The Ship Who Sang (32 page)

DRAGONDRUMS

MORETA: DRAGONLADY OF PERN

NERILKA'S STORY & THE COELURA

DRAGONSDAWN

THE RENEGADES OF PERN

ALL THE WEYRS OF PERN

THE CHRONICLES OF PERN: FIRST FALL

THE DOLPHINS OF PERN

RED STAR RISING: THE SECOND CHRONICLES OF PERN

(published in
US
as
DRAGONSEYE
)

THE MASTERHARPER OF PERN

THE SKIES OF PERN

and with Todd McCaffrey:

DRAGON'S KIN

DRAGON'S FIRE

DRAGON HARPER

DRAGON'S TIME

SKY DRAGONS

by Todd McCaffrey:

DRAGONSBLOOD

DRAGONHEART

DRAGONGIRL

Crystal Singer Books

THE CRYSTAL SINGER

KILLASHANDRA

CRYSTAL LINE

Talent Series

TO RIDE PEGASUS

PEGASUS IN FLIGHT

PEGASUS IN SPACE

Tower and the Hive Sequence

THE ROWAN

DAMIA

DAMIA'S CHILDREN

LYON'S PRIDE

THE TOWER AND THE HIVE

Catteni Sequence

FREEDOM'S LANDING

FREEDOM'S CHOICE

FREEDOM'S CHALLENGE

FREEDOM'S RANSOM

Individual Titles

RESTOREE

DECISION AT DOONA

THE SHIP WHO SANG

GET OFF THE UNICORN

THE GIRL WHO HEARD DRAGONS

BLACK HORSES FOR THE KING

NIMISHA'S SHIP

A GIFT OF DRAGONS

The Petaybee novels
written in collaboration with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

POWERS THAT BE

POWER LINES

POWER PLAY

CHANGELINGS

MAELSTROM

DELUGE

The Acorna Series

ACORNA
(with Margaret Ball)

ACORNA'S QUEST
(with Margaret Ball)

ACORNA'S PEOPLE
(with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

ACORNA'S WORLD
(with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

ACORNA'S SEARCH
(with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

ACORNA'S REBELS
(with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

ACORNA'S TRIUMPH
(with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

ACORNA'S CHILDREN: FIRST WARNING
(with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

ACORNA'S CHILDREN: SECOND WAVE
(with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

ACORNA'S CHILDREN: THIRD WATCH
(with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

and published by Corgi Books

About the Author

Auspiciously born on April Fool's Day, 1926, Anne Inez McCaffrey was the second of three children and the only daughter.

She, like so many of her time, was shaped by the two World Wars and the Depression. Her father, George Herbert McCaffrey had served as a lieutenant in the First World War and after the war helped the Polish set up their government before returning home to marry Anne Dorothy McElroy.

Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey was a very talented woman with a decent touch of what the family came to call ‘the Sight'. Just before the very worst of the stock market Crash in 1929, she pulled all her money out. Her husband, less trusting of such things, did not.

When not drilling the children in the backyard or maintaining his reserve status with the Army, the ‘Kernel' – as he called himself – indulged in gardening. He was also a great reader and one of Anne's first memories was of him at the far end of the hallway reading Kipling's Barrack-room Ballads while she was sick with scarlet fever.

As Anne got older, she learned to ride horses and thus began a lifelong equestrian love affair.

When the Second World War broke out, the Kernel reported immediately to the draft board, offering his services. Elder brother Hugh had already joined the Army and was stationed in Hawaii, desperately trying to get off the island and go to Officer Candidate School.

During the worst of the Battle of Britain when ‘the Few' were all that stood between the English and imminent invasion, Anne developed a sense of rapport with the plucky young Princess Elizabeth who, with her family, endured the German ‘Blitz' on London – Anne being just twenty days the Princess' elder. And with that was planted the seed that would grow into
Dragonflight
.

Anne's little brother, Kevin, was not expected to live. He'd contracted osteomyelitis and had, for several years, been at death's door. Anne's mother took charge of caring for ‘Kevie' which left Anne herself to be sent down south to Stuart Hall School for girls. As a Yankee, and a Catholic to boot, Anne found Stuart Hall not the best of matches. She turned heads and gained the ire of the Dean by insisting on being allowed to go to the local movie theater to see Edgar Rice Burroughs' ‘Tarzan'.

Kevin
did
live thanks to the newly-developed penicillin and went on to enjoy a long life. The family was reunited when ‘the Kernel' returned from his years in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO) but now a man so worn by the cares of war that his two younger children passed him by as they were searching for him among the returnees.

Anne graduated from Radcliffe College,
cum laude
, and while studying Slavonic languages, she'd participated in several theatre productions. It was at this stage in her life that Anne decided she really wanted to be an opera singer.

She met Horace Wright Johnson, who preferred to be called Wright. Wright, a very handsome man with a great voice, wooed her with
The Beggar's Opera
to such effect that they married.

The Kernel went to Japan to help set up their government and volunteered to go along with the UN group to Korea when war broke out there. He contracted Tuberculosis and was returned to the States in 1953.

Alec Anthony Johnson was born August 29th, 1952 and was less than a year old when the Kernel returned. After her first visit to her father in hospital, it appears that little Alec caught a diminished (and treatable) form of TB but Anne was forbidden to return to her dying father for fear of a more serious re-infection. She didn't have the heart to tell her father that his first grandchild had been infected and the Kernel was deeply hurt that she wouldn't come see him again. He wrote her out of his Will.

Anne wrote
The Ship Who Sang
as her catharsis over the death of her father.

Second son Todd was born in April 1956 after a ten months' gestation. Originally scheduled for March 23rd, young master Johnson knew when he was on to a good thing and clung to the womb for an additional month. When the doctors suggested that he might be stillborn, Anne waved them off. Still, the amniotic fluid was all gone and he was born a wrinkled, yellow baby, called ‘the Chinaman' by the nurses on staff. They were worried and immediately started pumping him full of liquids until they could finally say, ‘Congratulations, Mrs Johnson! He peed!'

On their third try, the Johnsons produced a beautiful baby girl, Georgeanne Johnson – her name being the sum of her maternal grandparents' names. When first seen by Uncle Hugh, he said, ‘What a gorgeous George!' And from that was born her life-long nickname, Gigi.

Wright worked in public relations for DuPont and when his job offered him a six-month stint in Dusseldorf, Germany, the whole family went. Here Anne met up with a voice coach and worked assiduously to develop her talent as an operatic soprano. Sadly, the coach insisted upon overworking a part of her register with the result that her higher range was forever spoiled and her dreams of opera stardom dashed. Years later, she turned this bitter disappointment into a story,
Crystal Singer
.

Returning from Europe Anne re-established contacts within the science fiction writing community. At one point she was brought aside by James Blish who asked her why she'd stopped writing. ‘You've written one beautiful story, please don't stop!'

On the way home, Anne thought to herself, ‘Jim
Blish
says I can write! Jim Blish says
I
can write! Jim Blish says I can write!' Enthused, she returned to her writing, producing the short story,
The Ship Who Mourned
.

In 1965, the family moved up to Sea Cliff, Long Island, following Wright's job. Anne started working on a novelette,
Weyr Search
. Her agent, Virginia Kidd, read it and said, ‘Oh, Anne! Do please finish it!'

Weyr Search
was followed by
Dragonrider
and, also by her first full-length novel,
Restoree
. The ‘Ship' stories continued and were collected into the anthology,
The Ship Who Sang
. Anne wrote another novel,
Decision at Doona
.

Betty Ballantine at Ballantine Books bought all her novels and bought
Dragonflight
when it was finished.
Dragonflight
incorporated both
Weyr Search
and
Dragonrider
plus new material.

At first, Wright was intrigued by and supportive of Anne's success; as time went on, less so. Famously he said, ‘You'll never pay a phone bill with your writing!'

For various reasons, their marriage slid into disarray and Anne finally decided that she had to get a divorce. But where to go? How to live?

She'd been on a trip to Ireland in 1968 with her Aunt Gladdie and loved it. Harry Harrison (of
Soylent Green
fame) regaled her with the lure of the Irish artists' tax exemption. The cost of living was much lower in Ireland than on Long Island or in Los Angeles, her other possibility.

And so, with her two youngest kids – her eldest now starting college – she departed for Ireland in August 1970.

Anne and the two children lived in a rented, suburban house in south County Dublin. The kids were already enrolled in nearby
Avoca & Kingston School
. Once settled, Anne re-wrote
Dragonquest
, and finished two gothic romances,
The Mark of Merlin
, and
Ring of Fear
, and took herself and her two kids on their first journey to England and Wales over the 1971 Easter Spring Break, taking in the English Eastercon, held that year in Worcester. The convention was great, Anne made many friends and afterwards the family toured around, down to Stonehenge and through other beautiful countryside, wending back up through Wales' scenic but seriously twisty roads.

Next year found them living in a Georgian mansion,
Meadowbrook House
, and Anne trying – and failing – to write the story of Menolly. ‘It just wouldn't write!' she complained. She did manage to complete
Cooking Out Of This World
and other stories – it was here that she penned
The Smallest Dragonboy
-but times were tight. Fortunately, her eldest son Alec came over from the United States and took up trawling. As a fisherman he could bring home a share of the catch and the family dined on Monkfish and other rarities. Still, there was a great deal of truth to Gigi's, ‘Gee, Mom, wouldn't it be nice to have pancakes for dinner because we
wanted
them?'