Dragonwriter (19 page)

When Nixon vetoed earlier versions of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, it made scarcely a ripple in the general populace; the disabled weren't largely thought of as deserving the same rights as the able-bodied, or, for the most part, as capable of living productive lives. In contrast, in Annie's world, shell persons were respected and played an important role in society. Not only did their parents' choice to shell them allow them to live, it permitted them to live relatively well. They were cared for and appreciated for their skills.

Annie had always maintained that she was never going to revisit Helva's world, but never is a long time, and in 1992, Bill Fawcett persuaded her to come back to it and this time to invite some friends. And this is where I came into the picture.

The first rule of working in someone else's world is don't change the canon without permission. However, I wanted to do something a
little
different with my incipient shell person, Hypatia. I wanted to have the technology extended to someone who wasn't an infant because I wanted to inject a little dissonance into the notion that “shell persons would never exchange their place with the able-bodied.” While that might be the case for those who were encased as infants—what about someone who had been able-bodied first?

Annie had maintained in the first books that the traumas involved would drive an adult insane, and I didn't want to break that rule. But what about a hyperintelligent child, a little prodigy—a genius, in fact? I posited that to Annie and gave her my arguments, and to my relief, she agreed. The reason I wanted this was because I wanted my protagonist to have the memories of what it was like to have a working, natural body and to strive for something beyond Helva's goal of emancipation. I wanted Hypatia to be the person who looked for a way for shell people to achieve real mobility. This was 1991, after all, and views and technology had changed vastly in the twenty plus years since the original book was written.

However, this was still a dystopia. When Hypatia is paralyzed and offered the chance to become shelled, it is with her parents' full knowledge of the fact that she will become indebted and indentured. I was writing in Hypatia's point of view, and at the point where she is paralyzed, she is far too wrapped up in her own troubles to pay any attention to her parents' reactions—but one can imagine that they are suffering the worst of torments—knowing that their daughter is paralyzed for life—complicated by the situation they are caught in—the choice they have to make for her, knowing if they choose to shell her, the experiment can end very badly, and even if it ends well, she will be an indentured servant for a very long time. I've known a few archeologists in my time, and they are far from wealthy people. I imagined them struggling with the question of what to do. Hypatia required full life support and would for the rest of her life. How could they afford that? Would one of them have to become Hypatia's full-time caretaker? If so, which one? All this, of course, was going on in the background.

Like Annie, I was bending the circumstances to serve the character and story I wanted to tell. The main difference is that, in 1992, I was fully aware that rights were being eroded. Not only could I envision Annie's dystopia coming to pass, but in the wake of Ronald Reagan's forays into the dismantling of the “social safety net,” threats to privatize Medicare and Medicaid, closing institutions, “mainstreaming” the disabled and mentally ill, I was more than half convinced it
would
come to pass. I had seen the streets suddenly populated with the mentally ill, suddenly “mainstreamed” and declared fit to function in society as a result of Reagan's policies, when they really should have been in a secure living space where they could get proper treatment. I could easily imagine rights being rolled right back to the bad old days. After all, in the Ayn Randian world of Reaganomics, the rights of the corporation took precedence over those of the individual. If the individual was more of a “taker” than a “maker,” then, in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge, he should “die and decrease the surplus population”—which fit right in with Annie's dystopian future.

But I am not a particularly dystopian writer either, so I wasn't going to wallow in the misery any more than Annie did.

Nor would Hypatia. Like Helva before her, Hypatia was not the least interested in accepting what she had been ordained to be. Like Helva before her, she was going to throw off her chains.

And like Helva, she was going to go where no shell person had gone before. If that's not the definition of ability, what is?

Annie had a vision; I was privileged to be invited into it. Annie had a universe; I got to play in it. And Annie's characters had a resolutely cheerful attitude in the face of terrible adversity. I hope I managed to convey the same.

Annie's approach to the world was to meet it head on, accept the challenge, and find a way over, under, or through it. That approach truly was made explicit in her writing. Even in the face of dystopia, Annie—and her characters—would never accept anything less than winning through.

MERCEDES LACKEY is approaching 100 books in print, with five published in 2003 alone, and some of her foreign editions can be found in Russian, German, Czech, Polish, French, Italian, Turkish, and Japanese. She is the author, alone or in collaboration, of the Heralds of Valdemar, Elemental Masters, 500 Kingdoms, Diana Tregarde, Heirs of Alexandria, Obsidian Mountain, Dragon Jouster, Bedlam Bards, Shadow Grail, and other series and standalone books, including the Secret World Chronicle, based on an ongoing Parsec-nominated podcast series at
www.secretworldchronicle.com
. A nightowl by nature, she is generally found at the keyboard between 10 P.M. and 6 A.M. You can visit her website at
www.mercedeslackey.com
.

A
t one point Anne McCaffrey was thinking of collaborating with someone on a new project, and I said, “Why not Annie Scarborough? You two get along so well.” I think that was the start of the Petaybee series.

We had first read Elizabeth Ann Scarborough back with her
Song of Sorcery, The Unicorn Creed,
and
Bronwyn's Bane.
Annie has a great sense of humor, an amazing talent for punning, and a brilliant mind.

Annie and Anne continued to collaborate right up until Anne's death. They both had a love of music, and I'm glad that Annie chose to write about that here.

ANNE MCCAFFREY HAD
a passion for music.

She was a musician whose first memorable gift was a piano, and a serious singer who trained as a soprano for roles in light opera and musicals. She was preparing for a singing career when someone—a tenor, according to
Dragonholder,
the autobiography she wrote with her son Todd—decided she was a contralto. In that range, flaws in her voice emerged (as they did in the voice of Killashandra Ree, the heroine of one of her later novels,
Crystal Singer
). Anne channeled the emotion she had once put into her music through her characters and her writing and continued singing for fun and enjoying listening to others. There was always a guitar at her house for anyone who cared to play it. And music played a critical role in much of her writing—especially in her twenty-six major works about Pern and its dragons.

Anne lived for most of her adult life in Ireland, where traditional traveling musicians called harpers and storytellers, or
shanachies,
still hold honored places in the nation's heritage. Much of Ireland's preliterate history and myth might have been lost except for these “entertainers.” And as a fellow musician and storyteller, Anne understood both the power of music to tell stories and the power of stories to show the importance of music as a culture-bearing art form.

Anne often told fans she chose dragons as Pern's biggest protagonists because “dragons have always had bad press.” She proceeded to provide them with good “press,” not just in our world, through her books, but on Pern in the form of the Harper Hall, which literally sang their praises and tales of their heroics to everyone on the planet throughout its post-technological history. In fact, next to the dragons and Threadfall, music, and the way it is used by the harpers, is probably Pern's most distinctive feature. Anne created a civilization in which music was, as it once was in Irish culture and in other Earth cultures throughout history, the circulatory system of society. The dragons may preserve the planet, but music is what makes the world go around.

Pern isn't the only world in which Anne used music in her storytelling. In
The Ship Who Sang,
Helva's music is, like Anne's, opera and operetta and is part of the world Helva creates within her hull. On Ballybran, Killashandra's trained operatic musical tones are used to cut crystal. But while music is a form of self-expression for Helva and a utilitarian tool on Ballybran, music on Pern is pervasive. The reason is important to the overall narrative of Pern.