Wed Reading Meme...A Trip Down Memory Lane

I'm still reading The Dragonriders of Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey - which was introduced to me by my beloved Aunt Audrey Koenigsberg Amos, who died 15 years ago, in 2000, just a few months before the Buffy episode The Body aired. [Everytime I watch that episode - I think of how I felt when my beloved Aunt died, so unexpectedly. There was no funeral. And no grave or urn. Her ashes were scattered over the desert that she adored, because my aunt had a fear of being buried alive. My mother's family looks at death differently than most - they don't like wakes, and funerals are informal affairs. But my Aunt was a great letter writer, and upon her death, my mother received letters from friends across the United States.] She died of an aneurysm. It was sudden. And at the ripe old age of 55. Not so old now, alas, since I'm a mere 7 years away from it myself. It's funny how life redefines itself as you get older, the things that seemed so important when you were in your late 30s and early 40s, seem silly and inconsequential now.

While in later years, my Aunt sold and made Native American Jewelry, in the 1970s and 80s, my Aunt was a Sixth Grade Librarian in Las Vegas. Why just the Sixth Grade? Because Vegas was weird and had a school that just had one grade, sixth. I didn't see her much, until I moved to Kansas City in late 1978, around the 5th grade. My Aunt who had no children of her own, and was quite close to my mother growing up, took a shine to me right off the bat. We were in many ways simpatico. She loved to tell stories, adored genre, particularly science fiction, fantasy and westerns. And devoured books. It was my aunt who introduced me to science fiction and fantasy, before my Aunt, I was reading mainly Judy Blume, Nancy Drew, all the horse books, and anything I could find at the library or the book mobile. Lots and lots of books about animals and surviving in the wild. Then my Aunt told me about the Dragon Riders of Pern. And I fell in love with the world, the dragons, and the possibilities.

Soon to follow, close on its heels, were CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, JR Tolkien's The Hobbit, the works of Zilphia Keatley Snyder - who for my birthday one year - my aunt made it possible for me to send questions to the writer, and receive answers. After that, she introduced me to CJ Cherryth - Chronicles of Chanur, and the works of Andre Norton and of course Ursula Le Guinn's Wizard of Earthsea.

Because of my aunt, I discovered science fiction wasn't well, Star Wars, Star Trek, and scary shows like The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Space 1999, Night Gallery, and half a dozen Japanese and 1950s-1970s sci-fi alien invasion films. My Aunt introduced me to a whole new world of literature.
I can still hear her telling me the plot of Dragonflight - about how Lessa, a young girl from a Hold is chosen to impress a dragon.

So for me, McCaffrey's novels will always been associated with my Aunt Audrey.

Re-reading them, now, more than 20 years later, I'm struck with how poorly they were edited. Lots of copy-edit errors, also consistency errors, and various other things that a good editor would be able to fix. But the world McCaffrey built is quite innovative and different from anything that was created before or after in some respects. Most fantasy novels focus on warfare between humans or species, and sci-fi on either warfare or alien invasion. McCaffrey's novel was about a weird sort of alien threat - an environmental oddity that was a natural occurrence of the world her characters found themselves within. She is as one reviewer described, a situational writer, not really character driven or plot driven, more a combination of the two - but focused mainly on the resolution of difficult situations. My difficulty with McCaffrey, then and now, is she's not really interested in the emotional life of her characters, so much as how they resolve a problem. For example? In Dragonquest, we're told long after the fact that Lessa, a major character in the series, had almost died in childbirth, and as a result can only have the one child - who she spends little to no time with. This isn't explored in any amount of depth. Just sort of mentioned in a few throw-away lines here and there. She regrets not having more, but you aren't sure why, since she has the boy fostered right off the bat.

I can see why the Dragonrider series produced a lot of fanfic. There's a lot of emotional gaps in the series - McCaffrey jumps over various bits. Another example? When a nasty character causes her dragon and another dragon to die in a mating flight, we never see the nasty character again. Nor do we see her during this tragedy. We hear about how she did it after the fact and from others. It reminds me a little of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - where Whedon and the other writers seemed to be more interested in situational conflicts, and less in the emotional life of the characters, skipping over bits and pieces here and there. A lot of fantasy and sci-fi serial writers do this - they focus more on the problem being solved, and discussing how to solve it, than on the interpersonal relationships. Which as a reader, I actually appreciate to a degree - because I've always found what people do for a living far more interesting than the ups and downs of their personal lives. (ie. their kids, their marriages, their divorces, who they are dating...their sex lives...bored now. Although in fiction if done well, it can be fascinating. In my own writing, I make a point of examining it -because it frustrated me when the writers I loved, didn't.)

McCaffrey also doesn't do a lot of description - which provides a lot of room for the reader's imagination. The reader can fill in gaps regarding who these characters are, the world, etc. McCaffrey unlike JRR Tolkien, Roger Zelzany, Stephen King, Ursula Le Guinn and CJ Cherryth, is a minimalist. Her dialogue is to the point, has little slang. And her description is perfunctory. The writing is easy to read - about a third grade reading level, although much of the content is adult.
And the world is slowly developed.

The time period, much like Game of Thrones series, is the medieval times -- but she does something interesting here. Modern settlers from Earth came to the planet, settled it, ran into a major threat that destroyed any hope of returning to Earth and cut them off from their home world. In order to survive they had to figure out how to make things work with what they had. Over time, they fell into a feudal society, with little to no technology, and a limited population - due in part to the threat.
Because it's a feudal society, power is determined by physical prowess, and women aren't treated well, or as subordinate to men. McCaffrey may be slyly commenting on how women were treated in the 60s-80s when she was writing the novels. At that time - in most books, including the Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and the old 1960s sci-fi novels -- women were subordinate to men. They are actually less so in Dragonriders of Pern. You don't really have any female characters in the others or not that major, just a few here and there. So while sexist in tone, this is due in part to the time period. And I have issues with going all social justice on well a "book". Folks? That's like throwing jello at a wall. For one thing? Not everyone interprets books the same way. OTOH, I do think critical analysis is a good thing - but I think it shouldn't be done in condemnation of either the book or its fans, if that makes sense? Probably not. Continuing on this theme? I'm not picking up on the homoerotic or homophobia that many reviewers saw in the books.

While flawed in places, especially the editing, it's still an engaging and compelling series. And a nice trip down memory lane. I'm not sure if I'll read All the Werys of Pern again or Dragonsdawn, I vaguely remember reading both years ago. Or the last one that McCaffrey wrote - "The Skies of Pern" which succinctly wraps it up. The other books were either written by her son, or with her son, who most of the reviewers didn't like all that much.

There's been talk over the years of a television series or a series of movies, but nothing concrete as of yet. We shall see.

On the fandom front - it had a huge fandom back in the day, with a lot of fanfic. McCaffrey, Le Guinn, and someone else, I forget who, I think it was Anne Rice, went after fanfic.net in 2002-2003 to take down fanfic posted there on their novels. All three writers were quite vocal about how they felt fanfic violated their rights as writers. I can't remember all the specifics, just have a vague memory of it -- and remember some disappointment when the Pern fanfic disappeared from fanfic.net - a free fanfic site that contained fanfic from over 1000 fandoms.