Anne McCaffrey Helped Pave the Way for Diverse Fiction Decades Before it Was on Anyone’s Radar
I first picked up a Dragonriders of Pern book when I was about 14 years old. My father took me to a local bookstore and I picked out a volume with the first three Dragonriders of Pern books McCaffrey wrote, the original trilogy, Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon.
From the moment I began reading, I was completely hooked. Nothing could pull me away and I spent years scouring used book stores, stocking up on other books in the series like Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, Nerilka’s Story, Dragonsdawn, All the Weyr’s of Pern, and many more.
Even as a young teenager, I saw the value in McCaffrey’s Dragonrider of Pern series and how it went well beyond amazing literary entertainment.
Before going any further, I do want to mention I am well aware of the infamous McCaffrey comment toward homosexuality that made the rounds in the early 90s. I won’t go into the details here, whoever wishes to look into it can do so on their own time. What I will say is this, despite never finding any documented evidence she actually said what the interviewer claimed (many people think it was a publicity hoax), the more important point is whatever she might have said that was offensive toward homosexuality isn’t reflected in her writing or storytelling.
So, for the purposes of this blog post, I am focusing on what she wrote, the world she created, and the stories that spanned hundreds of years in the world of Pern as well as more than four decades of publishing in our world.
A Breakthrough Woman Writer in Science Fiction
As a young woman, especially one aspiring to be an author of science fiction, fantasy, and science fantasy novels, Anne McCaffrey was an idol, a beacon of hope, and a hero of mine. It was no secret to me, even in my teen years, that the fantasy and science fiction genres were primarily dominated by men writers and male characters.
I grew up on books like Frank Herbert’s Dune, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and other books written by men with almost exclusively male casts. I usually don’t try to talk about J. K. Rowling because of her… very offensive viewpoints, but the story of why she used her initials is relevant. I was aware when I was in High School that she was asked to use her initials by her publisher instead of her first name because it sounded more masculine.
The world I grew up in was riddled with this kind of inequality in the literary world, and then, I found Anne McCaffrey.
A woman writer using a woman’s name, writing a diverse cast of male and female characters who had an incredibly successful career in a genre not all that welcoming to women. You can see why she as a writer was so inspiring and stood out.
What was even more impressive was that McCaffrey officially started her writing career in the 60s. That first Dragonriders of Pern trilogy was published through 1968 and 1978. I’m not sure if she had any earlier works published but it was still an incredible feat for that time.
I know Anne McCaffrey inspired many other young women like me to throw off the status quo of publishing and write what we wanted, no matter how unconventional in traditional publishing. Her success showed women could write science fiction and opened the door for a more diverse and inclusive publishing industry (which is still a work in progress).
Strong Women Characters, Sexual Freedom for Women, and the Autonomy of Reproductive Rights
Literature has always had an ebb and flow based on trends. Even so, there have always been some rigidities in published works as well as some topics that were just never touched on because of the limited character cast (straight, white, men).
This was especially true back in the 60s and 70s when the first Dragonriders of Pern trilogy was published.
And yet, Anne McCaffrey did something that hadn’t been done a lot before, and would still take decades to become something readers wanted to see explored in fiction or was accepted in mainstream fiction.
She wrote strong, dynamic, and compelling female characters who didn’t follow the same tired tropes over and over, she explored women’s sexual freedom along with their sex drive, and she even discussed the autonomy of women’s reproductive rights.
How did she do this?
Strong Female Characters
Well, the first one is pretty easy to break down. The majority of McCaffrey’s Dragonrider books were told from multiple character perspectives with a pleasant balance between male and female characters. Although, I’d say in many of her books, the female characters were “main characters.”
Every woman McCaffrey wrote was different, unique, and had histories and motivations. She didn’t endlessly recycle the “tough girl,” or the “tomboy warrior,” or the “sacrificial lamb,” or any other overused and sexist female character tropes I see popping up over and over again today.
She showed women’s strengths are more diverse than the hot headed, quick tempered, feisty, fighters that are commonly seen as “strong” female characters these days. I remember many of her female characters having a lovable softness with other strengths that made them great leaders and gave them the ability to overcome their trials.
On top of that, women rode gold dragons, which was the most authoritative position among dragonriders, the senior goldrider getting to choose who the male leader was based on the dragon’s mating preferences. While the goldrider remained the same, the male leader could change from year to year.
Among the Crafts, the careers everyone who wasn’t a dragonrider partook in, there were no restrictions on what ranks and titles men or women could hold. It was all based on talent, skill, and hard work.
McCaffrey’s Pern society was a place where women could thrive, lead, and be recognized. Something our world still struggles with.
Women’s Sexual Freedom and Sexuality
One aspect I loved of McCaffrey’s Pern world was how it promoted women’s sexual freedom and explored women’s sexuality.
She did this primarily through her dragonrider society where marriage wasn’t an expectation. In fact, it wasn’t even a practice. Throughout her books, women mostly rode the gold dragons. Whichever dragon the senior gold mated with, their rider became the next male leader. Since the senior gold could choose a new mating partner every time she mated, any kind of permanent leadership relationship was impractical – like having a queen marry someone to become the king.
On top of that, there was no expectation for two dragonriders to be in a romantic or sexual relationship outside of their dragons mating. So, a goldrider could have sexual partners and relationships that were completely separate from the dragonrider who was her co-leader. They didn’t have to share living quarters or anything else if they didn’t want to.
Thus, women had sexual freedom and weren’t expected or required to get married, settle down, and have children.
In one instance, there was a Weyrleader (the designation for a male leader among the dragonriders) who was in a long-term romantic relationship with a woman who rode a green dragon. However, to maintain his Weyrleader status, his dragon had to mate with the senior goldragon somewhat regularly. And in the world of Pern, dragonriders feel the same lust and desire as their dragons during mating, often going to bed with the dragonrider for their current dragon’s mate.
This particular greenrider had no issue with her romantic partner having a sexual relationship with a goldrider in order to maintain his status. It didn’t ruin their relationship; it was just a means for him to maintain his leadership role.
It was an awesome world where women weren’t restricted in their sexual partners, they weren’t married off and tied to one man, they had sexual freedom, and monogamy was a choice all around – along with cases of open relationships.
In terms of female sexuality, McCaffrey represented this most with her green dragons. They were all female and had the highest sex drive of all other dragons. They mated a lot, 3 or 4 times a year instead of the 1 time a year expected of gold dragons, the other female dragon color, and there are comments throughout the books about the green dragons’ amorous tendencies, highlighting female sexuality and pleasure.
She also introduced the concept of women who weren’t dragonriders who could “stand in” during mating flights if the two dragonriders whose dragons were mating didn’t want to go to bed together. These women were very sexually open and hoped for a more intense sexual experience fueled by dragon-lust.
Even now, books don’t portray women sexuality and its role in society as succinctly as McCaffrey’s Pern.
Autonomy of Reproductive Rights
Anne McCaffrey’s dragons have this ability to teleport from one location to another. When they teleport, they enter a space called between where it is very dark and cold. This space is so harsh that even though dragons and riders only shift there for a few seconds, it almost always causes a miscarriage for pregnant women.
This world-building aspect was introduced in one of McCaffrey’s very early dragonrider books. It showed women weren’t expected to churn out a bunch of kids and become the stereotypical “mom” character who has no other personality or substance beyond being a mother.
I can’t recall if McCaffrey explicitly addresses how between could be used as an abortion method. The fact that she brings it up at all as something everyone knows is a cause for terminating pregnancy tells me that in Pern society, women have the choice of whether or not they want to carry to term. They also have a non-invasive way to end an unwanted pregnancy.
And this was something she wrote in the 70s.
People are still shying away from writing about anything related to reproductive rights. Sure, I’ve seen books where women are used as sex and reproductive slaves and their reproductive rights are non-existent—Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean come to mind—but how many books write about societies where women have full autonomy over their reproductive rights?
Anne McCaffrey did.
A Literary Queer Utopia
Leaving Anne McCaffrey’s questionable comments about homosexuality aside, the world of Pern was kind of a queer utopia, in more ways than one.
When her first trilogy came out, the dragonriders were a somewhat closed society. There were female green and gold dragons and male blue, brown, and bronze dragons.
Bronze males were the only dragons with the stamina to mate with gold females.
Though blue dragons, brown dragons, and bronze dragons could all mate with green dragons.
In the beginning of Pern when dragonriders first came about, women rode gold and green dragons. However, by the time period of the first book, Dragonflight, men rode green, blue, brown, and bronze dragons while women only rode gold.
Again, I can’t recall the specifics behind why society changed the rules over the several hundred years of Pern history, but it happened.
So, by the time Dragonflight came around, there were mostly men riding male and female dragons. Thus, when a green dragon mated with a blue, brown, or bronze dragon, two men would be consumed by dragon-lust and end up in bed together.
This was just a normal part of dragonrider life. It wasn’t taboo, it wasn’t frowned upon, there were no stigmas against it, it just was. Since the majority of dragons were green, and golds with their female riders were far less common, there were a lot of male/male pairings, hence the queer utopia concept.
She even writes about male/male pairs who refer to each other as weyrmates (the term used for two dragonriders in a long-term romantic relationship and who often live together and whose dragons mate repeatedly, though that isn’t a requirement). There are side characters who represent this dynamic in various scenes and plot points throughout the initial trilogy.
Does that sound like the writing of someone who has negative views on homosexuality?
Sorry, I digress.
Now, there was always the possibility that a woman could act as a “stand in” during mating flights if two men didn’t want to sleep together (as mentioned in a previous section). But she still wrote about characters who were in male/male long-term and/or sexual relationships.
The other amazing queer aspect McCaffrey wrote about were her gender-neutral dragons. Rare white dragons existed, though they didn’t usually hatch or live long because of their stunted size. However, one such white dragon makes it to adulthood in The White Dragon and features in some of the other books as well.
While Ruth, the white dragon, is referred to as he/him it is also noted Ruth is a genderless/gender neutral dragon who’s also asexual. It is theorized all white dragons are gender neutral and asexual.
Now, she wrote this book decades before there were mainstream terms for being asexual and gender neutral and she still managed to create characters representing diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity.
Bending Her Own Rules
One thing I always loved about Anne McCaffrey’s books was that she wasn’t afraid to bend her own rules. She also wasn’t against showing progress throughout the centuries of her world. Pern was not one of those fantasy worlds stuck in time with society and technological advancement suspended for thousands of years.
Even though she introduced a world in Dragonflight where women only rode gold dragons, by the time the third book in the series came out, The White Dragon, there was one named woman riding a green dragon and it is theorized that there were more unnamed women greenriders as it was becoming more prominent.
Chronologically, that was less than 2 decades after the first book. Not only was society changing and progressing, but McCaffrey showed she had no intention of sticking to her cut and dry gender rules.
In a later book, Sky Dragons, which was written by Anne McCaffrey and her son Todd McCaffrey, we get to see a woman riding a blue dragon. And if I remember correctly, Sky Dragons took place in an earlier time period than the original trilogy.
In almost every one of her books, Anne McCaffrey shows the changes in Pern society, the advancements—both with society and technology—and that she doesn’t stick to strict ideas about the roles gender plays in Pern society.
For a science fiction/fantasy writer, that is unusual. Most series have strict rules about gender, society, sexuality, technology, etc. Those series rarely expand or explore change. No matter how small, McCaffrey’s willingness to show that she breaks her own rules tells me she was a much more innovative, creative, and progressive writer than a lot of others out there.
She was always thinking about how to make her society better and show it wasn’t stuck in place, and the beauty of it was she didn’t break her own rules in a way that was inconsistent or destroyed her canon. She used those rule breaks as plot points for a more engaging and diverse story.
Violence Isn’t the Answer
Now, I still haven’t read all of the Dragonriders of Pern books, although I did purchase all the ones I didn’t have copies of for my Kindle. That being said, from all the books I did read, there was one thing I noticed that was “missing” from Anne’s world of Pern.
Most fantasy and science fiction throughout the ages hinges on a massive build up to some epic war/battle with lots of action and casualties. Whether it is defeating the evil overlord, overthrowing the evil empire, or… well, no, the two of those pretty much cover the gamut of what epic battles exist in science fiction and fantasy.
I’m pretty much a pacifist. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy action and a compelling battle scene with a good plotline. However, reading book after book saturated with war, build ups to an epic battle, and all kinds of fighting and violence gets old.
To my knowledge (based on the books I’ve read in her series), Anne McCaffrey hasn’t written a Pern book where there is some kind of massive war.
Sure, there is violence and fighting on a small scale with duels and some characters abusing their power, but these plotlines are sub-plots. They aren’t the climax of the story.
Anne McCaffrey forever won a place in my heart for creating this amazing science fiction world and intricate society without ever resorting to war and violence as a means for action and entertainment.
In Closing
As a woman and aspiring science fiction/fantasy author, Anne McCaffrey will always be an inspiration to me. Her works introduced me to diverse writing with strong women characters, sexual diversity, gender diversity, and subverting (or all together ignoring) common genre tropes.
By today’s standards, she might not have “measured up” to inclusive and diversity standards but given the time period she began writing in and what she was up against as an early woman to write science fiction (and get published), I’m still in awe of what risks she took and how she challenged the status quo.
Though she’s no longer with us, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series will always sit in my top five series of books and continue to be a source of inspiration for me when I think about diverse and inclusive writing.
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