Read Online Dragonwriter by Todd McCaffrey - Free Book Online Page B

the genre’s writers credit her with inspiring them to become writers.
    These distinctions alone merit McCaffrey a place in literary history, but her impact on popular fiction did not lie only in showing she was as talented as any male writer, blazing a trail that other female writers could follow. McCaffrey’s legacy lies in the changes she brought about in science fiction literature itself.
    Science fiction has been characterized as falling on a continuum, at one end “hard” science fiction, which focuses on the sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and, on the other, “soft” science fiction, which is characterized, in contrast, by its emphasis on the so-called “soft” human sciences of psychology and sociology. The term “hard science fiction” appeared in the 1950s, as editors, writers, and readers were promoting the genre for its realistic scientific premises. As more female and male writers began focusing on characterization and social sciences in the genre in the 1970s, the corollary “soft science fiction” proved a useful publishing and fan term. Soft science fiction focuses as much on characterization as on scientific issues, and is as concerned with human emotions as it is with scientific premises. Hard science fiction was associated more with male writers and characters, and soft science fiction with women.
    In the Golden Age of science fiction, the genre largely focused on a scientific premise or problem, solved using technology or scientific knowledge, by a male hero in an adventure setting. The science was the center of the story. Less emphasis was placed on character development or a complicated narrative. Anne McCaffrey’s work was different. While her books were emphatically science fiction, not fantasy—set on other planets or in space, in the future, and interested in technology and science, not magic—she combined the traditional science focus of science fiction with previously derided female concerns like emotion, romance, and sexuality. In doing so, McCaffrey helped science fiction gain both larger audiences and widespread acceptability. Her complex, interesting female characters, who confronted emotional trauma and learned the value of tolerance, assertiveness, and leadership, brought in female readers, expanding science fiction’s readership.
    The Dragonriders of Pern, as McCaffrey’s best-known and most successful series, provides a telling example of her literary innovations, which are evident from the very first story set on Pern. Dragonflight focuses as much on Lessa and F’lar’s relationship and Lessa’s blossoming as an individual as it does on the science fictional setting of a planet and the urgent puzzle of how Pern ancestors defended the planet from the invasive spore called Thread. Readers identify with Lessa’s outsider plight and follow with intensity her growing assimilation into the world of dragons and dragonriders. Lessa learning to love and be loved provides a compelling narrative. That emotional narrative is intertwined with a problem with a science-based solution: how to work with dragons to protect life on Pern. How the puzzle is solved, however, demonstrates an alternative to hard science fiction’s traditional engineering or laboratory solution. It is not a lab of scientists or an action hero wielding a new weapon that saves the day. Instead, the ability to interpret a tapestry and understand a song’s hidden meanings provides the critical clues. Female characters’ appreciation and knowledge of traditionally (in our world) feminine texts provides Pern’s redemption.
    The importance of these feminine domestic arts is central to many plots in the Dragonriders of Pern series. It must have been especially surprising to readers, that first time, that songs, tapestries, and stories contained the knowledge needed to save the planet from Thread. Such a solution