Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, Anne McCaffrey

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, Anne McCaffrey (1983)
Review by Megan AM

As a kid who devoured Nancy Drew and Baby-sitters Club novels, then Kurt Vonnegut and Marion Zimmer Bradley as a teen, I can’t quite place where Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series would go on the recommended reads for child development chart. Its style and content seem ideal for the ages 3 to 7 crowd, yet there are some sexy moments that seem a little too sophisticated for young kiddos. But I’m not sure an older child or young teen would buy the whole space-dragon on a medieval future world premise. I know I wouldn’t have.

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern is the prequel to McCaffrey’s extensive Dragonrider series, which serves to explain the legendary tale of the famous dragonrider, Moreta, who is often referenced in the earlier-published, but later-occurring novels. Moreta is a dragonrider/dragonhealer/weyrleader who lived 1000 years prior to the events of the first published Pern novel. Little is known about her because the Pernese suck at recording history (they do this on purpose, sometimes), but her adventures and tragedies are immortalized in song and poetry. Basically, it’s a story about a story from the story.

So what do you do when your people settle a planet and abandon all mechanized technology, only to discover your new planet is bombarded by sizzling thread every 100 turns? You genetically-engineer dragons to combat the thread, and (quietly) discover time travel via said dragons. Obviously. And everything works out perfectly until… FLU PANDEMIC!

Moreta and her golden queen dragon, Orlith, are eagerly awaiting the end of the current thread cycle, eight years away. Both are in the prime of their lives and their careers, important to their weyr community and throughout Pern. They go to a gathering at Ruatha Hold, and Moreta enjoys racing and dancing with the hot Lord Holder Alessan. But when a runner and a rider fall mysteriously ill, Pern is faced with a problem that dragonriding can’t solve. Moreta is swept into the crisis as her Weyrleader Sh’gall and Masterhealer Capiam become bedridden, and many of Pern’s holds are wiped out by the virus. Moreta must use her skills as a rider, a dragonhealer, and a leader to stop the crisis… all while Orlith is pregnant with Pern’s most important clutch of eggs!

Although Pern is praised for its undercurrents of feminism, the first two novels in the series didn’t meet my expectations, mostly due to Pern’s paternal feudal society led by grumbling male Weyrleaders and Lord Holders, a vain female side character, and only one standout female lead who breaks all the rules, yet remains the exception. By Moreta, seven books into the series, that feminism is well-established, giving the Weyrwoman unquestioned authority and independence, including freedom of sexual relations without implications, even within a Weyr partnership in which her dragon chooses a mate whose rider does not appeal to Moreta. Her relaxed attitude toward relationships demonstrates an overt criticism of the possessive nature of romance in our society.

McCaffrey’s version of motherhood is also rather progressive, even by today’s standards. Moreta has had an unaccounted for number of children with several different men, all of whom are fostered to other weyrs and holds, yet she is neither viewed as a slut, nor as a neglectful mother. It can be assumed based on an interaction with one of her children that the relationships between Moreta and her fostered children are warm and loving, with no bitterness about the situation. The Pernese idea of child-rearing is almost more like the crèche style exhibited in other SF novels, where the community raises the children, allowing parents more time and energy to devote to their skills and personal development. In Pern, however, this option seems to be only available to the very important dragonladies – elitist in nature, but very unique, especially in a society that seems backward in so many other ways (feudalism, atavism, etc.)

Despite Moreta’s inhuman feats of dragonriding, followed by dragonhealing, followed by time-jumping to collect the ingredients for a vaccine, followed by more time-jumping to vaccinate the entire planet within the incubation window, the story feels rather insubstantial. Considering the impact of a major pandemic, the emotionality of so many deaths is not conveyed well. After all, it is a children’s book, and the pacing matches a child’s imagination and comprehension. Even fans of the series complain of the book’s lackluster plot, seemingly wedged into the series when McCaffrey ran out of fresh ideas but publishing pressures forced her to mine her own work. I was bored, to the point where I desperately hoped someone important would die – I often do this – forgetting that this is a story about a legend.

Legends always have a tragic end. And THAT’S when this book gets good!

This review originally appeared on From couch to moon.

Fool’s Run, Patricia A McKillip

Fool’s Run, Patricia A McKillip (1987)
Review by Guy

As my somewhat dog’s eared copy will attest this is a novel I have enjoyed quite a bit and read more than once. I first encountered McKillip’s work when I found Heir of Sea and Water, the second volume of the Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy in a drug store while attending an archaeological field school in Elk Point, Alberta. The Riddlemaster series now ranks right up there with Tolken’s Hobbit/LOTR books for me, and McKillip is really the only fantasy writer whose works I still buy as they come out. As far as I know, Fool’s Run is her only SF work.

From the prologue:

The static again. A different voice. “Jailbird. This is records. Name of prisoner?”
“Terra Viridan.”
The com whistled. “You’ve got her.”
“Affirmative.”
“Legal status.”
“Her status-sheet is a mile long, can I give-“
“Give us a printout when you dock. Jailbird. Is she sane?”
“Legally”
“Off-record.”
A break of silence. “You ask her. Look into her eyes and ask her.”

And so Terra Viridian who, as a conscripted recruit stationed in the Desert Sector of Earth, used her laser-rifle to kill one thousand five hundred and nine men, women, and children, has come to the Dark Ring, the Underworld, to spend, the rest of her life.

Chapter one starts in the Constellation Club on the Sunshine Coast, which includes the area formally known as Australia. The Constellation Club is owned by Sidney Halleck, a musicologist and promoter, who collects instruments and bands. His club contains 20 stages with the bands operating behind screens of light allowing the patrons to move from stage to stage. The Magician, the pianist and leader of a band called Nova, has just played Bach for four straight hours, after Nova’s last set, while in some kind of trance. This has been witnessed by Sidney and the Magician’s friend, Aaron Fisher a patroller (police officer) who works in the area. At the same time this is happening Jason Klyes the chief administrator of the Underworld, is fielding two requests. One is from his rehabilitation director Jeri Halpren who wants to work with Sidney to bring a band to perform a concert at Underworld.

The second is from a scientist Dr A Fiori of New Horizons, the mental health facility and rehabilitation centre that Terra Viridian should logically have been sent to, if there had not been so much political pressure to find her guilty. He wants to use a prisoner for Project Guinea Pig, a biocomputer (Dream Machine) which translates brain impulses onto the computer screen in an attempt to help understand and control criminal impulses. And of course the prisoner that Fiori has selected for the project is Terra Viridian. The last piece of the puzzle falls into place when Nova is selected to be the band will play a concert at Underworld.

Not all aspects of McKillip’s universe can immediately be ferreted out. There are no info-dumps and few lectures. She is a writer who shows rather than tells making the reader pay attention to the text they are reading. Which is not to say, she festoons her work with needless slang and in-jokes, to give it a false sense of depth. Any new words, cubers for drummers, sectors replacing countries and continents just supply a hint of the changes time has wrought but the language is straightforward. We find out enough about the world the characters inhabit, without slowing the narrative to add a lot of unneeded detail. The present culture some 5.2 billion people occupy the earth, the asteroids and some of the nearby planets. Regions are divided into sectors and the FWG, Free World Government is the overarching authority. As the Magician states,

“I wonder how long the FWG can keep its grip on the world. It’s part democracy, part tyranny, part socialist, part plain parental, and it has kept itself alive so far by our memory of near annihilation.” (p 101)

It is certainly not a perfect society, there are separatist movements, terrorist organizations, the patrollers must battle not only financially motivated crime but also random seemingly unmotivated crimes. Sounds a lot like today.

The characters themselves are nicely detailed. Despite the fact that McKillip has chosen to have the members of Nova go by nicknames, like characters in a western or medieval allegory, the Magician, the Scholar who is smart and plays the rod-harp, Questor the vocalist, who is or at least pretends, to be very French, the Nebraskian, the sound man who took the name from an old movie, and the cubers, the Gambler and his replacement (he does not fly, inner ear problems), the Queen of Hearts, become real people with obvious personalities before the end of the novel. I did notice that a number of the character traits that can be found in the Riddlemaster books, are also be found in Fool’s Run. One of the things I enjoy about McKillip’s characters is that conversation are often broken off, interrupted, that tone or body language is as important as what is said. Also even after years of working together or being friends her characters do not fully understand one another or know all the details of each others pasts.

I think this is best expressed in a conversation between the Magician and Aaron Fisher:

“Probably. Sorry I brought it up.”
“You didn’t,” Aaron said helplessly. “You just pulled it out of my head. You just -“…
“It was in your voice.”
Aaron shook his head doggedly. “It was in the silence after my voice.” (p 75)

I find this to be a reasonable approach that mirrors my experience. In my experience we interrupt each other, conceal as much as we reveal, dwell on some topics and avoid others, repeat ourselves, tailor what we say to our audience. Sometimes even our closest friends surprise us and sometimes even we do not fully understand our own motivations and reactions. I think this gives McKillip’s work a maturity and nuance lacking in a lot of science fiction. Fool’s Run is very much a novel about language and communication. One of the longest discussions between the band members is about the meaning and importance of symbols. The language of the novel is beautiful and evocative, from the fragments of poetry introduced in the security challenges from the prolong, to all the sensory information we receive, about the light, scents and sounds that inform each scene. This is also a novel about how people act and react, many of the characters rely as much on hunches, intuition, even a slight precognition ability as they do on logical decision making.

If I had to compare Fool’s Run to another book it would be Delany’s Babel-17. Stylistically both deal with language and symbol, with visions, intuitions, short hallucinatory passages of poetry and bursts of sensory experience although otherwise they are very dissimilar works.

This review originally appeared on A Jagged Orbit.

Heritage of Flight, Susan Shwartz

Heritage of Flight, Susan Shwartz (1989)
Review by Ian Sales

The Alliance is at war with the Secessionists and has been for many years. It is not going well for either side. Pauli Yeager is a fighter pilot aboard an Alliance battleship, operating in a flotilla of three such ships. But a battle with a Secessionist ship and its fighters goes badly, and Yeager’s ship is forced to flee. Since the ship is the only survivor of the engagement, the security marshal aboard decides to implement Project Seedcorn. The battleship is carrying a number of refugees from a world nuclear-bombed by the Secessionists, most of which are children. These, and a handful of the battleship’s crew – including its captain and Yeager – are landed on the uninhabited world of Cynthia and left to fend for themselves… in the hope they will found a new colony to provide cannon fodder for the ongoing war, or will at least become a last hidden bastion of the Alliance should the Secessionists win.

Unfortunately, it seems the initial survey of Cynthia was somewhat slipshod – the planet is inhabited. The colonists quicklyu establish relations with the primitive flying Cynthians. The other wildlife is less welcoming. A race of acid-spitting giant caterpillars called “eaters”, for example, kill several of the colonists, including the battleship’s ex-captain and head of the colony – forcibng Yeager to take over. She orders the eaters eradicated… before belatedly realising they’re the nymphal stage of the Cynthians. And since the Cynthians quite rightly object to having their young exterminated, Yeager decides the colony’s survival requires genocide of the entire race. Which they accomplish…

Some time later, a Secessionist fighterpilot crashlands on Cynthia, and so demonstrates that the Secessionists have been using mind-linked clones to fly their fighter craft. Originally part of a sextet, Thorn is now the sole survivor. His fighter group was attacked and destroyed by breakaway Secessionists – it seems their war on the Alliance has triggered a civil war. The colony welcomes Thorn, but he needs time to find himself… so he disappears into the mountains.

Then there’s an outbreak of illness/madness… which is discovered to be ergot-poisoning of the colony’s wheat. Everything they have built is pretty much ruined. The poisoning kills some, but the madness kills others.

The battleship on which Yeager served then returns. But this time it carries people from the Aliiance, the Republic (what the Secessionists called themselves), and Earth. The home of humanity had managed to broker a peace between the Alliance and the Republic. The moment they land, Yeager demands she be court martialed for genocide. No one else does, of course – they think she did what had to be done. But she’s been carrying the guilt for all the years the colony has struggled along and she demands justice.

Heritage of Flight is an odd novel. I have fond memories of Shwartz’s Arthurian fantasy/romance Grail of the Heart, but Heritage of Flight reads like a fix-up based in a universe that had been explored in greater detail elsewhere. And this despite being set on a world that is pretty much a tabula rasa. The colophon in my edition of Heritage of Flight reveals that two parts of it were previously published in Analog – although this does not explain why the other sections of the novel read like installments in a series. That episodic nature works against the novel’s plot – Yeager’s guilt over killing the Cynthians, for example, moves backwards and forwards into view depending entirely on the plot of that section… and yet the novel finishes with the implication it is the book’s major theme.

Some elements ofthe background feel a little too… Cherryhesque. True, if you’re going to steal, then steal from the best. But the Alliance / Republic thing feels like a cheap copy of Cherryh’s universe, without the depth she manages to give it. Yeager, however, is a little too thin for a Cherryh heroine – she seems driven by her love of piloting and her guilt over the genocide, but not much else. Few of the other characters rise above the level of sketches. In the novel’s favour, however, there is an extended scene – actually, it’s over-extended, as its purpose could have been served by half as many words – in which the colony celebrates KwaZulu. It is this festival, in fact, which leads to the ergot poisoning, and the effects of that poisoning are given in quite gruesome detail.

I admit I had expected more of Heritage of Flight, given my previous experience of Shwartz’s fiction. Perhaps I was expecting too much. Heritage of Flight is a solid piece of 1980s science fiction, without anything which might lift it above others of its type. It’s an entertaining enough read, but it’s bread-and-butter sf, nothing to set the genre alight, and it comes as no real surprise that it wasn’t reprinted until the SF Gateway picked it up in 2012.

Three Worlds of Futurity, Margaret St. Clair

Three Worlds of Futurity, Margaret St. Clair (1964)
Review by Joachim Boaz

Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995) was a mainstay of the major pulp magazines and maintained a prolific career from 1946 to the late 60s (between the 70s and early 80s she produced only one novel and a handful of stories). Previously, I found myself disenchanted with her work as I struggled through the Wicca-inspired ramblings of Sign of the Labrys (1963). However, I thought I would give her short fiction a try and snagged a copy of the 1964 Ace Double #M-105 that contained her collection Three Worlds of Futurity (1964) and her best known novel Message from the Eocene (1964).

Three Worlds of Futurity contains five stories from her most prolific period – the late 40s-early 60s. Although the majority do not rise above their fellow pulp ilk, ‘The Rages’ (variant title ‘The Rations of Tantalus’ 1954, revised 1964) shows a measured and incisive feminist inspired vision and the unusual subject matter of ‘Roberta’ (1962) suggests St. Clair’s willingness to tackle controversial subjects. Most of the stories contain evocative imagery although the delivery rarely transfixes. Also, although most of the main characters in St. Clair’s stories are men, women scientists and pilots (etc) populate the pages. I suspect one could make a case that her characters do not fit neatly into the pulp mode.

Somewhat recommended for fans of pulp (of which I am obviously not).

‘The Everlasting Food’ (1950): Published originally in Thrilling Wonder Stories, ‘The Everlasting Food’ is a mostly forgettable story with some intriguing, and turbulent imagery. Richard Dekker, Earth-born, employed as a oceanographer on Venus chooses a controversial surgery to save his native Venusian (an “almost-mytheical Sanedrin”) wife Pamir Dekker. The result is catastrophic for Pamir loses her “Seeing” ability. Of course, as is often the case with telepathy in pulp SF/F, the ability to the non-telepathic is beyond basic comprehension. Initially all seems well, Pamir smiles (an empty smile) but claims she no longer needs to eat. Soon Pamir runs away with their half-Venusian son. The story soon devolves into a chaotic quest to find the boy. Standard pulp fair with little to distinguish it from its dime-a-dozen Thrilling Wonder Stories brethren.

‘Idris’ Pig’ (variant title: ‘The Sacred Martian Pig’) (1949): Published originally in Startling Stories, ‘Idris’ Pig’ tells a comical story of a mostly immobile unusual pig-like creature with a rank smell… George, on his friend’s death bed, is bequeathed the object and the mission of its original courier: “he was greeted by a fishy smell and a feeble oink. Inside was a small blue animal, some twenty centimeters long, regarded him comatosely” (p 43). This creature with its comatose gaze soon embroils George in an elaborate plot involving Martian cults and general mayhem. Silly and outrageous, ‘Idris’ Pig’ is very much what you’d expect from a late 40s pulp story.

‘The Rages’ (variant title: ‘The Rations of Tantalus’) (1954): First published in Fantastic Universe, ‘The Rages’ is by far the best story in the collection. Although the premise is a standard one – future over-medicated world – St. Clair’s measured way telling, paranoid undercurrents, and human-centered vision make it worthwhile. Harvy and his wife Mara lead a chaste life – i.e. “they had lain side by side for nearly a thousand nights and, except for a handful of times in the first years of their marriage, nothing had ever happened” (p 76) – controlled by drugs. Harvy, addicted completely to euphoria pills, finds himself excited by his wife, not for her attractiveness, but as her “tunic was the exact shade” of his pills.

The state claims the euphoria pills are completely safe and necessary to prevent rages. However, lab experiments on rats and the mental state of city’s hostels occupants indicate the devastating damage caused by the “final rage”. Harvy spends his time fantasizing about increased allotments of pills however a sequence of events cause him to question their effects. Does he have the willpower to overcome his addiction or will he too turn into a twitching wreck on the hostel floor…

There’s more to ‘The Rages’ than the ubiquitous drugs are dangerous message. Drugs do not only create non-sexual states of pleasure that detached society from the importance of sex but are also used to prevent menstruation (and odor and sweat). Drugs are powerful means to control women. However, St. Clair is quick to point out that Harvy himself is the one who must be controlled, his eventual lusts almost cause him to rape another woman. ‘The Rages’ is the most trenchant of St. Clair’s pulp stories I have encountered. Recommended.

‘Roberta’ (1962): First published in Galaxy Magazine, ‘Roberta’ is a disturbing story of a man from Vega named Mr. Dlag who comes to Earth collect “imitation things”.

“That was what interested me most, you know, when I came to Earth – realizing how many Earth things were imitations. Insects that imitate other insects. Plants that imitate other plants. Plants that imitate plants. Plants that imitate rocks. And half your your artifacts imitate other things. It’s amazing. There are almost no imitation things on Needr, my home.” (p 116)

And the “imitation thing” in this case is Roberta, who used to be Robert. Mr. Dlag paid for Robert’s sex change so he could have her in his collection. And Roberta, who constantly talks her to her “male” predecessor, is compelled to kill the collector. Remember, this is the 1960s treatment of transgender topics… I am not sure whether this is a positive, or negative portrayal, or somewhere in-between. For example the above passage seems to indicate that such “imitations” (obviously not the word we would use today), although occurring in life do not replace the original state. But then again, St. Clair puts those words in the mouth of an alien. And, the story follows this format as Roberta talks constantly with Robert. As a story, the idea of a collector looking for a transgendered individual disturbs. I do not know what to make of it.

Recommended for scholars studying gender and transgender topics in SF.

‘The Island of the Hands’ (variant title: ‘Island of the Hands’) (1952): First published in Weird Tales, ‘The Island of the Hands’ is a story of obsession. Dirk compulsively searches for his wife, who disappeared while talking to him on the radio on her solo flight across an ocean. The search and rescue expedition encounters an island where a simulacrum of Dirk’s wife, with subtle differences, resides. Rather, the simulacrum is his projection of what he wished his wife looked like… All the characters are soon transfixed by the Island of Hands and its miraculous powers. But, will Dirk still be able to find his wife? A fun story, with some cool images, that moves in all the right directions.

This review originally appeared on Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations.