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 Maybe you’re a long time reader of fantasy and science fiction (sci-fi) or maybe you’re just becoming interested in the genres. In either case, chances are, you’ve run across Ann McCaffrey’s name. She’s one of the most prolific and certainly among the most respected names in these genres. Sometimes called the Dragon Lady by her fans, it is used only lovingly for her Planet Pern series of books is vast, numbering 14 or 15 books at present. Like many sci-fi writers, there is often a political point to her work. In fact, her first book called Restoree is a sort of protest piece about the way women were portrayed in SciFi books of the 1950s and 1960s.
In her Pern books, Rukbat is it’s star; they are in the Sagitarian sector and Pern is the third of 5 planets, two asteroid belts and a newer stray planet it attracted more recently. Spores fell on this temperate hospitable planet and grew quite rapidly and consumed everything, which caught the colonists off guard. They were devastated by the loss of their crops and useful vegetation; only fire could kill the threads, only stone and metal could stop it’s progress. The colonists began breeding a highly specialized life form called dragons. Dragons could instantly teleport from place to place and could also, after eating a phosphine-bearing rock, emit flaming gas and could thus char Thread from mid air. Colonist men and women high in empathic ability were used to partner with dragons, to train them and to form life-long relationships with them.
Initially, a transport ship was cannibalized to forma cave like dwelling for these early inhabitants but when that became too small, the men and women found that the cave-pocked cones of extinct volcanoes were well suited for their residential needs. This also presented new challenges as some of the 6 Wyers had more water than others, and some had better grazing, some were smaller and less well placed and so on. During times of thread attacks, it took strong and wise administration to keep the growing population of people from becoming frantic.
Measures were taken to keep population from exploding and children from one hold were often raised in another hold to spread the gene pool. In this way of fostering children, too, children from various holds could learn specialized skills in such areas as metalworking (one of the means to keep the threads at bay), animal breeding, farming, fishing, and mining. The Pernese prospered, they spread across the rich land, they carved more holds from the rock, thry forgot how few dragons there were in the sky and that only one Weyr of dragonriders was left on Pern.
Every 200 years, or thereabouts, at the conjunction of Rukbat’s 5 natural planets (excluding the newer one), the red star appeared. Until then, all was well, no, better than well; it was lovely and peaceful and without trouble. But the Red Star would return, of course. As it spun closer, F’lar and his half brother F’nor convinced a strong woman, Lessa and the three of them forced the Lord Holders and craftsmen to recognize their imminent danger and to prepare a defense; by then, there were only 200 dragons left, too few for one Weyr and there are 6, much more inhabited now than in the olden days.
In learning to direct her Queen dragon between one place and another, however, Lessa discovered that dragons could also teleport between times. Putting her life at risk in addition to that of Pern’s only Queen, Lessa and Ramoth went back in time 400 Turns, to the days before the other Wyers disappeared so mysteriously, just after the last pass of the Red Star. The 5 Weyers of that day, seeing only boredom and inactivity after a lifetime of exciting combat and mental challenges ahead of them, agreed to come foreward to her time. The trilogy of Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums picks up the story from here. The stories can be had in individual volumes as originally published or in a single volume called The Harper Hall of Pern. From there, the Pern stories continue.
McCaffrey says that she is “opinionated, asocial, extroverted, and impossible.” She has learned to be “proud of being different.” But she adds, “It isn’t easy! It’s lonely until you realize that you have inner resources that those of the herd mentality cannot enjoy. That’s where the mind learns the freedom to think science-fictiony things, and where early lessons of tenacity, pure bullheadedness, can make a difference. Most people prefer to be accepted. I learned not to be.” (Authors and Artists, Vol. 6, p. 139)
Dave Burrows
Ann McCaffrey Titles |