(no subject)
Jun. 20th, 2026 10:14 amOkay, this is my last McCaffrey post for the foreseeable future for real, but I do want to talk about the weirdness of reading Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern in 2026.
I find it hard to imagine I did not read this one when I was a child and reading Every Pern, but I also didn't remember anything about it except that it was the Plague Book, and it surprised me in several ways!
1. the most plot-important relationship in the book is Moreta's friendship with her mentor, the previous Weyrwoman, which takes increasing prominence once Moreta's dragon lays her eggs and has to hang out by the Hatching Grounds and Moreta keeps needing to borrow Leri's dragon to fly around in a weird sort-of-taboo blurring of the bond between the two of them and their dragons that eventually results in both Moreta's Heroism and MOreta's Doom. This could have been really interesting in the hands of a writer who was more interested in this sort of thing, which McCaffrey is not, but nonetheless is probably the strongest and most central relationship between two women I've yet seen McCaffrey write
2. [direct corollary I think] the main romance in the book is completely plot unimportant. I had somehow been under the impression that Moreta died delivering vaccine specifically to or from this guy's place-- not true! He's not involved! It would change almost nothing about the novel if the romance did not happen except that Moreta would be having a slightly worse time because she didn't get to have a nice date in the middle of it. To be clear I think this is great; the fact that this relationship is in no way load-bearing takes all the pressure off it in a way that is remarkable for a McCaffrey novel. It's nice to see two adults click over a shared hobby!
(Moreta also has a Weyrleader. They have dragon-mandated sex when necessary and otherwise he's a kind of annoying coworker who does some parts of his job very well and has to be aggressively managed through the other parts, though Anne McCaffrey and I do not always agree on which elements of his behavior are annoying.)
3. there are more explicit m/m dragonrider pairings in this book than in any other before or (I think?) since.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay and I were chatting a bit over this and I do think it's impossible to completely disentangle this from the fact that this is the Pern Plague Book, written in 1983 -- the same year that Samuel Delaney dedicated a Neveryon book to Anne McCaffrey, the sequel to which would be his own take on the AIDS crisis. She had to have been thinking at least a little bit about it, consciously or subconsciously. For which reason, I was sort of extra pleasantly surprised that all of these named gay dragonriders do actually make it out alive and are well in recovery by the end of the book!
4. [kind of a corollary] despite the massive and terrible death tolls reported as a general statistic throughout, very very few named characters actually die of the plague; everyone we actually spend any time with makes it through completely fine. There is a sort of a sense that Anne McCaffrey secretly believes it's a bit embarrassing to die of the plague and anyone who really bucks themselves up and commits to it should be able to make it through on sheer willpower ... like she knows, in her head, that this is not true, and nobody should actually be blamed for dying of plague. But I don't know that she's been able to make herself believe it in her heart. For this reason perhaps I did not actually find it very creepy or horrifying as a plague book -- I was braced for it to be kind of a difficult read, for the Obvious Reasons, but McCaffrey is really much less interested in creeping inevitable horror and more in Heroically Practical People Find Solutions.
5. You know what I did have a big reaction to? You know what I did have big emotions about? THE WHOLE PLAGUE SITUATION AND FULL VACCINATION PROGRAM IS RESOLVED IN TEN DAYS. Ten days! TEN DAYS. Ten days and then nobody has to think about it ever again?? What I wouldn't give -- no. Sorry. It's a very bad and serious plague situation and so many people on Pern died and also they have to deal with Thread, and also feudalism. It's rough to be on Pern. (TEN! DAYS!!!)
I find it hard to imagine I did not read this one when I was a child and reading Every Pern, but I also didn't remember anything about it except that it was the Plague Book, and it surprised me in several ways!
1. the most plot-important relationship in the book is Moreta's friendship with her mentor, the previous Weyrwoman, which takes increasing prominence once Moreta's dragon lays her eggs and has to hang out by the Hatching Grounds and Moreta keeps needing to borrow Leri's dragon to fly around in a weird sort-of-taboo blurring of the bond between the two of them and their dragons that eventually results in both Moreta's Heroism and MOreta's Doom. This could have been really interesting in the hands of a writer who was more interested in this sort of thing, which McCaffrey is not, but nonetheless is probably the strongest and most central relationship between two women I've yet seen McCaffrey write
2. [direct corollary I think] the main romance in the book is completely plot unimportant. I had somehow been under the impression that Moreta died delivering vaccine specifically to or from this guy's place-- not true! He's not involved! It would change almost nothing about the novel if the romance did not happen except that Moreta would be having a slightly worse time because she didn't get to have a nice date in the middle of it. To be clear I think this is great; the fact that this relationship is in no way load-bearing takes all the pressure off it in a way that is remarkable for a McCaffrey novel. It's nice to see two adults click over a shared hobby!
(Moreta also has a Weyrleader. They have dragon-mandated sex when necessary and otherwise he's a kind of annoying coworker who does some parts of his job very well and has to be aggressively managed through the other parts, though Anne McCaffrey and I do not always agree on which elements of his behavior are annoying.)
3. there are more explicit m/m dragonrider pairings in this book than in any other before or (I think?) since.
sovay and I were chatting a bit over this and I do think it's impossible to completely disentangle this from the fact that this is the Pern Plague Book, written in 1983 -- the same year that Samuel Delaney dedicated a Neveryon book to Anne McCaffrey, the sequel to which would be his own take on the AIDS crisis. She had to have been thinking at least a little bit about it, consciously or subconsciously. For which reason, I was sort of extra pleasantly surprised that all of these named gay dragonriders do actually make it out alive and are well in recovery by the end of the book! 4. [kind of a corollary] despite the massive and terrible death tolls reported as a general statistic throughout, very very few named characters actually die of the plague; everyone we actually spend any time with makes it through completely fine. There is a sort of a sense that Anne McCaffrey secretly believes it's a bit embarrassing to die of the plague and anyone who really bucks themselves up and commits to it should be able to make it through on sheer willpower ... like she knows, in her head, that this is not true, and nobody should actually be blamed for dying of plague. But I don't know that she's been able to make herself believe it in her heart. For this reason perhaps I did not actually find it very creepy or horrifying as a plague book -- I was braced for it to be kind of a difficult read, for the Obvious Reasons, but McCaffrey is really much less interested in creeping inevitable horror and more in Heroically Practical People Find Solutions.
5. You know what I did have a big reaction to? You know what I did have big emotions about? THE WHOLE PLAGUE SITUATION AND FULL VACCINATION PROGRAM IS RESOLVED IN TEN DAYS. Ten days! TEN DAYS. Ten days and then nobody has to think about it ever again?? What I wouldn't give -- no. Sorry. It's a very bad and serious plague situation and so many people on Pern died and also they have to deal with Thread, and also feudalism. It's rough to be on Pern. (TEN! DAYS!!!)
