Part of Series
To escape extermination at the hands of their former colleagues, the Heavy Scouting Team, Kai, Varian, and their companions sought refuge in the suspended animation of cryogenic sleep. Now time has passed - it's hard to say how much, but at least two generations - and the survivors emerge from hibernation. Ireta, the planet of the dinosaurs, has changed a lot. The Heavy Team has regressed to primitive barbarism. Much-needed life support equipment is out of order or missing. All Ireta is altered. But help is near...a rescue ship is on the way. However, although hopes are reborn, new problems continue to arise. What are the motives of the mysterious Theks? Why do the intelligent Giffs - pterodactyls locked in an evolutionary dead end - act so strangely? And above all, what could be the cause of the Heavy Team's blind hostility? For survivors, it's about more than just survival...
Author
Anne McCaffrey was born on April 1st, 1926, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her parents were George Herbert McCaffrey, BA, MA PhD (Harvard), Colonel USA Army (retired), and Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey, estate agent. She had two brothers: Hugh McCaffrey (deceased 1988), Major US Army, and Kevin Richard McCaffrey, still living. Anne was educated at Stuart Hall in Staunton Virginia, Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey, and graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, majoring in Slavonic Languages and Literatures. Her working career included Liberty Music Shops and Helena Rubinstein (1947-1952). She married in 1950 and had three children: Alec Anthony, b. 1952, Todd, b.1956, and Georgeanne, b.1959. Anne McCaffrey’s first story was published by Sam Moskowitz in Science Fiction + Magazine and her first novel was published by Ballantine Books in 1967. By the time the three children of her marriage were comfortably in school most of the day, she had already achieved enough success with short stories to devote full time to writing. Her first novel, Restoree, was written as a protest against the absurd and unrealistic portrayals of women in s-f novels in the 50s and early 60s. It is, however, in the handling of broader themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly the two series The Ship Who Sang and the fourteen novels about the Dragonriders of Pern that Ms. McCaffrey’s talents as a story-teller are best displayed. She died at the age of 85, after suffering a massive stroke on 21 November 2011. Obituaries: Locus, GalleyCat.
