The Talents Universe

Series · 8 books · 1973-2000

By Anne McCaffrey

Books in series

To Ride Pegasus

1973

They were four extraordinary women who read minds, healed bodies, diverted disasters, foretold the future\-\-and became pariahs in their own land. A talented, elite cadre, they stepped out of the everyday human race...to enter their own!

Pegasus in Flight

1990

As director of the Jerhattan Parapsychic Center, telepath Rhyssa Owen coordinated the job assignments for psychically gifted Talents. And though she had her hands full dealing with the unreasonable demand for kinetics to work on the space platform that would be humankind's stepping-stone to the stars, she was always ready to welcome new Talents to the Center. Feisty and Streetwise, twelve-year-old Tirla used her extraordinary knack for languages to eke out a living in the Linear developments, where the poor struggled to make ends meet and children were conscripted or sold into menial work programs. Young Peter, paralyzed in a freak accident, hoped someday to get into space where zero gravity would enable him to function more easily. Both desperately needed help only other Talents could provide. With the appearance in her life of one extraordinary man with no measurable Talent at all, Rhyssa suddenly found herself questioning everything she thought she knew about her people. And when two Talented children were discovered to have some very unusual—and unexpected—abilities, she realized that she would have to reassess the potential of all Talentkind...

Pegasus in Space

2000

In a triumphant career spanning more than thirty years, Anne McCaffrey has won the devotion of millions of fans. Now she has written the exciting and long-awaited addition to her classic Pegasus series—and the perfect link to her bestselling Rowan saga . . . For an overpopulated Earth whose resources are strained to the breaking point, there is only one place to look for straight up. With the successful completion of the Padrugoi Space Station, humanity has at last achieved its first large-scale permanent presence in space. But there are those who, for motives of their own, want Padrugoi to fail. Standing in their way are the Talented, men and women gifted with extraordinary mental powers that have made them as feared as they are respected—and utterly indispensable to the colonization effort. Now, as sabotage and attempted murder strike the Station, it's up to the Talented to save the day. Only who is going to save the Talented? Pegasus in Space is the tale of Peter Reidinger, first Tower Prime!

The Rowan

1990

Told in the timeless style of Anne McCaffrey, The Rowan is the first installment in a wonderful trilogy. This is sci-fi at its best: a contemporary love story as well as an engrossing view of our world in the future. The kinetically gifted, trained in mind/machine gestalt, are the most valued citizens of the Nine Star League. Using mental powers alone, these few Prime Talents transport ships, cargo and people between Earth's Moon, Mars' Demos and Jupiter's Callisto. An orphaned young girl, simply called The Rowan, is discovered to have superior telepathic potential and is trained to become Prime Talent on Callisto. After years of self-sacrificing dedication to her position, The Rowan intercepts an urgent mental call from Jeff Raven, a young Prime Talent on distant Deneb. She convinces the other Primes to merge their powers with hers to help fight off an attack by invading aliens. Her growing relationship with Jeff gives her the courage to break her status-imposed isolation, and choose the more rewarding world of love and family.

Damia

1991

Of all the Rowan's children, Damia was the most brilliant and the one who inherited the Talent. It was obvious that she would be a Prime. As Damia grew up, her Talent became almost too strong to control, and the only solution was to send her to the planet of Deneb, to her strange grandmother.

Damia's Children

1993

Damia and Afra-Raven-Lyon had reared their children in a brilliant and unorthodox way. All their young had been 'paired' when six months old with the furry, one-eyed Mrdinis, the only other sentient beings in the Alliance, who could communicate with humans by their 'dream messages'. Together, Man and Mrdini worked to create prosperous worlds and guard against the terrible threat of the annihilating Hivers. And now, in the deeps of Space, Mrdini scouts had crossed the path of three Hive ships—ships that were giant hulks of cell units, bearing the queens and workers out into space, to breed and multiply and destroy wherever they found a viable planet. It was the four elder children of Damia—Laria, Thian, Rojer and Zara—all uniquely talented in their various ways, who were to play their part, helped by their life-long Dini friends, in the conquering and investigation of the Alien threat of the Hivers.

Lyon's Pride

1994

A continuation of the saga begun in "The Rowan", "Damia" and "Damia's Children". The four children were Primes among the Talents, and all their skills were desperately needed, for the Hivers' terrible Sphere ships were still thrusting through space, carrying death in their labyrinthine depths.

The Tower and the Hive

1999

Much had been done to limit and destroy the powers of the terrible Hivers, who had torn through space, annihilating every living thing that stood in their way. But still the Alliance had to discover the whereabouts of every last Hiver world and stop the Queens from further colonization.

Author

Anne McCaffrey

Author · 119 books

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.