Todd McCaffrey Books In Order

Publication Order of New Adventures of Pern Series (with Anne McCaffrey) Books

Publication Order of Dragonriders of Pern Books

Publication Order of Game of Stars Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Todd McCaffrey is an American Irish author best known for writing a series of science fiction novels, the most popular of which is the Dragonriders of Pern series, which he coauthored with Anne McCaffrey. Todd was born in Montclair, New Jersey to Anne McCaffrey an author and Horace Wright Johnson a Dupont employee. Except for a brief period when his father was transferred to Dusseldorf, Germany, for the most part the family was resident in Wilmington in Delaware. In 1965, Horace moved the family to Long Island in New York City where the children finished their schooling while their mother Anne McCaffrey built her writing career. Given that his mother read and wrote science fiction, Todd was exposed very early to the genre, and particularly loved Ruthven Todd’s Space Cat series of novels. By the time he was 12, he had attended the 1968 New York City’s Lunacon, his first ever science fiction convention. In 1970, Todd’s parents got divorced and Anne moved to Ireland with Todd and his sister. The move saw Todd move around Dublin several times, as his mother struggled to feed and clothe them from the proceeds of her writing and childcare payments.

Todd McCaffrey finished his high school education back home in Ireland, before he moved back to the US in 1974 for his college studies. He went to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, where he undertook a course in engineering physics only to drop out after a year. He moved back to Dublin and earned his Mechanical Engineering degree from the College of Technology, and another one in Political Economy from Trinity College. Before he got his political economy degree, he served in the American military based in Stuttgart, Germany for four years before, he left to pursue civilian endeavors. Going back to the United States, he found a job in computer programming even though he preferred the aerospace industry. During this time he enrolled for a pilot’ program and took many solo trips between 1988 and 1990. Using his flight and military experiences, he made his first contribution to The Dragonlovers of Pern series “Training and Fighting Dragons” that was included in the “Dragon Lovers Guide to Pern” published in 1989. Most of his contributory works to the series in the 90s was written as Todd Johnson.

Todd would often accompany his mother to many of her meetings with gents, publishers, editors, and writers right from the time he was about twelve. As such, he had the front row seat to the Pern series right from the very first one that his mother wrote in 1968 when he was only nine. In fact, he remembers that his mother once asked him about his opinion on the bad press that dragons had received all these years. The conversation gave birth to a story about a divided people that live in a technologically regressed survival planet, which has drawn many contrasts to the divisions in America during the Vietnam War. Three decades later, Anne McCaffrey’s publisher approached Todd and asked him to write an autobiography about his mother. He asserts that this was a ploy to ensure her mother wrote more Pern books rather than focus on her autobiography. By 1999, Todd had published “Dragonholder”, a novel that was so well received, that the editor suggested that he was best placed to continue writing the Pern series when his mother could no longer do it.

Todd McCaffrey would get started proper on the series in 2003 with the publication of “Dragon’s Kin” that he co-wrote with his mother Anne McCaffrey. He dove right into it solo in 2005 when he penned “Dragonsblood” in 2005. The series of novels are set in the 500-year period of the Third Pass novel and 2000 years prior to the events in the Ninth Pass when humans had just started settling in Pern. Most of the events mirror some of the most important events in Anne McCaffrey’s earliest works. Todd McCaffrey would later go on to publish several novels in the Pern series of novels that were just as popular if not more popular than the original works. Todd McCaffrey and his mother regularly attend several comic conventions around the US. They were the Guests of Honor at the 2008 New York annual Albacon.

“Dragon’s Kin” is the first solo novel in the Pern series by Todd McCaffrey. It is a story of how the people on Pern discover that some distant relatives of dragons have supernatural abilities. The beasts are then employed in locating stranded miners and to find gas pockets in deep mines. The lead in the novel in Kindan, a boy whose father owns one of the supernatural beasts named Dask. A mine caves in and Kindan loses his entire family forcing him to go live with a man who trains him in the darks arts of espionage and entertainment. Meanwhile, the camp is suffering from the lack of the dragon beasts, which is hampering work on the mines. Despite warnings from a few of the tribe, the leaders trade an entire winter’s coal reserves for a dragon egg. It is now up to Kindan to care for and raise the paranormal beast without any training or manual. However, he has the help of a mysterious girl who comes out of the blue and helps him train the animal that in the end saves many lives.

“Dragonsblood” is another excellent novel in the series by Todd McCaffrey. Loran the young dragon rider finds herself in a dire emergency, as a mysterious illness has been taking down the dragons. Loran a now needs to find a cure and fast if her beloved Arith is to survive the epidemic, which is spreading like wildfire. She finds the lyrics of an ancient song that surprisingly point to what may just be the answer to the community’s woes. But she faces a bigger problem as the community is more focused on the present, putting in danger their future by not minding about the very important knowledge. With her people struggling for survival, she needs to convince them that the present and near future is just as important as their far future. Suddenly she unearths evidence that may just portend a worse fate for her people and the dragons. She may have to join hands with a brave woman from centuries past to rally against sickness if their homeland Pern is to survive.

—-