Free Dragonwriter by Todd McCaffrey

demonstrates, to the book’s characters and to its readers, that art can be as important as science, and that art and science are both essential to human existence. It suggests, less explicitly, that both men and women are essential to society and that we ignore “feminine concerns” at our own peril.
    The Dragonriders of Pern also raises another “feminine concern,” relationships, to a place of world-saving importance—particularly the one between dragon and rider. Dragons and dragonriders share emotionally rich and rewarding collaborative relationships, ones that are essential to Pern’s survival. Rather than fantasy monsters to be feared and killed, Pern’s dragons are sentient beings created by science. In them, McCaffrey took the human-animal bonds we know from our own lives a step further, radically reimagining a fearsome creature into an intimate partner. What Isaac Asimov did for robots, transforming them from humanity’s enemies to our supporters and friends, McCaffrey did for dragons. On Pern, dragons are sentient, competent, and caring companions with a believable scientific explanation for their existence.
    As useful partners to humans, dragons play crucial social and emotional roles on Pern beyond their contributions to fighting Thread. Emotionally, a dragon’s relationship with his or her rider is so important that, in most cases, should a dragon die, the human also will die from the shock of losing his or her dragon companion. Should the dragonrider die first, the dragon will fly between and die also. Because of their telepathic bond, dragons and their human riders can share complete openness and intimacy and provide a model for the kind of ideal, mutually supportive relationship that humans have difficulty achieving. Certainly the emotional relationship of Lessa and F’lar in Dragonflight is much more complicated and fraught with difficulty than the one between Lessa and her dragon, Ramoth. Literary critic Jane Donawerth suggests that McCaffrey’s dragons and dragonriders offer an alternative to traditional heterosexual relationships based on male dominance. Perhaps fittingly, then, dragons also provide a source of social power. Through their relationships with dragons, female characters on Pern have a path to leadership, something as hard won at that time in literature as in real life.
    In addition to making relationships the center of her narratives, McCaffrey dealt explicitly with sex and sexuality, and did so in a way that contrasted dramatically with that of most of her male contemporaries. Sex frequently wasn’t mentioned at all: for example, the justly celebrated Isaac Asimov almost completely ignores sex, and his brilliant female scientist, Dr. Susan Calvin, eschews sex and femininity. If present, sexuality in texts by men tended to be oppressive, presented in a way that made clear the female character’s complete subordination to men. In 1953, Philip Jose Farmer received a Hugo Award for the novella The Lovers, in which a female alien morphs into a male fantasy of a sexually attractive partner. This female alien only exists to sexually satisfy a human male even though the resulting pregnancy kills her. Her offspring look like just like her, suggesting that the next generation of females will fulfill the same subordinate role.
    In contrast to such portrayals, McCaffrey depicted sex as a key part of a full and satisfying relationship of equals. In Dragonflight, Lessa first experiences sex when her queen dragon mates because when dragons mate, their riders feel compelled to have sex also. Since the experience is not initiated by Lessa, she faces the possibility of losing control of her body. Over time, however, she asserts her dragon’s ability to out-fly undesirable suitors, and with her dragon’s support, is able to assert herself as an independent female, including choosing to embrace her sexual desires. By the end of the novel, her