Todd McCaffrey, Dragon Harper

Like many boys growing up in the 1960s, Todd was, according to his website's biography, "space mad." In 1968 he got a set of Lunar Module Study Guides, which he proceeded to devour. He's still likely to quote them when he's on a convention panel. He attended Lehigh University in Pennsylvania for a year. He hated it, but he did discover his love for computers. He flunked out of college in Ireland, and subsequently joined the US Army and became a Reconnaissance Scout in Germany. He turned down Officers Candidate School and went back to college. This time he graduated with honors from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in 1985.

Hoping to get into the aerospace industry, he moved to Los Angeles in 1986. He got into computers instead and also got a private pilot's license in 1988. Also at this time, this son of a best-selling author began developing his own writing skills and published several short stories as Todd Johnson (his birth name). One example of his writing as Todd Johnson is the section on "Training and Fighting Dragons" in The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern by Jody Lynn Nye with Anne McCaffrey first published in 1989 and updated in 1997.

According to his biography, Todd realized he wanted to be a writer "when I realized that I had characters within me that would not be heard unless I gave them voice." He quit his day job in 1990 to write full time. In 1992 he attended Clarion West, an annual six-week writers workshop held in Seattle for people preparing for a career in science fiction and fantasy.

So far, Todd McCaffrey has been involved in five novels about Pern, set during the end of the Second Interval and the beginning of the Third Pass, about 500 Turns (the Pern equivalent of an Earth year and roughly the same length) after the colonists settled the planet, intending it to be a pastoral, low-technology society. Three of the novels have been written in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, with the second and fifth being solo efforts.

According to a blog entry on Todd McCaffrey's website, over the 2008 Christmas holiday, which he spent at Dragonhold, his mother's home in Ireland, discussions of future collaborations on two books occurred. His latest book, Dragonheart certainly leaves the door wide open to future novels.

Lunar Module illustration from NASA

This first collaboration between Anne and Todd McCaffrey opens sixteen years before the start of the Third Pass of the Red Star. It is nearly 500 years after Pern was colonized by people who only after it was too late to leave found out about the dangers of Thread falling from the skies.

The dragons had been developed by Kitti Ping, one of the original colonists. Her daughter, Wind Blossom Ping, carried on the work, but wasn't quite as talented. One of her partial failures resulted in the development of watch-whers, creatures related to dragons but with very limited abilities. Watch-whers are nocturnal, so they are used as guards at holds. They have some telepathic abilities and can bond with humans, Impressing in a manner similar to their larger cousins.

Like many Pern novels and stories, this is a coming-of-age story told inside the context of larger events. The story centers around Kindan, youngest son of Master Miner Danil. Danil is also handler of the watch-wher at Camp Natalon, a mining camp established to relearn the nearly lost art of deep mining for coal after the surface deposits on Pern's Northern Continent run low.The watch-wher, with its ability to see in the dark, is important to this underground venture. Kindan's friend Zenor and young blind girl Nuella are also important characters in the story.

An accident kills Kindan's father and the rest of his family along with the watch-wher. Kindan takes up residence with the newly-arrived Master Harper Zist, who had heard of Kindan's fine singing voice and begins training the boy in harper ways. When accidents begin plaguing the miners, Master Miner Natalon realizes the camp needs a new watch-wher. He acquires an egg and entrusts it to Kindan because Kindan's father was a wher-handler. Kindan wonders if he'll be able to handle the responsibility, but he gets help from Nuella and Zenor, while Master Zist enlists the help of the leader of Benden Weyr.

Kindan, Zenor and Nuella come to learn more about watch-whers and their abilities than anyone else on Pern. This knowledge leads to a new understanding between ordinary hold folk and Dragonriders.

Dragon's Kin (Mass Market Paperback) from Amazon.com
Dragon's Kin (Mass Market Paperback) from Amazon.co.uk

Dragonsblood begins at the end of the Second Inverval in 507 AL (After Landing). Lorana is a young healer who lost her father during a virulent plague that had swept over Pern. She has the very rare ability to hear all dragons. At Benden Weyr, she Impresses a queen hatchling who had, to everyone's surprise, wandered off the Hatching Grounds looking for her. At the same time, ominous signs of dragons and fire-lizards coming down with an illness begin to be seen. Then dragons begin dying. Lorana tries to find a cure, and she gets help from a very unexpected source.

450 Turns before, at the end of the First Pass, Wind Blossom Ping, daughter of original colonist, geneticist and creator of Pern's dragons Kitti Ping, is still living. She realizes that at some point in the future, the dragons could be threatened by illness. She works to make sure that dragonriders in the future will have available the knowledge they need to keep the dragons from being wiped out by a plague that affects them and their tiny cousins the fire-lizards.

The viewpoint of the story shifts back and forth from Lorana's time to Wind Blossom's as the two women, separated by 450 Turns, work to save the dragons, the only thing standing between the people of Pern and the devastating Thread falling from the Red Star.

Dragonsblood (Mass Market Paperback) from Amazon.com
Dragonsblood from Amazon.co.uk

This second mother-son collaboration is set in the same time frame as Dragon's Kin. It's a coming-of-age tale of three young Pernese: Pellar, a mute Apprentice Harper who travels with Masterharper Zist to a mining camp, Halla, daughter of criminals known as the Shunned, and Cristov, son of Tarik, a crooked miner dealing with one of the Shunned, the ruthless Tenim.

Tenim decides there's more profit in firestone than in stolen coal and determines to corner the market. The firestone of the time is far more volatile than the type familiar to dragonriders of the Sixth and Ninth Passes. It must be protected from the slightest contact with water or it will explode. This makes mining it extremely dangerous.

When the last remaining firestone mine explodes, Tenim seeks to turn tragedy to his advantage, no matter who must die. Pellar, Halla and Cristov must find a way to stop him and ensure that firestone will be available when Thread begins to fall in the not too distant future.

Dragon's Fire (Mass Market Paperback) from Amazon.com
Dragon's Fire (Mass Market Paperback) from Amazon.co.uk

The third collaboration between Anne and Todd McCaffrey takes place immediately following the events of Dragon's Fire. It is told largely from the viewpoint of Kindan, an apprentice at the Harper Hall near Fort Hold, the oldest Hold on the Northern Continent of Pern. The story goes into some detail about apprentice training as it follows Kindan, his friends the young women apprentices Nonala and Kelsa, and Kindan's fight with the bully Vaxoram.

After a clutch of fire-lizard eggs is delivered to Fort Hold, Kindan is on hand when they hatch, and he Impresses one, which wins the heart of Koriana, Lord Holder Benim's daughter. Benim will have none of it, not wanting his oldest daughter becoming attached to the low-born Apprentice Harper.

Then a plague arises and strikes hold after hold. With Threadfall due in a little over ten Turns, the dragonriders of Pern isolate themselves from the Holders and Craftspeople to insure there will be dragons enough to rise to fight Thread. As the disease strikes down people regardless of their station in Pernese society, it fall to Kindan and other Harper Hall apprentices to find a cure.

Dragon Harper (Mass Market Paperback) from Amazon.com
Dragon Harper from Amazon.co.uk

Dragonheart is largely the story of Fiona, the only child of Lord Bemin of Fort Hold to survive the Plague that struck Pern late in the Second Interval. As the only survivor, she's being groomed to become Lady Holder at Fort. She's thirteen at the beginning of the book and because of her position has never really had a childhood. Brought to Fort Weyr with her father to watch a Hatching, she and everyone else are surprised when the gold queen hatchling seeks her out from the audience. She Impresses Talenth and becomes a Weyrwoman.

With the first Threadfalls of the Third Pass imminent, a disease is found among the fire lizards that many holders and weyrfolk keep as pets. Fiona had been forced to give up her queen fire lizard as everyone sends the fire lizards to the Southern Continent hoping to avoid contaminating the dragons. The plan isn't entirely successful as dragons begin falling ill.

As Thread begins falling, casualties among the inexperienced dragons and their riders are high, a problem compounded by the disease weakening and killing dragons. As the situation darkens, Fiona begins hearing a mysterious voice telling her things will eventually work out. The dragonriders decide to send injured dragons, riders, and weyrlings back in time to abandoned Igen Weyr for several Turns so the injured can recover and the weyrlings can grow and train to return ready to fight Thread. They will age three Turns but only three days will pass in the time period they leave.

The flight back in time is led by a mysterious queen rider. Fiona, in spite of her young age, has the only queen at Igen and therefore is the Weyrwoman. She learns to cope with her responsibilities, aided by an even younger weyrgirl who at ten Turns becomes headwoman, mostly because she's the only other female to make the trip in time to Igen. They form an alliance with traders who had been using Igen Weyr, and also become involved in setting up the first Wherhold for raising and training watch-whers.

With "Dragonheart" Todd McCaffrey gives us a lot more detail about weyrling training than had been presented in other Dragonriders books. He shows how Fiona has to grapple with her position as a very young Weyrwoman as she trains with Talenth and the other weyrlings. Even though it will be a while before Talenth rises to mate for the first time, Fiona is nervous at the prospect of the emotional storm that envelops dragonriders, especially the queen rider and the rider of the bronze who is successful at catching the queen in a mating flight.

The ending of the book is left open to a sequel that will most likely continue Fiona's story. Among the questions left unanswered are the identity of the voice Fiona heard and the identity of the mysterious queen rider. Fiona suspects both the voice and the rider are her future self, but her suspicions are never resolved.

Dragonheart (Hardcover) from Amazon.com
Dragonheart from Amazon.co.uk