and third books feature brainships which were not main characters in the Brain & Brawn Ship series.

Ireta

See list of books

The Ireta series (as catalogued by the Internet Speculative Fiction Database) comprises five novels: two "Dinosaur Planets" by McCaffrey in 1978 and 1984 and three "Planet Pirates" co-written during the 1990s.^[51]
They share a fictional premise, and some characters and events overlap. "Dinosaur Planets" follow the Exploration and Evaluation Corps team on the planet Ireta, which did not expect to find dinosaurs. In "Planet Pirates", all is not well in the FSP: pirates attack the spacelanes. Survivors on Ireta and the survivors of space pirate attacks join forces.

The Talents universe

Main article: To Ride Pegasus

See list of books

"The Talents Universe" (as catalogued by the Internet Speculative Fiction Database) comprises two series: "Talent" and "The Tower and Hive" and share a fictional premise. Eight books (all by McCaffrey alone) are rooted in her second story (1959) and three stories published in 1969.^[52]
The Talents universe involves a society built around the Talents of telepathic, telekinetic individuals who become integral to the connectivity of interstellar society.

The Barque Cat series

See list of books

This series covers the origin of the barque cats in the Tower and Hive series.

Doona

See list of books

Two civilizations in near-identical circumstances – an overlarge, lethargic population and a tragic history with sentient aliens – end up attempting to colonize the same planet by accident. What the humans do not know is that the people they have misidentified as nomadic natives are more technically advanced than themselves (and under no such illusions regarding the humans). The books are set in the time of "Amalgamated Worlds", but a sentence in chapter ten of Crisis at Doona hints that there is "a desire to form a Federation of Sentient Planets". This sets the books just prior to the FSP universe (which comprises much of McCaffrey's work).

Petaybee universe

Main article: Petaybee Series

See list of books

The Petaybee universe comprises two trilogies (Powers and The Twins of Petaybee) by McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.^[53]

The Freedom series

Main article: Catteni Series

See list of books

The Freedom series (or the "Catteni Sequence") comprises one 1970 short story and four Freedom novels written between 1995 and 2002.^[54]

Acorna universe

Main article: Acorna

See list of books

The "Acorna Universe series" comprises ten novels published between 1997 and 2007: seven sometimes known as Acorna and three sometimes known as Acorna's Children. The first two were written by McCaffrey and Margaret Ball, and the rest by McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.^[55]

Other works

This section requires expansion. (November 2011)

McCaffrey also published two short-story collections, several romances and young-adult fantasies. Her nonfiction work includes two cookbooks and a book about dragons. McCaffrey collaborated closely with musicians Tania Opland and Mike Freeman on two CDs ("The Masterharper of Pern" and "Sunset's Gold"), based on her lyrics and the music described in her Pern novels.


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