Dragonwriter (2 page)

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.

T
o 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.

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.

But Anne was insistent. There is a deeper difference, and it goes to the heart of what makes her tales science fiction, after all. The characters in her Pern epic start out dwelling in a feudal setting, all right. But unlike the endlessly repeated trope protagonists in all those Tolkien-clone universes,
most of them don't want to!

Moreover, they don't intend to—not for any longer than they must.

In the course of Anne McCaffrey's fictional universe—as the stories unfold—people discover relics of an older time and learn that things weren't always this way—with peasant-serfs tied to the rocky land, wracked by filth, pestilence, and arbitrary rule by hereditary lords, with gender and class roles stiffly predefined and strictly enforced, with people staring in occasional wonder at the great dragonriders who protect them from raining death.

Sure, their condition is eased by a myriad of lovely traditions and crafts, reflecting the makeshift creativity of brave folk, by improvising—making the best of things across centuries of darkness. As a fallback position, feudalism can be a preferable stopgap to keep from tumbling all the way down to caveman or tribal existence . . . or extinction. Despite all of its wretched aspects, including deep and inherent injustice, feudalism has another side; its horrors can be moderated and softened, even livened by the ingenuity and pride of clever, brave folk. And McCaffrey's Pernese characters—in one deeply moving tale after another—brilliantly illustrate both sides.