Anne McCaffrey passed away on the 21st of November, a hugely sad loss to the world of science fiction. It would be hard to underestimate the impact her works had on me as a young man.
I was lent a copy of ‘Dragonflight’ (the first book in the Dragon series) by my Uncle, who is also a sci-fi fan. I think I was thirteen or so at the time.
I made the assumption, very wrong in hindsight, that it was going to be a fantasy story. The name of the book implied ‘Dragons’, and the cover of the book had a large fearsome dragon on it. So most people would forgive me for this obvious conclusion.
Upon reading I was drawn into a carefully crafted, and curiously non-religious, feudal world, weighed down with a sense of enormous history and modern political machinations. A world in decay, a shadow of its former self, and step by step, continuing to slowly come apart. A world where myths and legends were part of a rich backdrop where something intangible, yet very important, has almost been lost beyond recall.
At this point I was expecting the aforementioned dragons to make an appearance, but instead, the sorry tale of a disenfranchised young woman unfolds; her birthright stolen by a greedy warlord, and forced from childhood to spend her life as a drudge, her true identity unseen and unsuspected – forgotten to all but herself.
Lessa is a remarkable character. Strong willed, intelligent, scheming and often downright unscrupulous, she is an unlikely heroine. She manipulates all around her, first attempting to undermine those who rule above her, and later the dragon society in which she eventually finds a place.
The hero of the story, F’Lar, initially uses her as a tool to further his own agenda, that of trying to rouse the unconcerned dragonfolk based on his sense of impending disaster based on the aforementioned myths and legends. They tell of an approaching ‘Red Star’ that will rain a curious destruction down on the planet of Pern – ‘Thread’ – a voracious, mindless spore that consumes anything organic. Sure enough, the Red Star is growing brighter in the sky night by night as the story unfolds.
Lessa confronts bigotry, sexism, manipulation and the question of her own value throughout the story. I expected F’lar to be the main protagonist but it is Lessa who saves the day, takes the biggest risks and ultimately triumphs. She is the strongest character in the story by far, gaining the respect of everyone, male or female. Anne McCaffrey herself put it better than I can…
“I was so tired of all the weak women screaming in the corner while their boyfriends were beating off the aliens. I wouldn’t have been—I’d've been in there swinging with something or kicking them as hard as I could.”
Amen to that! Having looked back at Anne’s stories and characters I can see that she had an immense influence on my own writing. Anne’s plots are mostly character and conversationally driven, as are mine. I like well rounded characters with something to say rather than just ‘action’. My ‘Rebecca’ from the Oolite Saga, in hindsight, owes a great deal to ‘Lessa’ from Dragonflight.
And what of the dragons? They are characters themselves, not dumb brutes who eat damsels in distress, but rounded individuals with their own needs and opinions, in some ways a reflection of the human they are paired, for life, with. Essential to the story, but not actually the main theme.
I was expecting a fantasy, what I actually got was character driven romantic science fiction. It’s still a rare combination even now.
Later books introduce more characters, the female ones being far more memorable in general. Menolly, the gifted musician, is another wonderful example, another person with talents struggling against their position of birth and eventually overcoming all obstacles.
As the stories continued the ‘science fiction’ aspect grew in importance. It was revealed that Pern was settled by colonisation from Earth, but due to the depravations endured, knowledge of their ancestry had been lost. This is revealed to the population towards the end of the saga as they rediscover their past and eventually rid their planet of the curse of ‘thread’.
Despite the earliest novel in this series being written in 1968, these stories are pretty much timeless and well worth a read. Anne’s passing is a sad loss, but her treasures are left behind in those books.
So thanks for the inspiration and those wonderful characters.