Dragonwriter Read online

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  THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN is a trademark of Anne McCaffrey

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  First e-book edition: August 2013

  Dragonwriter : a tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern / edited by Todd McCaffrey, with Leah Wilson.

  pages cm

  Summary: “Science fiction Grand Master Anne McCaffrey and her work, particularly her Dragonriders of Pern series, are beloved by generations of readers. She was one of the first science fiction writers to appear on the New York Times bestseller list, the first woman to win the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and an inductee to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Her death in November 2011 was met with an outpouring of grief and memories from those whose lives her stories had touched. Edited by her son Todd, Dragonwriter collects McCaffrey’s friends, fans, and professional admirers to remember and pay tribute to the pioneering science fiction author, from the way her love of music and horses influenced her work to her redefinition of the SF genre”—Provided by publisher.

  eISBN: 978-1-937856-84-7 1. McCaffrey, Anne—Appreciation. 2. McCaffrey, Anne—Influence. 3. Science fiction, American—20th century—History and criticism. 4. Women and literature—United States—History—20th century. I. McCaffrey, Todd, 1956– editor of compilation. II. Wilson, Leah, editor of compilation. III. McCaffrey, Anne, honouree.

  PS3563.A255Z75 2013

  813’.54—dc23w

  2013018670

  Copyediting by Brittany Dowdle, Word Cat Editorial Services • Proofreading by Chris Koch and Amy Zarkos • Cover illustration © 2013 by Michael Whelan • Cover design by Heather Butterfield • Text design and composition by E. Strongin, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc. • Printed by Bang Printing

  Distributed by Perseus Distribution

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  Tel: 800-343-4499

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  Significant discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact Glenn Yeffeth at [email protected] or 214-750-3628.

  COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Anne McCaffrey, Believer in Us” © 2013 by David Brin

  “Why Are You Reading This Stupid Shirt?” © 2013 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  “Star Power” © 2013 by John Goodwin

  “How the Dragonlady Saved My Life” © 2013 by David Gerrold

  “Bookends” © 2013 by Robert Neilson

  “Lessons from Lessa” © 2013 by Elizabeth Moon

  “Flying in New Directions” © 2013 by Robin Roberts

  “Modeling the Writer’s Life” © 2013 by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “All the Weyrs of Pern” © 2013 by Wen Spencer

  “The McCaffrey Effect” © 2013 by Jody Lynn Nye and Bill Fawcett

  “The Ships That Were” © 2013 by Mercedes Lackey

  “The Dragonlady’s Songs” © 2013 by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  “Religion on Pern?” © 2013 by Richard J. Woods

  “Annie and Horses” © 2013 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Picturing Pern” © 2013 by Michael Whelan

  “Red Star Rising” © 2013 by Alec Johnson

  “Changes Without Notice” © 2013 by Angelina Adams

  “The Twithead with the Dragon Tattoo” © 2013 by Charlotte Moore

  “The Masterharper Is Gone” © 2013 by Janis Ian

  “Universal Mum” © 2013 by Georgeanne Kennedy

  Introduction, Afterword, and essay introductions © 2013 by Todd McCaffrey

  Contents

  Introduction

  Todd McCaffrey

  Anne McCaffrey, Believer in Us

  David Brin

  Why Are You Reading This Stupid Shirt?

  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  Star Power

  John Goodwin

  How the Dragonlady Saved My Life

  David Gerrold

  Bookends

  Robert Neilson

  Lessons from Lessa

  Elizabeth Moon

  Flying in New Directions

  Robin Roberts

  Modeling the Writer’s Life

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  All the Weyrs of Pern

  Wen Spencer

  The McCaffrey Effect

  Jody Lynn Nye and Bill Fawcett

  The Ships That Were

  Mercedes Lackey

  The Dragonlady’s Songs

  Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  Religion on Pern?

  Richard J. Woods

  Annie and Horses

  Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Picturing Pern

  Michael Whelan

  Red Star Rising

  Alec Johnson

  Changes Without Notice

  Angelina Adams

  The Twithead with the Dragon Tattoo

  Charlotte Moore

  The Masterharper Is Gone

  Janis Ian

  Universal Mum

  Georgeanne Kennedy

  Afterword

  Todd McCaffrey

  Acknowledgments

  About the Editor

  To all those who have found solace in the Worlds of Anne McCaffrey and Pern

  Introduction

  TODD MCCAFFREY

  ALL TOO OFTEN we try to measure a person by cold, hard facts: when they were born, when they died, their marriages, their children, their schooling.

  Is that really enough to illuminate a soul? What about when they cried in despair, wept for joy, screamed in exultation—aren’t those all memorable moments? When they sang, when they played, when they loved?

  What is it, truly, that marks a life and gives it shape?

  Those of you who are reading this probably have already met some aspect of Anne McCaffrey. Most likely you know of her as the science fiction author of the famous Dragonriders of Pern® series. Perhaps you first found her with The Ship Who Sang or with To Ride Pegasus or any of some hundreds of other novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories.

  So you know a part of Anne McCaffrey, and you’re reading this because you’d like to know more—perhaps to see her through different eyes: ones that knew her in a different light or from another perspective.

  Dragonwriter presents essays by people who knew Anne McCaffrey from various stages of her career and various points in her life that we hope will illustrate the life and passion of this marvelous person in ways previously not explored.

  You’ll get a cha
nce to hear recollections from all three of her children—Alec, her eldest; middle child, Todd (me); and the youngest, daughter Georgeanne Kennedy—as well as from people who knew her most of her adult life, people who only met her through her writing, and people who knew her entirely outside of her writing.

  It is not really possible to present Anne McCaffrey to you in a clear, concise way. It is simply not possible to show but snippets of the rainbow of her personality, of the array of ages in her life.

  By way of background, from a high-level, distant view, it is possible to say that Anne McCaffrey was born on April Fools’ Day in 1926 to a stern disciplinarian by the name of George Herbert McCaffrey and his wife, Anne Dorothy (McElroy) McCaffrey. She was the second of what were to be three children and the only daughter. Her father had served as a lieutenant in the First World War, was a reservist between the wars, would go back into service in the Second World War, and would finally die of tuberculosis contracted while working for the UN in Korea.

  While growing up, Anne was called “LeAnn” or “LeeAnn” to differentiate her from her mother. In college, she majored in Slavonic languages and literature (including minor excursions into Celtic literature) with a minor in geology. She wanted to be an opera singer and wound up, after graduation, working in a music store where she met Horace Wright Johnson. He wooed her with recordings of The Beggar’s Opera.

  Her husband, who preferred to be called by his middle name, Wright, got work with DuPont in their public relations department, and Wright and Anne started their family first in Montclair, New Jersey, and later, when the job moved, in Wilmington, Delaware.

  Anne had always liked reading, and science fiction had appealed to her as a teenager. She devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and his Barsoom series (John Carter of Mars and A Princess of Mars). She took up writing as soon as her youngest, Georgeanne (nicknamed “Gigi” for “Gorgeous George”), was old enough to leave under the eye of a babysitter, using her free time to regain her sanity (which had been much put upon by the antics of her second born).

  Anne still loved singing; she and Wright were active in the church choir. She had been born Catholic but lost faith during the Second World War and was untroubled by Wright’s association with the Presbyterian Church.

  It was in Wilmington that she also worked with a local theatre company, scaring me (middle son, Todd) silly when she played Queen Aggravain in a production of Once Upon a Mattress.

  Life took a major turn when Wright’s work demanded that he decamp to Germany for six months. Instead of splitting the family, it was decided to take them all, and so the boys were enrolled in the local German schule, and little Gigi stayed home. Anne learned gekauft Deutsch (“shopping German”) and was surprised to discover that two-year-old Gigi had absorbed enough of the language that when separated on a shopping trip, she approached the nearest motherly person and announced, “Ich habe meine Mutti verloren”—I’ve lost my mother.

  In Germany, not only did the family develop a passion for the marvelous fresh-baked breads, but Anne found herself a vocal coach who offered to fulfill her dream of becoming an opera singer. Instead, he destroyed her voice by forcing her to overwork it in a vain attempt to remove a burr she had on one note.

  Germany was a milestone in the family’s life, and while they toured France, Belgium, and even England, it also opened strains that were ultimately to destroy it.

  The family moved again, this time to Long Island, New York, when Wright’s job again moved. In order to afford expensive New York, the family agreed to share a rambling eighty-year-old three-story Victorian with another DuPont family, using the pretext that they were “third cousins.”

  Wright commuted to New York and dealt with such people as the Princess Galaxine while Anne stayed home and wrote. The fissures grew greater, and Wright found himself extolling the virtues of martini lunches and evenings on the veranda. Wright was not a pleasant drunk and took to being violent with the children, something Anne would not tolerate.

  The family broke in 1969, and in 1970, Anne moved with her two youngest children to Ireland. At the time she touted the marvelous tax-exempt status Ireland offered artists and writers, but later she confessed that it was to get “3,000 miles away” from her ex-husband.

  The move to Ireland was not the complete leap in the dark it seemed; Anne had been there one summer with her favorite aunt, Gladdie, and also knew Harry Harrison, another science fiction writer who had moved there the previous year. Anne’s mother, called “Bami,” followed not long afterward to add support.

  In Ireland, Anne found a nice semi-detached house and sent the children to a private school. Costs were low at the time, prices being roughly half what they were in New York. Anne’s marvelous editor, Betty Ballantine, at Ballantine Books, loaded her with contracts, including one to edit Cooking Out of This World.

  Ireland itself was another world, and Anne learned to love it. Irish pubs were a place where a single, divorced mother could go and not be molested or frowned upon. She met many “characters” who formed the basis of many characters in her later writing. She loved the lilt and weave of the Irish accent, and the turns of phrase soon stole into her writing.

  Life in Ireland for the first four years was difficult, very much hand-to-mouth and contract to contract. It became a family joke to talk about the Rolls being in the repair shop and how “wouldn’t it be nice to eat pancakes for dinner because we wanted them?”

  Anne was an excellent cook and learned to stretch food out the whole week.

  Her eldest son, Alec, arrived at one of the worst times, adding his bit to the family pot—later on shipping aboard a trawler and bringing back monkfish and other “delicacies” that graced the family table—and keeping the wolf from the door.

  In the strange way of life, the upward turning point came simultaneously with several downward turning points in 1974. Her son, Todd (me again), was accepted into Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; her daughter, Georgeanne, was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease after years of debilitating illness; and Anne’s mother suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed her left side—fortunately, she did not recover. As Anne said after, “She would have hated living like that.”

  The good news was that Anne had been invited to attend the New England Science Fiction Association’s annual spring convention, Boskone—and that they commissioned her at a healthy price to write a special novella to be sold at the convention. In all this turmoil, Anne had trouble finding a time when she could write and so got the title for the story, “A Time When.” This also became the first part of her third Pern novel, The White Dragon.

  Boskone was a triumph, the novella sold magnificently, and her two earlier books, Dragonflight and Dragonquest were given new covers to match the marvelous Michael Whelan cover of The White Dragon. Anne later said that “those beautiful covers sold the books,” and she was forever grateful to Michael Whelan for them.

  Here, now, you have in your hands yet another brilliant Michael Whelan cover, surely the last for the Dragonwriter of Pern.

  And inside that brilliant Michael Whelan cover you have these words from people who knew or were influenced by Anne McCaffrey—words that will give you a greater feel for the amazing woman: Anne McCaffrey, Dragonlady and Dragonwriter of Pern.

  To the popular press, David Brin is perhaps best known as the author of The Postman, which became a movie starring Kevin Costner. However, for Anne McCaffrey, David Brin was the amazing person who penned Sundiver and followed it up with the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Startide Rising and the also Hugo and Nebula Award-winning The Uplift War.

  David constantly referred to Anne McCaffrey as “Annie,” being one of those admitted to such intimacies. Although separated by one continent, an ocean, and thousands of miles, David and Anne kept a long and cheerful correspondence, and he was always a welcome guest at the original Dragonhold and, later, Dragonhold-Underhill.

  Anne McCaffrey, Believer in Us

  DAVID BRIN
>
  LET ME TELL you about a colleague and friend, a wonderfully vivid writer who entertained millions, who also helped distill for me the essence of my profession.

  It happened one day when we were both being interviewed by a reporter who referred to the famous McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern books as fantasy novels.

  Oh, how Anne bristled! With clenched restraint, she corrected the reporter:

  “I don’t write fantasy. I am a science fiction author.”

  Now, a great many people have tried to define the difference between fantasy and SF, two cousin genres that share the same section in most bookstores and the same professional organizations, yet always appear to be in a state of tension. Some try to explain the distinction as a matter of past versus future; or settings that shift from medieval, mystical realms to far, far interstellar space; or the various gimmicks and tools (e.g., swords versus spaceships) that empower characters to make epic journeys or take on impossible odds. One can argue that there is a vast moral distinction between magic and science—for example, in the way that mages almost invariably deal in secret knowledge that they share only grudgingly with normal folk. That happens in science too, but those scientists are called villainous or “mad.”

  And sure, one can easily see how some folks make simple, lazy assumptions about the central epic tale created by Anne McCaffrey. Hey, if it’s got dragons, well then, it must belong in the same category as Tolkien, right?

  Anne dealt with that part of it swiftly. “My dragons were genetically engineered. Scientists designed them to help colonists save themselves from a terrible environmental threat.”

  Hmm, well, okay. Only you’ve got to sympathize, at first, with folks who make the fantasy assumption by glancing at her covers or skimming some random scenes. It’s not just the dragons, you see. Most of Anne’s tales are filled with colorful characters who don’t just face challenges and danger; they also have skills, jobs, and crafts that are linked to a feudal-like setting. They farm and weave and make things like candles and ink and tapestries and epic oral poems. There are great stone castle holds, with much talk of herbal lore and fathom-deep traditions. Her pages are rich with duels and nobles and bards and songs and brave knights of the sort that are standard fare in your typical fantasy novel. If you’re going to judge by superficialities, like the furniture, then it’s easy to see why some people make assumptions.