The Divine Miss M
Michael Cart -- School Library Journal, 6/1/1999
Michael Cart is past president of the Young Adult Library Services Association and author of the soon-to-be-published Tomorrowland: Ten Stories About the Future (Scholastic).
Photograph by Orla Callaghan
As the 1999 winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, Anne McCaffrey becomes the first science fiction writer to receive this lifetime achievement award. But firsts are nothing new to the redoubtable McCaffrey. She is also the first woman to win the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the first science fiction writer to appear on the New York Times bestseller list, and (almost certainly) the first writer to name a heroine (Killeshandra) after a brand of butter.
In announcing McCaffrey's selection, the Edwards committee singled out her celebrated "Pern" novels: the trilogy known as "The Dragonriders of Pern" (Ballantine) and a second trio of novels aimed at young adult readers, "The Harper Hall Trilogy" (Atheneum). Also cited was The Ship Who Sang (Ballantine, 1970), the novel McCaffrey calls her personal favorite.
Born in Cambridge, MA, on April Fool's Day 1926 ("I've tried very hard to live up to being an April-firster," she quips), McCaffrey graduated from Radcliffe College in 1947. She worked as a copywriter and professional stage director before publishing her first novel, Restoree (Ballantine), in 1967. Since then, she has written more than 60 books, which have been translated into 21 languages. Having lived in Ireland since 1970, McCaffrey now makes her home at Dragonhold-Underhill in County Wicklow, where (in addition to writing) she owns a livery stable and an equitation center. This interview took place on the eve of McCaffrey's 73rd birthday.
What does winning the Edwards Award mean to you?
Apart from being totally astounded -- gobsmacked, as they say here -- elated, stunned, and falling into my daughter's arms in tears when Jana Fine [the Edwards committee chair] told me The Ship Who Sang was included in the Award package, you might tentatively say I was very pleased to be the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award. Winning a lifetime literary award is also a vindication of my choice of genre.
Why is The Ship Who Sang so important to you?
My father died in 1954. He had been in three world wars, including Korea, where he picked up diabetes and tuberculosis, and he died at 63. Now, his death was a severe blow to me. It meant I would never have a chance to prove to him that I was worth something. I didn't realize at the time I started writing about Helva that she was me and that in Jennan's death in the first story, I was actually grieving for my father. He was a grand figure -- not very approachable, though. We always called him "The Colonel." He was a lot more interested in his damn garden than in his children.
Was the act of writing from very personal emotion an innovation for science fiction at that time?
Oh, it was. But this was also about the time that the readership was growing up and beginning to want more characterization, more feeling, more plot. In my stories there was no hand-holding off into the sunset at the end. The man got the girl, and there was no doubt what they did thereafter. If I had been a character in one of my books, I wouldn't have been cowering in the corner. I'd have been in there kicking and fighting.
I often think that humor is the Rodney Dangerfield of literature: it gets no respect. Is the same true of science fiction?
Unlike Rodney Dangerfield, I command a great deal of respect [gales of laughter]. But, no, we didn't have much respect in those days -- not even from my then husband. We were getting a penny a word back then.
You've certainly redressed that oversight. You're now the first science fiction writer to win the Margaret A. Edwards Award.
Yeahhhhh!
And the first woman to win the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.
Yes, though I arranged it so that Kate Wilhelm's short story Nebula prize [for "The Planners"] was presented first [in 1968]. I don't hog things [laughter].
And you're the first science fiction writer to appear on the New York Times bestseller list.
Yes, I beat Isaac [Asimov], Sir Arthur [Arthur C. Clarke], and Frank Herbert. I remember that the PR woman at Atheneum [publisher of the Harper Hall Trilogy] once asked me what aspiration did I have. I giggled and said I wanted to be on the New York Times bestseller list. I thought it was off the top of my head and impossible. Mind you, I was never first but I was definitely on [the list]. That was the month the Times was on strike, so the list wasn't published. But I knew I was on and [a pause here for dramatic effect] so did my publisher.
What are your thoughts on having attained all of these firsts?
I'm a Radcliffe and, thus, Harvard grad, and they always show the ineffable consciousness of effortless superiority. Now, we were enjoined when I graduated to be first in whatever field of endeavor we chose to enter. No one thought science fiction would be a proper venue. So, typically, I did what no one expected me to do.
Some people say that you write fantasy instead of science fiction. Which is it?
We keep having to settle that question. I write science fiction. It may seem fantasy because I use dragons, but mine were biogenetically engineered; ergo, the story is science fiction.
That settled, how has science fiction changed since your first novel, Restoree, was published 32 years ago?
It's gotten a lot better. It's attracted a better class of inventive writer, and the plots and themes are more unusual. The reader base has also expanded with Star Trek, Star Wars, Close Encounters, and the rest. Then women started reading women writers -- Andre Norton, Kate Wilhelm, Ursula LeGuin, Marion Zimmer Bradley. And once women realized they could understand science fiction, the reader base doubled, if not tripled.
Science fiction was a man's field when you began writing, wasn't it?
Yes, but there were more women writing then than you'd realize. They just weren't so prominent because they typically stuck to short stories -- writers like Virginia Kidd, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and, of course, Andre Norton. I cut my science fiction teeth on Norton. No one told me it was a man's field.
You've said that Jean Karl of Atheneum invited you to write the "Harper Hall Trilogy" as an inducement to girls to begin reading science fiction. Did the books' publication succeed in that?
Yes, very well. All three are still in print; it's 23 years now for Dragonsong. That means I have three generations of readers. And the "Harper Hall" books are used as recommended reading or for discussion in ninth grade. I wasn't sure at first that I wanted kids to have to read my books, though. I didn't like that as a kid.
Who was the inspiration for Menolly, your teenage protagonist?
I had two young friends who have now grown up. Both were admirable horseback riders at 13 or 14. Both were determined to stay with horses and both have. I pictured Menolly as looking like one of the girls, Derval, with a shaggy mop of curly hair, tall and skinny, with her knees slightly knocking, which is very good for a rider. Menolly's dedication to her music and her parents' opposition was also borrowed. The girls' parents weren't mean to them like Menolly's; they just didn't understand horses. [Derval Diamond is now manager of McCaffrey's livery stable and equitation center.]
How did Piemur come to center stage in Dragondrums?
I wanted to attract boys to the series, too! And then he just horned in like [Masterharper] Robinton, who has horned into 10 of the books. There's no way I can keep him out.
Do your characters ever surprise you?
Constantly! I used to put them back in the drawer when that happened, until I learned to follow their lead. After all, why write about wishy-washy characters? They're no damn fun.
How do you name your characters?
I used to use signposts with letters that were missing. Then I started using sports pages and finding ethnic names. Piemur is a Latin declension. Menolly is a corruption of Melanie. Simple, no?
Was writing for young adults different from writing for adults?
No, because I wasn't talking down to my readers. There were certain things I didn't talk about, though.
One of the things you don't talk about is religion. Why?
When I was writing the first short story, we were going through quite a few religious wars, and so I decided the one thing the people on Pern did not need was organized religion. In a disaster or war situation many people will query whether God should allow this or not. God has given us free will to make wars and kill other people. However, if you have been in one and your faith is not secure, it will weaken and be replaced by atheism or agnosticism. The people who first went to Pern had just finished a very nasty war. They took their disbelief with them. But there is religion on Pern and it begins with a big D -- as in Dragon. That's what John Campbell [the legendary editor of Analog magazine] told me. It had not occurred to me before.
How did you decide to write about dragons?
Andre Norton remarked to me once that dragons had had a very bad press. When I found myself wanting to use an alien "critter" in my writing, I remembered that. What I did differently was to put dragons on an equal footing with humans and to make their relationship symbiotic.
I've read that you discovered science fiction during your annual bout of bronchitis in 1950.
That's right [laughing]. But I had been reading utopian/ dystopian fiction much of my life: Tarzan, A. Merritt's Ship of Ishtar, Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia, and, of course, Kipling. The Colonel used to declaim The Barrackroom Ballads, and my mother read to us from The Jungle Books. Mowgli was one of my favorite people.
When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer?
I wanted to be either a writer or a famous film star or a singer. I was always going to be rich and famous. No surprise for a kid like myself, who was not well liked by the peer group. [In an exaggerated child's voice:] They'll be sorry they were mean to me.
You say you were very "lucky" with your parents. Can you comment on that?
My mother would often say, "Anne, you're going to grow up, go to college, marry, and have children. What are you then going to do with the rest of your life? She was a real estate agent, by the way, and a very good one. The fact that she very early on informed me that I had the rest of my life to do something meant I was not under the prohibition that everything stopped when I married and had children. As for my father, he showed me a standard of excellence that I don't think I've ever lived up to. My parents gave me ambition and motivation to go do it. Then I got divorced and I had to.
How did you happen to choose Ireland as your post-divorce home?
I needed to resettle myself, my kids, and my mother. I recognized an affinity for the country; my mother loved it; I had gotten my [Irish] maiden name back following the divorce and then there was the matter of that artist's tax exemption [laughter].
Have you ever regretted the move?
Never. And now that they're importing American cantaloupe and Oreos, I'm even happier.
If, instead of Ireland, you could live in one of the worlds you've created, which would it be?
[With great laughter] Pern!
You and everybody else. To what do you attribute the international popularity of Pern? Your work was available in 21 different languages at last count.
Wouldn't you like to have a 40-foot telepathic dragon for your best friend? That translates into any language.
Speaking of language, let's talk about your writing. Does it require significant research?
More and more as things get more complicated. I used to be able to wing it. Now I get on the Web, go to the subject I need, and say, "I need help."
How do books begin for you?
With a scene, usually, and with characters in conflict -- either with themselves or with their society. Generally speaking, the plot develops when you're writing about the characters and their problems. And, like life, one runs into another. It is Chekhov's slice of life, not necessarily plotted.
Once begun, how do they evolve? Do you work from an outline?
Never! If I write an outline, I have already told the story, and I'm no longer interested in it.
Do you write every day?
Yes, so long as there's a keyboard around to trigger it. I do my thinking when I'm in the car or doing mechanical things, but once I hit the keyboard -- whoops! It's the trigger.
Do you ever experience writer's block?
Yep.
How do you deal with it?
I put in a new character or switch to a new theme and then go back and work it all in. Generally, writer's block means your story logic is wrong. Go back to where the book doesn't interest you and there work in something new.
You don't sit around waiting for inspiration?
Inspiration? What's that? Paying bills -- that's the inspiration. Well, the motivation, anyway.
You've said you created Pern in an afternoon. True?
Um-hmm. Actually I created the background for a short story; that's all I expected to write. Fifteen novels, three short stories, three reference books, and one CD later...
And a TV series?
The Dragonriders of Pern will begin airing in January 2000 on major channels internationally.
I look forward to seeing it.
Not as much as I do.
Since you write books about entire worlds like Pern, how do you avoid inconsistencies and self-contradictions?
I don't! I try hard, but occasionally they will crop up. Sometimes they're typos; sometimes my head was somewhere else. But then there are many anomalies in our own world -- though mostly they're politicians.
How do you develop your various worlds' geographic features?
I passed my science requirement [in college] with cartography and geography. It seemed like science I could handle. Cartography is a useful skill to have when you're creating worlds. A guy named J. R. R. Tolkien did pretty well at that, too.
I spent the morning on the Web discovering the incredible number of sites devoted to you and your work.
It's appalling, isn't it?
Is there a downside to your fame?
Yep. Everyone wants a piece of you. However, part of it is very gratifying. When you get letters from people who are challenged and who tell you they have met their challenges through reading your books, that's pure gold.
In addition to your writing you own a livery stable?
Yes. We started it at old Dragonhold [her former home]. Derval came to work for me in 1982 and said we needed more land. I managed to acquire an additional 47 acres, a barn, and a cottage. We added an American stable, an outdoor dressage, and then an indoor school. We're presently an internationally known equitation center.
How long have you been interested in horses?
Since I was eight or nine. The Colonel got me riding lessons with cavalry mounts.
Is there any equation between horses and dragons?
No. Horses are stupid! Oh, well; they're smart within their parameters. My horse Mr. Ed used to throw me once a year just to prove he could.
You once described your child self as "a totally uncompromising, egregious, domineering, opinionated brat." How do you describe your adult self?
Well, I've got more friends. I'm pretty gregarious, certainly not a workaholic. I'm arthritic, slightly deaf and [a long pause] I'm a survivor.
