Dragonwriter (9 page)

Lessa, in fact, isn't anyone's ideal girl/woman in that era: intelligent and courageous and talented, yes, but also scrappy, prickly, resentful, manipulative, and vengeful. She goes against the standards of womanly behavior for both Pern and the culture in which I'd been brought up. She isn't in search of a good marriage; she wants justice for her family and for herself and is willing to do anything to get it. “Anything” includes pretending to be older and uglier than she is and acting the part of a rather stupid servant, while actually plotting to drive out—if possible even kill—the man who has murdered her family and stolen the holding. In everyday society, and in other novels, such behavior stamps a woman as wicked and worthless. And yet as the story goes on—as all the Lessa stories go on—it is clear that she is not purely selfish, a storybook villainess. She cares deeply about people and works for goals beyond herself.

Lessa resonated instantly with me. For far less reason, I had, at that time, a sackful of resentment for unfairness heaped on girls in general and me in particular. I understood instantly the drive, the ambition, the ability to choose a seemingly impossible goal and go after it in spite of disapproval and threats. I shared her personality: the hot temper, the impatience with fools, the searing hatred of injustice, the sheer blind stubbornness that pitted me against so much of that era's attitudes.

As Lessa manipulates F'lar into fighting Fax, I saw talents I didn't have (or hadn't needed). As she resists what someone else would have seen as rescue to stand up for her own rights, I saw the person I'd been in high school—the outsider determined to get and hold what was hers. A Bausch & Lomb science medal wasn't Ruatha Hold, but when told I should give it up to a boy because girls didn't need validation in science, my reaction was pure Lessa, though she hadn't been written yet. Although I'd never plotted against those I blamed for my predicament (no telepathic powers, alas), I cheered Lessa on. Lessa even had unruly dark hair—like mine—in an era that seemed to produce endless book-girls and -women with golden curls or red tresses.

But even in that first story, Lessa began to have dual effects on my life. First, Lessa validated my sense of worth as a self-motivated female who didn't fit the current ideal. What some called faults—independence, temper, prickly nature, fierce ambition for something others thought far beyond reach—needed only a little smoothing of the sharp edges—some maturity, some experience—to reveal the underlying virtues that made Lessa into a force for good in her world. Lessa was encouragement for being myself—someone who didn't fit well in any of the categories that were then, in the '60s, being so firmly defined and established.

Second, the existence of Lessa as a character in a story, with that specific personality and its development, changed how I conceived of characters I might write. I had been writing stories since childhood, and like most child writers, much of my writing was derivative, taking its inspiration from one writer after another, from varied sources scattered across genres. But at that time, none of them had shown me a female character with Lessa's vibrancy who did not end up “tamed” or “punished” into more a conventional life. So as a young writer, that part of my mind—the writer-brain, as it were—sucked Lessa in and digested her very differently than I had as a reader alone.

How, writer-brain wanted to know, had Anne McCaffrey
done
that, created such a compelling, fascinating, complex female character who transgressed—and triumphed? Was it just having a female acting in charge of her own life, from an initial position of apparent weakness? Writer-brain paused to gulp down several of the other characters for comparison: F'lar, Robinton, Manora—other women in the story who were more conventional. I read more, of course: “Dragonrider” in the December
Analog,
everything of Anne McCaffrey's I could find (I often had to wait for used bookstores). I was reading many other things as well, but the writer-mind kept circling back to Lessa and comparing her to other female characters.

Much of my learning about writing, at this stage, was scarcely conscious and certainly not analytical at the surface level. It was felt: this character was full and satisfying; and that one felt thin, sketchy; and that other one felt like a lecture on sociology. But slowly, as I tinkered with my own stories, the characters—both men and women—began to change.

Everything I read and experienced had some effect, of course. In the 1970s and '80s, more women were writing science fiction, and women's writing (old and new) gained more critical importance. I found, and read, many more women writers. Many books with women protagonists had women as victims—sometimes as victims who'd managed to survive and succeed at something, but whose lives were shaped by having been victimized.

But as I reread
Dragonflight
until the paperback was thoroughly tattered, and gradually collected the other Pern books, Lessa stood out as an early example of someone who transcends the victim role—whose life is not defined (once she becomes Ramoth's partner) by the attack on her home and her family's death. As Weyrwoman, she has authority, and Lessa can snap out orders as quickly as any Weyrleader and fly her dragon to fight Thread just as well. As she matures, book by book, her ambition ranges wider but is tempered by experience and the wisdom she gains from it: she has grown beyond Ruatha Hold, and even beyond Benden Weyr. Such a character—a woman intelligent enough, strong enough, complicated enough—could not only star in a single book, but could anchor an entire multivolume story arc.

Again, that insight affected both my life and my writing: Lessa as not just a survivor, but a transcendent survivor, as she matures through the various books, retaining the essence of the self-directed, courageous, intelligent girl, but learning from her experience, softening the jagged edges without weakening her resolve to see justice done. And Lessa as an example of how writing could unpack human experience at multiple levels.

As a writer, I was slow to develop, especially slow to develop the confidence to believe I could write anything worth publishing (despite the Lessa influence). I was forty when I sold my first story and forty-three when my first book came out. I had never written a fan letter (believing that I shouldn't bother someone in the throes of creating a book) or met other writers. At my first Worldcon, I was full of awe and almost tongue-tied in the presence of those I admired.

So it was that a few years later, when my publisher called and asked if I'd like to collaborate with Anne McCaffrey, I was momentarily speechless. Breathless.
Anne McCaffrey?
Lessa's writer? And me? Together? “Does water run downhill?” I remember saying after fighting past the disbelief, followed immediately by “Yes, of course.” That collaboration, on two of the Planet Pirates books, was like a master class. Working with Anne was pure delight—she was a generous, helpful, senior partner. I could ask questions; I could ask advice; I could offer ideas, some of which she liked and we used. On the second book,
Generation Warriors,
I asked about making up a couple of new alien races. “Have fun,” she said. Wow. Not only was I playing in Anne McCaffrey's sandbox, but I had the freedom to rearrange the toys. (The blue, plush, horse-shaped mathematician . . . the spiky sulfur creature.)

Then came the launch of the first of those two books,
Sassinak,
at Dragon*Con, when I first met Anne McCaffrey in person. By this time, I knew that she also loved horses and music and that she admitted to a temper. I knew enough of her history—divorce, moving to Ireland, supporting her children as a single working mother—to see connections between her and many of her characters—including Lessa.

I was both eager and scared to meet someone who had generated so many different worlds, so very many different characters. Familiar shyness lasted all the way to the actual meeting and melted instantly in her warmth. It felt like suddenly acquiring a favorite aunt I hadn't known I had.

That meeting began a friendship that persisted over the next two and a half decades, until her death. When I finally got email, we could correspond that way (much easier than snail mail or telephone, given the time difference from Ireland to Texas). We ran into each other at conventions, very occasionally: Ireland and Texas are a long way apart.

More and more, as I came to know Anne better, I saw the part of her that generated a character like Lessa, although there was, as with any author and character, more to Anne than Lessa could show—the sparkling wit, for one thing, and that wonderful laugh—the graciousness with which she hosted visitors in her home or at a dinner at a convention. If she ever felt Lessa-impatience, she never showed it.

But the core of Lessa, her blunt brevity and power, burned bright in the core of Anne McCaffrey, and one incident in our friendship made that very clear. We shared an editor at the time, and I was not convinced the editor was right about something. So I asked Anne, explaining the situation. Back came the answer, with a Weyrwoman's authority. “She's right; it won't do. Fix it.” She was, of course, right.

ELIZABETH MOON has published twenty-four novels including Nebula Award-winner
The Speed of Dark,
short fiction in anthologies and magazines, and three short fiction collections, including
Moon Flights
(2007). Her most recent novel is
Limits of Power
(Del Rey, June 2013). When not writing, she knits socks, photographs wildlife and native plants, pokes her friends with (blunted) swords, or sings in the choir. She likes horses, dark chocolate, topographic maps, and traveling by train.

W
hen Robin Roberts approached Anne McCaffrey about writing her biography, the response among the family was “Yes, please!” Anne had talked for a while of taking time off to write her autobiography and had even started it once, but writing about herself wasn't as compelling to her as writing about Lessa or Killashandra or Helva.

Robin, with an academic's eye, listened much and spoke little, and soon was embraced by Anne's much-extended family. We were quite open with her, and her
Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons
is currently the best biography of Anne McCaffrey available.

We were thrilled when we discovered that Robin was made Dean of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, not only for her but also for what it means to science fiction and fantasy as a whole: that the literature, so often derided in the past, has moved into general acceptance.

In this essay, Robin gives tribute to the literary impact of Anne McCaffrey from an academic standpoint.

WHEN ANNE MCCAFFREY
published her first science fiction story in 1953, and even in the '60s and '70s, women writers and women's concerns were marginalized in science fiction, as they were in the real world. As shocking as it sounds today, in the mid-twentieth century, an editor could dismiss women's writing as “diaper copy,” the phrase implying not only that the pages were disposable, but also, pejoratively, that the writing focused on women's mundane preoccupations, including romance, family relationships, emotions, and children. While some women had always written science fiction, its so-called Golden Age was dominated by male writers and characters. Male science fiction writers tended to emphasize action and problem solving, with female characters serving only as dangerous distractions to the male hero. (A classic example is Tom Godwin's 1954 story “The Cold Equations,” selected as one of the best science fiction stories published before 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers of America; it features a pretty and foolish young girl who stows away on a one-man spaceship, endangering the lives of many people.) Science fiction magazines were edited by men, and the readership was presumed to be male; plots, illustrations, and dismissive comments about women and female aliens revealed a suspicion, and even fear, of femininity.