Dragonholder

by Todd McCaffrey

  Dragonholder

  The Life and Dreams (so far) of Anne McCaffrey

  Todd McCaffrey

  To Betty and Ian Ballantine, whose kindness, faith, and perseverance did more than give us the dragons of Pern — they kept them flying.

  Foreword

  Dragonholder was first published by Del Rey books in 1999. It was supposed to be a sort of “scrapbook” of Anne McCaffrey’s life.

  The biggest complaint levelled against the book was: “It reads like a scrapbook.” To which I say, “Mission Accomplished.”

  In undertaking to publish Dragonholder in electronic format, my first decision was to stick with the material as presented. With few exceptions, there have been no changes.

  Twelve years is a long time. A lot has changed since then. There are still more stories, still more “Life and Dreams” to be told about Anne McCaffrey — but those stories, those “life and dreams” shall wait for another book and another day.

  For those who can’t wait, here are some websites that might be of interest:

  www.pernhome.com

  The Worlds of Anne McCaffrey

  Todd McCaffrey

  Todd J. McCaffrey

  October 2011

  Introduction 2014

  Dragonholder tells the story of Anne McCaffrey’s life up to 1988. It ends at the time when Mum’s dragons had flown high enough and far enough to repay her investment in them—to provide her with a Hold of her own, which she called Dragonhold because “the dragons paid for it.”

  Between 1988 and the end of her life in November 2011, Mum had many more amazing adventures:

  Her books flew in the Space Shuttle to the International Space Station.

  She acquired three more grandchildren.

  She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime contribution to young adult literature and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America’s prestigious Grand Master award, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future.

  She bought a forty-seven-acre farm and built a house of her own design on part of it, naming it Dragonhold-Underhill.

  There, she had a heart attack in the year 2000 and a stroke in 2001. With those two warnings, we all knew that we were on golden time.

  And what golden time! In the decade before she died, she produced, either solo or in collaboration, more than twenty books.

  “Age is not for the timid; I wouldn’t wish it on the faint of heart,” Mum was fond of saying. She passed away at about 5:00 p.m. on Monday, November 21, 2011.

  Anne McCaffrey changed the lives of countless people with her stories, and her spirit lives on in every word of her writing.

  Todd McCaffrey

  Corona, California

  May 21, 2014

  Introduction 1998

  Cead mille Failte from Dragonhold-Underhill

  Cead mille Failte — a thousand welcomes, as they say here in Ireland. I’ve had the pleasure of greeting many of my readers to my house and while I’d love to greet each and every one of you, there’d be no time for writing — and you wouldn’t want that!

  So, for those that can’t come here, and to free myself up for the serious task of writing, we decided to build you a scrapbook of tidbits and pictures. To let you get the feel of things, as it were. It's the same scrapbook we’ll be showing my grandchildren as they get older.

  I’ve asked my number two son, Todd — the same Todd in Decision at Doona — to do the work for me. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before. In fact, if anyone were to write on Pern, it’d be him.

  So settle back, put your feet up, don’t mind the cat, and turn the page!

  Anne McCaffrey

  Dragonhold-Underhill

  April 1998

  When I was nine years old, I started reading science fiction. My first book was Space Cat by Ruthven Todd. I really loved the whole Space Cat series. I loved it so much that I decided to write a fan letter to the author. He never replied. My mother was upset by that and vowed to answer all her fan mail.

  She still does to this day. Her first fan was an eighty year-old veteran of the Royal Flying Corps of WWI, named Pat Terry. When he first wrote, he was paralyzed from the waist down and had to write lying on his back with a notepad held at arm’s length. With such dedicated fans as he, it was not at all hard to find the time to respond. As the numbers of her fans increased, my mother had to spend less time responding to fan mail — or else spend less time writing the new books every letter clamored for!

  I remember her proudly showing me her copy of the F&SF magazine with The Lady in the Tower in it. All I saw was a magazine with a picture of a banana floating on a field of stars — nothing at all like the picture of a cat romping in a spacesuit on the Moon.

  As the years passed — and her covers got better — I became a voracious reader of Anne McCaffrey. I even claim the distinction of being the very first person to read the individual pages of The White Dragon as it came out of Mum’s IBM Selectric typewriter.

  While you’ve been to Pern — met Lessa in her lonely fight against Fax — cried with joy for the smallest dragonboy — marveled at Robinton’s wit and humor — laughed with Menolly and her gay ways — you haven’t heard the stories behind the stories.

  I propose to fix that.

  Baby Gigi, Alec, Todd

  I suppose we ought to get acquainted, oughtn’t we? I am Todd Johnson McCaffrey — Anne McCaffrey’s middle child. I am the person who, aged twelve, writhed with anticipated teenaged taunts when his mother suggested dedicating Decision at Doona “to my darling son, Todd.” (We settled on “To Todd Johnson — of course!”)

  All Anne’s kids are “A” children — but while Alec and Gigi were born in August, I joined her in April. I arranged this by the rather unique expedient of being born more than a month late. For some reason, we kids were all inclined to the late 20’s — Alec was born on the 29th and Gigi and I were both born on the 27th of our respective months. Sadly, this means that I missed my mother’s famous April Fool’s birth date.

  Growing up, I was the first of Anne’s children to read science fiction. Because of this, I went with her to many meetings with her fellow writers, her editors, publishers, and agent, and also to several of the local science fiction conventions.

  I remember being refused entrance to our front room in Sea Cliff, Long Island because Anne was brainstorming — and what did I think about dragons? Why dragons, I asked. Because they’ve had bad press all these years, was the answer. I went away very confused.

  In Sea Cliff most of Anne’s work was done in a back room, not the front room. She had a narrow room at the back on the first floor which was filled with books, filing cabinets, a table, a bed, and a typewriter — first a Hermes, then later an IBM Selectric.

  369 Carpenter Avenue, Sea Cliff, New York

  The house at 369 Carpenter Avenue, Sea Cliff, Long Island, was an old three-story Victorian. Old is a relative term — this house was about eighty years old when we moved in back in 1965. We occupied this house of eighteen rooms and ten bathrooms with another DuPont family — my father worked for DuPont — which had also relocated from Wilmington, Delaware. It wasn’t a commune, merely a practical way that two families could afford to live in that very expensive part of New York.

  We split the house, with a front room for each family, and shared access to the great dining room on special occasions like Christmas. It was a good, if sometimes difficult, arrangement. The Isbells had the front entrance, the first floor kitchen, and most of the second floor while we had the side entrance, the whole of the third floor, some of the second and Anne’s room in the back of the first floor.

  There Anne wrote all the stories which would be collected as Dragonflight, and wrote her first at
tempt at a sequel to Dragonflight which her agent told her to burn — and she did. It was from Sea Cliff that she first ventured to Ireland — accompanying her favorite aunt, Gladdie.

  Gladdie with her late husband, John

  Aunt Gladdie was a “hoot.” She was an outgoing, kind person and we all loved her very much. Anne only found out on their European trip that Gladdie had suffered all her life from a spinal condition that caused her a great deal of pain. Gladdie dulled the pain by liberal application of alcohol, normally in the form of scotch on the rocks — whiskey would be used in a pinch.

  Gladdie stayed with us one Christmas at Sea Cliff. I recall that shortly after New Year’s, all the adults in the house — except my mother — were very “fragile” in the morning. Apparently they’d stayed up all night with Aunt Gladdie — trying to match her drink for drink. They failed. Gladdie cheerfully arrived for breakfast and nearly got throttled when, taking in their condition, said sympathetically, “You know, I don’t think I’d drink so much if I ever got a hangover!”

  When Anne was younger, Gladdie would invite her up to her home in Winthrop, Massachusetts, for holidays — she felt that Anne didn’t get as much attention as she needed. This was because Anne’s younger brother was hospitalized with osteomyelitis — a fatal disease in those days before penicillin, and her mother acted as private nurse. Among other treats, when Anne was sent to Stuart Hall (named after the first principal, J.E.B. Stuart’s widow), Aunt Gladdie sprang for the piano lessons Anne had begged for.

  “She was the first person who had faith in me for myself alone,” Anne says of her.

  After I left the front room (a number of years before Aunt Gladdie took Anne to Ireland and at least a whole summer before Gladdie drank everyone under the table), and Anne had decided on dragons, she set about figuring out what sort of planet they were on. She’d had two stories published in John W. Campbell’s magazine, Analog, and had had a number of meetings with him. Under John’s vision, Analog had become the premiere science fiction magazine of the 1950’s and 1960’s specializing in character-driven hard science fiction stories. So Anne was concerned not only with the story but also with the science and the background of the story.

  She settled on a technologically regressed planet — a survival planet, existing in near medieval times. Because at that time, America was so divided over the Vietnam War, Anne wanted a world unified against a common, undeniable enemy. So she came up with Thread — mindless, voracious, space-borne. The dragons became the biologically renewable air force, and their riders “the few” who, like the RAF pilots in WWII, fought against incredible odds day in, day out — and won.

  Anne finished thinking and took herself back to her back room and the typewriter. Hours later, after writing all of Weyr Search up to the fight scene, she took a break to finish the prom dress for Linda Isbell — the daughter of our housemates. At Sea Cliff the magical and the mundane were mixed — a scraped knee might interrupt Lessa’s impressing Ramoth. Somehow Anne found the time to cook, to sew — and to let dragons fly.

  When she had done what she could with the story (long after the prom), Anne took the unfinished Weyr Search and two other stories with her up to the writers’ conference at Milford Pennsylvania. She gave Weyr Search and another story to her agent, Virginia Kidd, and submitted the third to the judgment of the writers’ group.

  Harlan Ellison (standing)

  Harlan Ellison, now famous for so many things — Star Trek’s City on the Edge of Forever, The Outer Limit’s Demon with the Glass Hand, and the incredible story I have no mouth but I must scream — but then science fiction’s reigning bad boy, tore Anne’s submission apart. Anne was used to Harlan’s ways and re-wrote the story. It was later published as A Womanly Talent — the second story in To Ride Pegasus.

  Virginia read the incomplete Weyr Search and handed it back, saying, “Oh, Annie, do please finish it.” When she did, Virginia submitted Weyr Search to John Campbell at Analog. John bought it. He wanted more.

  Virginia? Anne will tell you that she first met Virginia in the local supermarket at Milford. At the time she was Virginia Kidd Blish, married to the science fiction writer James Blish who was best known then for his Cities in Flight series but may be known more now for his Star Trek novelizations.

  Anne? Virginia will tell you that she was “given” Anne by Judy Merril. Judy Merril was so impressed with Anne’s second-ever story, The Lady in the Tower that she invited Anne up to her first Milford writer’s conference. Judy was at the time married to Fred Pohl, another science fiction writer, who was editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (everyone just says “F&SF”). He published The Lady in the Tower after Algys “AJ” Budrys pulled it out of the slushpile.

  In science fiction and fantasy in the 1940’s, 1950’s, and even the late 1960’s, everyone knew everyone else. There was and still is a strong sense of community in the profession. And there’s a strong sense of camaraderie and a willingness to help new writers starting out.

  Most of the magazine editors in the old days started life as writers. Many did a stint of editing and returned to writing. While they were editing, they looked out for ways to help new writers, too — the way Sam Moskowitz helped Anne with her first story, Freedom of Race.

  Anne’s first story was bought by Sam Moskowitz for Science Fiction Plus. Sam did Anne a big favor by cutting the story from 1300 words to 1000 words. Why was that a favor, you might ask? In those days Science Fiction Plus paid the glorious amount of three cents per word. The longer the story, the more the author got paid.

  But at that time there was a story competition for the best 1000-word story, and that paid one hundred dollars. By cutting the story by three hundred words, Sam made Anne’s story jump in value from $39 to $100.

  Judy Merril had noticed Anne’s second story, The Lady in the Tower, and bought it for her “year’s best” anthology. From her contact with Anne, Judy knew that she was looking for an agent — she also knew that Virginia had decided to start agenting, so she introduced them. They hit it off and they’ve been together ever since.

  Just as important as Judy’s introduction of Anne to Virginia was Judy’s invitation to Anne to attend her first Milford writers’ conference in 1959. They were called “Milford” because they were held in Milford, Pennsylvania. The Milfords were the creation of science fiction writer, editor, and critic Damon Knight. His idea was to gather the brightest writers in the field together for a number of weeklong intense rounds of criticism. Every writer brought a story for the conference, all the writers read all the stories, and all participated in the critiquing of the stories. Anne says she learned more about the craft of writing at Milford — she would come back to the conference many times — than anywhere else.

  She couldn’t stay long at her first Milford because she was pregnant with her third child — who would be named Nicholas if a boy or Georgeanne if a girl — in those days the doctors couldn’t tell.

  And she almost didn’t get there because her second child — me — almost scared her into an early labor. This was back in Wilmington, Delaware where we had a really great split-level bungalow house. One of the few problems it had was that the house was at a major intersection in the housing development. Another problem was that it fronted onto a hill. It wasn’t much of a hill, unless you were a three-year-old, in which case it was a mountain.

  100 Danforth Place

  And the hill wouldn’t have been a problem for me except that my mother — our Anne — had this vision of her children growing up and having children of their own (she succeeded). Fortunately for her, we had some really smart dogs — German shepherds. The first — Wizard — was the father of the second, Merlin.

  Now Wiz was so smart that after Anne walked him around the property line he knew what was his and where his child was allowed to go. And where he wasn’t — like down the hill and onto the busy main road. So every time I tried to go down, he’d get in front of me. I’d go around, he’d get in front.
And because a three-year-old just can’t walk around an eighty-pound dog, I’d always go back up the hill (towards the house) when I tried to get around. My brother thought it was hilarious, my mother thought it was great but I thought it was too much.

  Okay, I was only three and didn’t know better. But even back then I had stubborn all worked out. I knew that I couldn’t get down to the road unless I was in a car. Hmm …

  So one day I climbed into the car, got behind the wheel and “vroom! Vroom!”’d a bit until I noticed the parking brake. My mother noticed that it was too quiet just a bit too late and rushes out of the house in time to see me in the car rolling backwards down onto the main street. At the same time our neighbor across the street saw Anne, huge with child, and yelled, “Anne! Don’t run!”

  And Sir Isaac Newton once again was proved correct as the car rolled down our hill, across the main road, into the neighbor’s driveway, through their garage door and into their garage. Where our kindly neighbor managed to grab the parking brake. A kid’s got to try, right? And you wonder where Anne McCaffrey ever got the idea to write Decision at Doona?

  But that was the only time I ever got around Wiz. He was a very smart dog. He was a big German shepherd and quite intimidating. Once a workman came up to Anne, “Lady, you’ve got to do something about your dog.”

  The workman was running a bulldozer a few doors down — digging a ditch or something. Anne looked out her back window and saw that Wiz was sitting in front of the bulldozer. “He won’t move,” the workman said. Anne went outside, and saw that I was playing in the back yard. Then she looked again, smiled, moved me back towards the house a few feet, and called out, “Wiz! It’s okay.”

  Wizard took one look and gave up his ‘dogged’ vigil — his charge had been moved out of direct line with the bulldozer, so the bulldozer was no threat. Wizard’s son Merlin would later be remember in Anne’s gothic, The Mark of Merlin and Wizard was given place of honor in the short story, The Great Canine Chorus.