Deep Thoughts about Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern TEASER

It takes a special person to impress a dragon.

In this bonus episode, Tracie shares deep thoughts about the science fiction and fantasy novel series the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. From her early exhilaration of discovering fantasy novels with female protagonists to her current discomfort upon realizing the essentialist nature of dragon/rider pairings, Tracie shares with Emily how McCaffrey’s world made her a reader…and why it deserves a second look with a more critical eye.

Throw on your earbuds and join us as we battle the Thread! (But only if you’re a Patron. This bonus episode is exclusive content!)

CW: abstract discussions of rape.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Tracy Guy-Dekker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? In today's bonus episode, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the Dragonrider series by Anne McCaffrey with my sister, emily Guy-Burken, and with you. Let's dive in. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture? Others might deem stupid shit. You no matters. You know what's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us and, of course, share the show with your people. All right, em, what do you remember about the Dragonriders of?

Speaker 2: 1:02

Pern, so I remember that you really liked them. I only read a couple. I read two of the Harper Hall trilogy with Mennoly, I think was her name, right? Yup, that's her name, and they were like little dragons in that one they're fire lizards and they were like yes, yes, and they were adorable and she was musical.

Speaker 2: 1:29

Yes, she's a musician, there's something about music, yeah. And there were two. It was a trilogy and I read the first two and I liked them very much. And then the third one was about a boy who I was like I'm not interested and just like I read the first three pages and was like I'm where's Mennoly, I'm in it for her and I quit. And then I read, I think, the White Dragon, and I remember like enjoying it.

Speaker 2: 1:58

But there was, I think I was probably still in elementary school, like I was in fifth grade, maybe as old as sixth grade, and there was very mild sex scene in it and I'm like I'm out, and so I liked the background of the story. It was that they were on Pern Was the name of the planet, the planet that was Earth, like there had been some sort of like terrible, apocalyptic thing that had happened. And then there was. They ended up one as colonizers on Pern and there was something called the thread that like rained down from the sky, that were like these like I don't know, like parasites that ate everything and so the dragons they use their fire breathing to kill all the threads to make sure that they could survive, because otherwise they'd eat all their crops and everything else. And oh, and the covers. The covers of the books were really, really good. Oh, what was that guy's name?

Speaker 1: 3:03

Michael Whalen, that's it.

Speaker 2: 3:04

Yes, michael Whalen, he did a phenomenal job on these, these covers. This is like back in the battle days of covers, where not that what covers aren't still taken very seriously these days, but it just it felt like a thing with these that Michael Whalen made sure he did a really good job with them.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Well, he clearly actually read the stories, or at least the very good synopsis of them, so that the dragons were like matched the description in the books and stuff. Yeah, also, it wasn't all about like it's an ass which is so many science fiction.

Speaker 2: 3:39

Yes and the like. The dragons were rendered beautifully and the people were rendered very nicely as well. That's basically what I remember about Anne McCaffrey. I'd love to know why we're talking about it today. What brings this up for the deep thoughts?

Speaker 1: 3:56

So you remember a lot of stuff. I'll fill in some other details. I first read the Harper Hall trilogy that's the one with mentally Harper's. Where that was there the pernies word for musicians like Bard, I guess. I first read that when I was in the sixth grade and I absolutely adored it. It just lit something up with me. I met Anne McCaffrey in a line with a lot of other fans at a book convention not long before she died, I suppose and I told her that she was the reason that I loved reading, and I think that was true. Like I, just Something about those books just really captured my imagination.

Speaker 1: 4:32

Now I had read Tolkien in like third and fourth grade and really loved that kind of high epic adventure. And what McCaffrey brought was some science fiction to it as well. So there was this sort of like almost feudal kind of existence, but then there were dragons. But there was also science and it was from. They were colonists. So there had been space travel in the past and the thread that you remember was she actually explained it scientifically that there was like a rogue planet on this elliptical I don't remember she described the actual orbit that caused it to come within range to send off these, whatever they were, that destroyed everything. And there was something about that mix that just just adored and there was a strong female character as the protagonist and so all of those things together made it just really light up.

Speaker 1: 5:30

You know 11 year old Tracy's brain and it has remained like, unlike you, I read all of them. I mean actually doing research, for today I've realized that there were some later that she wrote with her son much, much later, like closer to the end of her life, that I haven't read, but I read all of the ones from the 60s, 70s and 80s and then I also, like McCaffrey, would like co author with other books, like she wrote besides the dragonriders, where the you know Perne was like her biggest kind of franchise, but she wrote other things as well. I read all of those and then she would write things like with other authors and through that I found Elizabeth Moon who wrote the peccinarion theories that oh my God, like I just absolutely adored. And so McCaffrey kind of looms large as this like pillar of the kinds of literature that I love, the kinds of characters I love, the kinds of scenarios that I love. I still you know, listeners, I don't know if you do this, but I have like the good bookshelves in my house that have like the books that like I want you to peruse that, I want you to see sort of my literary history. Mccaffrey's books are on there, like the hard covers that I bought, with the nice dust jackets, with the Michael Whalen paintings, so.

Speaker 1: 6:57

So that's kind of like where she sits in my literary DNA, and so I wanted to take some time with UM to kind of look back at that a little bit, especially since the strong female protagonist was a big part of what drew me to it. So I'm not going to go into everything because there's a lot and there's a lot of fandom out there and has been for a long time. So and I I haven't done, I haven't done sufficient research to do that justice. So I just want to name that. I want to look at gender and whether or not turn and McCaffrey's treatment is feminist and how it stands up and how it doesn't. That's specifically where I want to focus. Now, you know, the two of us, we meander sometimes, so I'm not going to like stop us from meandering, but that's going to be my sort of main focus. Okay, so let me give like a little bit bigger. Like Emily gave a couple of like snapshots of what she remembers, so let me see if I can give a little bit more of the picture.

Speaker 1: 8:00

So the kind of backstory of this Dragon Riders of Perne franchise is that some distant future we earthlings are colonizing all earth like planets that we can find. We find this one, we name it Perne, we settle and then within a few like, within a generation, the planet, the rogue planet that sets off the thread like, comes with too close and kills a lot of people and destroys crops, and so one of the colonists is a scientist and she actually does some work to genetically modify and develop a new, like a modified species of a native species, to the fire lizards that Emily remembers are like, maybe cat sized to us, to a, you know, medium sized dog. And they, the colonists, noticed that these fire lizards can they chew phosphorus rock they call it firestone and are able to breathe fire. And the lizard, fire, destroys thread. But these things are little like, they couldn't possibly protect the whole planet. And so this scientist decides to create this new version of them which is large enough for human beings to ride, and she actually has it planned out. So, however many generations she has like a target size she wants them to be and she so she works it up. So the very first clutch they call a litter because they lay eggs. The very first clutch are like about horse sized and then eventually they get actually quite big, like 45 feet. Because of the threat of thread.

Speaker 1: 9:42

The colonists lose all contact with their earth origins. Earth is just like a legend, a mythos of their past, and they lose a lot of the technology that brought them there not all, but a lot. And they set up this almost feudal structure where the dragon riders become sort of the lords right, like what the landholders would have been in feudal England. It's not around farming, though, but they do tithe and they call it tithing, so that the farmers who own their own land and the other guilds, people like tithe to the dragon riders. Okay, so that's sort of the societal structure. The thing is, the thread only comes when that rogue planet is close enough to kind of it, so that it's whatever's being cast off from it enters the atmosphere of Pern. So it'll go between 40 and a couple hundred years between that past, because it's an irregular orbit Like right exactly.

Speaker 2: 10:48

Like Pluto. I want to say erratic.

Speaker 1: 10:50

but it's not erratic, it's irregular. That's the word.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Thank you. And so the first pieces that McCaffrey wrote there were some novellas that were published in a science fiction magazine called Analog. Those first pieces became Dragonflight, dragonquest and the White Dragon, which was the one that you remember. So that was a first trilogy, the first of which was published in 68. And we meet a woman who becomes a dragon rider. And now the dragons also have sort of a hierarchical structure. They're different colors and the different colors also align with different sexes. So the only female dragons are gold, who are queens, also called queens, and blue, and then there's also bronze, brown and green. Bronze, brown and green are all male. There is a phenomenon whereby the and this happens to fire lizards as well fire lizards and dragons are what's the word I'm looking for Like kinetic, not just not not just telekinetic, but yes, they are, but actually more important to that is telepathic. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1: 11:54

So dragons have higher thought and language. They don't speak with their voices, they have telepathic connections. They they call it impressing. They impress on the first creature that feeds them after their, after they're hatching. So in the Harbor Hall trilogy with Menelie, which was my introduction, menelie accidentally impresses 12 fire lizards because she happens to be in a cave where they are hatching during a thread storm and the babies, as they hatch, go out to go find food because they're starving but thread is falling and so she sees one or two go out and immediately die because they can hit by thread. So she's grabbing them as they come out and feeding them and accidentally impresses 12 fire lizards, which may be why I have too many pets now.

Speaker 1: 12:52

So the dragons impress on the person that will be their rider and it is very clear that the dragon chooses their rider. Now they choose from a monk who's in front of them, but they choose. It's not like Menelie where she grabbed the fire lizard and put chicken in its mouth. It's the dragon speaks to I'm putting quotes around the word speaks telepathic to the person that they want to be their rider. And McCaffrey had somewhat rigid rules about the sex and sexuality of the human that could impress the dragons of the different colors. So only heterosexual women. And this is all cis, like McCaffrey didn't even acknowledge the possibility of gender queer folks which in 68 makes sense.

Speaker 1: 13:48

So only heterosexual women can impress the gold, the queens, and then only heterosexual men the bronzes, and then only homosexual men, the greens, the smaller male dragons, the smallest of the male dragons, and they do go down in size in the order that I said. And like McCaffrey was like very specific and rigid about this and then, like later in her life in the existence of the franchise, she sort of softened a little bit and would be like well, maybe like a butch or masculine lesbian could impress. It was when I was reading this to prepare for today. I was like whoa, I didn't remember any of this and this is like kind of freaking me out a little bit.

Speaker 2: 14:39

Now that that gets to the reason why I was like I was. I was out and I was young I mean, I was 11 or 12 reading the white dragon and the sex scene is not just between the two riders, their dragons are also having sex at the same time, exactly, and that was like I don't, I can't, mmm, it just weirded me out.

Speaker 1: 15:03

Yeah, yeah. So that's actually precisely why she was so particular about the sexuality of the riders. Because because of the telepathic link hey there, deep Thinker, if you want to hear the rest of my deep thoughts about dragon sex, you'll have to become a patron and confirm your place in the guy girl family. Not only will you get access to more and early deep thoughts, you'll be helping make sure this sibling revelry can continue. Find the link in the show notes and thanks. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember, pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?