The Dragons Are Singing Tonight

This Wednesday (January 16) is Appreciate a Dragon Day. One of the odder holidays, perhaps -- but one I whole-heartedly approve of, given my affection for dragons.

For being a mythical creature, dragons have quite the geological range. Virtually every culture has a variation of the dragon legend in their mythology. Western tradition tends to tells stories of fire-breathing, maiden-eating monsters that must be conquered and slain, while Eastern mythology generally views dragons as benevolent beasts who are symbols of good fortune.

The stories themselves may differ wildly, but dragons themselves are present in stories and legends everywhere. Historians have guessed that discovering fossilized remains of dinosaur bones may have led to early cultures devising myths about dragons. Nowadays, we know dragons to be imaginary -- but that's done little to relax their hold on our collective imagination.

I've been a fan of dragons since middle school, when movies like Dragonheart and books like Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles captivated me with their weird, wild, wonderful dragon characters. 

Here's five of the most memorable:

-- Smaug

Legends of dragons have been around for centuries. But for fans of modern high fantasy, Smaug might be considered the "original" dragon. Appearing in J.R.R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, Smaug fits in with many of the dragons of Western mythology: a cruel, greedy, evil beast, who spends his days lying atop his hoard of treasure in the cave inside the Lonely Mountain. The treasure, incidentally, was stolen by Smaug, having originally belonged to the dwarven residents of Lonely Mountain. Smaug chased the dwarves out of their home and has lived in the Mountain (with its treasure) ever since -- at least until a group of dwarves decide to reclaim their homeland, with the help of the hapless Bilbo Baggins.

Last December saw the release of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The first in a trilogy of films, Smaug's presence is suggested but not really shown. Expect that to change in this year's sequel The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which will feature the dragon, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, in all of Smaug's menacing glory.

-- Ramoth

We've talked before about Anne McCaffrey, the sci-fi author whose most famous creation was the Dragonriders of Pern. The series centers on a group of specially-chosen men and women who are telepathically bonded to the dragons they ride, and who are charged with protecting the people of Pern.

The first book in the series, Dragonflight, tells the story of dragonrider Lessa and her golden dragon, Ramoth. Published in the 1960s, the book was groundbreaking on a number of levels -- not the least of which was the portrayal of a strong female character in Lessa. But dragon Ramoth was groundbreaking, too: here was a dragon who was one of the good guys.



-- Falkor

To be fair, he doesn't really look all that much like most people's idea of a dragon. In fact, Falkor the Luckdragon -- from the Neverending Story books and films -- is unusual in a number of ways.

Covered in fur and scales, Falkor is wingless but still capable of flying. He can breathe fire (the flames are blue), but his most magical trait is his boundless good luck. He's there to help story heroes Atreyu and Bastian on their quest to save Fantasia, and his luck never seems to fail them.

-- Temeraire

This "alternate history" series posits a highly unusual "what-if" -- what if there were dragons during the era of the Napoleonic Wars?  

In Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, dragons not only exist, they also comprise the aerial fleets of European and Asian nations. Captain William Laurence of the HMS Reliant finds himself forced into Britain's Aerial Corps alongside his dragon, Temeraire (who he names after a French ship of the same name). Laurence and Temeraire -- the latter of whom turns out to be a highly unusual kind of dragon -- quickly find themselves caught up in the politics and intrigue of their time, making this historical fiction with a highly fantastical twist, indeed. This original series has been on my reading list for years.

-- Secoh

Secoh merits a place on this list simply because he's a favorite of mine. He appears in Gordon R. Dickson's Dragon Knight series, which centers on the adventures of Jim Eckert. Jim is just your average twentieth-century financially-struggling historian -- until he's whisked back in time to medieval days and promptly finds himself surrounded by magicians, sandmirks, talking wolves, and dragons.

One of those dragons is Secoh, a "mere-dragon" who's only half the size of the average dragon. Half-starved and constantly bullied, Secoh is a sniffling, cowardly sort of dragon -- at least until the wise old dragon Smrgol gives him something new to think about:

"Don't give me this nonsense about being only a mere-dragon! Mere's got nothing to do with what kind of dragon you are. You're a DRAGON! Get that straight, once and for all time! And a dragon ACTS like a dragon, or he doesn't act at all!"

That's good advice, I think, for any dragon to follow.

Click here to read Jack Prelutsky's poem "Once They All Believed in Dragons."

-- Post by Ms. B

DragonLady

Before Christopher Paolini and Eragon, there was Anne McCaffrey and the dragonriders of Pern.

In 1967, Analog magazine published the novella Weyr Search. The novella would eventually serve as the basis for McCaffrey's first Pern book, Dragonflight -- kicking off a series that includes over 20 novels and two short story collections. Weyr Search tells the story of Lessa, a young woman living on the colonized planet of Pern, who is picked by the dragonriders to be a Candidate for the new queen dragon. If she's chosen (by the dragon, not the riders) to actually become a rider herself, she'll become the most powerful person on the planet, telepathically bonded to a queen dragon who is virtually unstoppable. And yet, it's a dangerous time to be the only queen rider on Pern, because something is returning to the skies ... something that only the dragonriders can stop ...

McCaffrey said that she came up with the idea for the Pern series by asking herself, "What if dragons were the good guys?" Before McCaffrey, the dragons in most fantasy and sci-fi series followed the model of J.R.R. Tolkien's Smaug, the dragon (and evil antagonist) of The Hobbit. McCaffrey was one of the first modern authors to imagine a world where dragons were the heroes instead of the villains. But it wasn't just dragons that benefited from the "good press" they received in McCaffrey's science fiction tales.

Weyr Search would give Anne McCaffrey the distinction of being the first woman to win either a Hugo or Nebula award (which are awards given to authors of science fiction and fantasy). She'd win both, in 1968, for the novella. (Author Kate Wilhelm also won a Nebula that year for her short story The Planners.) But in addition to presenting dragons in a positive light, McCaffrey also brought another rarity of the time to her sci-fi stories: strong female characters.

With characters like Ripley from the Alien films, Sarah Connor from Terminator, and Dana Scully from The X-Files, it's easy to forget that engaging, well-developed female characters are still a relatively new phenomenon in the fictional worlds of sci-fi. And in the late 60s, such characters appeared far less frequently. But in her stories of Pern, as well as in books like The Ship Who Sang and Crystal Singer, McCaffrey presented female characters that were strong, capable, flawed, changing, and -- above all -- human. Rightly known for her inventive story devices (read more about the "brainships" in The Ship Who Sang) and skill at worldbuilding (her world of crystal singing being almost as engaging as Pern), she's also beloved as a writer for her characters. In a time when few were writing about female characters as anything but shallow stereotypes, McCaffrey tried to write her female characters as real people -- and she succeeded.

When I was in high school, I was a big McCaffrey fan, and a huge Pern nut. Looking back on it now, it's not hard to see why McCaffrey's dragon stories appealed so much to me (and to millions of other fans; McCaffrey's books routinely topped the best-seller lists). Who wouldn't want a super-intelligent dragon as their best friend? There's always an element of cool escapism to sci-fi and fantasy, and just as readers of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series might imagine the fun of being a wizard, McCaffrey's intricately-detailed sci-fi worlds offer a similar window of imagination.

And yet, like all great sci-fi and fantasy, McCaffrey's stories go beyond mere escapism. Take away the unicorns and dragons, and you're left with intently human stories about characters who are struggling to overcome obstacles and help each other. McCaffrey's worlds are about escapism, but her characters  inspire her readers. To young female readers in particular, the Pern books provide characters to both relate to and admire, in a field where such characters were once severely lacking.

McCaffrey passed away last week at the age of 85, but Pern will continue on, both in the novels she wrote and in the Pern stories still being written by her son Todd McCaffrey. And her fans -- myself included -- will remain grateful for the wonderful worlds she took us to.

-- Post by Ms. B