Dragonholder

by Todd McCaffrey

  At that time I’d managed to find a fellow science fiction reader in my school and so often, he, I, and my little sister, Gigi, would be the ones to help Anne pull the Forum together. Sometimes, Anne would have help from the local science fiction writers, and there would be a large party atmosphere which made the work go very quickly.

  It was before and after such collating parties that Anne entertained numerous young writers including Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, Pamela Sargent, and Patrice Duvic.

  Anne attended more science fiction conventions — in those days the lifeblood of science fiction. In 1968 science fiction was something that teachers didn’t want you to read, that parents loathed, and that rarely occupied more than a small number of shelves at the local bookstore.

  Many books achieved good sales through word of mouth — and the patience, dedication, and perseverance of the publisher. Science fiction conventions were where word of mouth worked best.

  That was the year that Anne brought me to my first science fiction convention — a Lunacon in New York City. I remember seeing Harlan Ellison doing one—handed pushups, talking with Isaac Asimov, and going out to dinner with Robert Silverberg. And I remember being entranced by Ian Ballantine’s twinkling eyes and bushy eyebrows.

  Every year there was one big convention — the World Science Fiction Convention known as “Worldcon”. Like bees to honey, science fiction readers and writers alike would flock to the Worldcon. Not only was the atmosphere always electric — alive with readers and writers mixing together, swapping enthusiastic tales or exploring some new aspect of science — but the Worldcon was the place where every year the fans awarded that year’s best novel, novella, novelette, and short story with the Hugo — named after Hugo Gernsback, one of science fiction’s early lights and great editors.

  Shortly after it was founded, the Science Fiction Writers of America agreed that there should be awards voted yearly by its membership for the best novel, novella, novelette, and short story. The award was called the Nebula — SFWA’s version of Hollywood’s Oscars. But there is nothing like the Hugo in Hollywood — an award from the readers of the genre for what they consider to be the best in the field.

  Although just back from Europe with Gladdie, Anne got Wright to agree to let her attend the 1968 Worldcon — partly because her story Weyr Search had been nominated for the Hugo award.

  The world science fiction convention, Baycon, was held in Berkeley, California. There were student riots at the time. Betty and Ian Ballantine, who were staying at a different hotel from the main convention hotel, got tear-gassed on their way to the convention. Anne herself suffered a bit of culture shock, returning from her trip to quaint England and Ireland out to the modern Spanish architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area — and much more from discord between the ever polite Irish to the anti-war student rioters.

  At the convention itself, Anne started to relax. She met David Gerrold, fresh from his success with the marvelous Star Trek episode, The Trouble with Tribbles. The two hit it off immediately. When Anne mentioned that she was Secretary-Treasurer of SFWA, Dave asked, “Can I join SFWA?”

  When Anne asked if he had any credentials, David said just “The Trouble with Tribbles”, did that count? And Anne replied, “Well, I’m Secretary-Treasurer and I say it does.”

  Anne had acquired a Carbineri cloak from Wright’s first trip to Milan for Dupont, and it had become her signature at science fiction conventions. At one party at Baycon, it was used as a prop for whomever entered the room. The cloak was made of black felt with a red lining — most people chose to be a vampire in the classic Dracula pose, while others would pretend to be the Scarlett Pimpernel. Robert Silverberg was the most ingenious. Upon donning the cloak, he dropped to his knees in front of Anne and proclaimed, “I’m sorry your Majesty, but we’ve had to cancel the Royal Foxhunt. Thy spendthrift ways have bankrupt the nation!”

  David and Anne discovered that they both had something nominated for a Hugo – Anne’s Weyr Search and David’s The Trouble with Tribbles.

  David lost. Anne won.

  “I remember being so ecstatic I could have flown home without a plane. Gene [Roddenberry] and Majel [Barrett] were complimentary and sincerely so — and Ian and Betty were delighted. Dave didn’t win but he was as sweet as could be over losing. There were many parties that night and I remember Phil K Dick urging me to write as much as I could right now, and get the benefit of the award’s publicity. He was very nice to me.”

  “I remember phoning home to tell everyone my good news and I think even Wright was impressed. Betty and Ian took my plane tickets and upgraded me to first class so I could sit with them.”

  The triumph of that occasion has never been paralleled. Anne McCaffrey was the first woman to win a Hugo award for writing science fiction. With her Hugo, no one could deny that she was a serious writer of science fiction.

  The bad:

  Some people had no trouble belittling science fiction writers – and others were still ignorant. “Now that we’ve landed on the Moon, just what’ll y’all write about?” asked one society columnist assigned to cover a science fiction convention the year Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. Harlan Ellison took the lady away, kindly but firmly telling her to have her newspaper send over their science editor.

  The landing on the Moon had not brought science fiction out of the closet and into social acceptance — nor raised it any higher in H. Wright Johnson’s affections.

  Higher in Wright’s affections were gardening and sailing. Wright loved a beautiful garden — but he didn’t like to weed. Fortunately for him, he had two growing sons who could do that little something to earn their keep. Unfortunately, Wright was never trained in the better styles of leadership — to put it mildly. So, while he was in the basement working with seedlings and sipping martinis, he expected his boys to be out in the hot humid Long Island summers gladly pulling up weeds to the greater glory of gardening. This division of labor might just have worked if Wright had not also insisted upon drafting the boys as waiters for his outdoor dinner parties and loudly boasting about how he did all the garden work himself.

  When Anne funded Wright’s purchase of the sailboat Angel’s Cloud, a nineteen foot skipjack Chesapeake Bay clammer, she might well have hoped that it would improve the relationship between sons and father — because they all had a love of sailing. But Wright’s manner soon cast such a pall on sailing that he was hard pressed to find a crew, and when the boat was swamped in a storm in the spring of 1970, he was the only one of the family who cared.

  Wright with Angel’s Cloud

  In 1968, Anne had been a staunch supporter of Robert Kennedy’s bid for the Presidency. It had been a very personal blow to her when he was assassinated — she had known him at college. In 1970, Alec had to worry about his “Lottery number” for the draft — and ponder whether he would flee to Canada or accept service if worse came to worst.

  Inside and out, Anne’s family was battered.

  The Secretary-Treasurer of SFWA had many responsibilities. One of the more enjoyable jobs was helping in the construction of the Nebula Awards. These were made from a lucite block encasing a disk-like galaxy spinning above a quartz crystal. Anne thought it would be fun for us kids to help make the Nebula galaxies. The Nebula galaxies were made by taking a clear lucite disk, putting spirals of glue on the top and sides, sprinkling silver sparkles on the glue, blowing off the excess and — voila! — a Nebula galaxy.

  It was not as much fun at the time as it is looking back over all those years and realizing who got those Nebula Awards. Maybe Anne planned it that way.

  You see, one of the other responsibilities of the Secretary-Treasurer is handing out the Nebula Awards at the Nebula banquet. And that meant getting the Nebulas engraved with the right names before the Awards’ Banquet. So, as Secretary-Treasurer, Anne was one of the very few people who knew the winners ahead of time.

  Which was okay with her. Except that in 1969, Dragonrider had b
een nominated in the Best Novelette category. And it won — which meant that Anne would be the first Secretary-Treasurer to have the rather awkward honor of presenting herself with an award. She did what any wise science fiction author does in such circumstances — she chickened out.

  She called Isaac Asimov. They had been friends for over six years and he lived in New York.

  “Isaac, I need a favor,” Anne said.

  “For you, Anne, anything,” he said. She explained the problem to him.

  “No problem, Anne, I would be delighted to present you with the award,” Isaac gallantly responded. “But I would like to say a few words first.”

  Now I should warn you that Isaac Asimov was an accomplished tenor, raconteur, punster par excellence, as well as an incredibly bright, friendly, and talented person. All of which should have been for the best. But, as Anne subsequently says, “Never trust a tenor!”

  At the banquet, a nervous Anne handed over the podium to Isaac to present the Best Novelette. Isaac thanked her. He then started into a lengthy discussion of music, musicals, and his favorite songs. This discussion turned into a monologue on names and how they lent themselves to song. Isaac illustrated this by picking many famous science fiction writers’ names and putting them to popular songs.

  “Which brings me to the recipient of this award,” Isaac finished. “The recipient has such a mellifluous name that only the very best of songs could possibly fit it.” He paused, and added dramatically, “I suppose you are all familiar with the tune of ‘San Francisco’.”

  And, in his best Al Jolson imitation, Isaac belted out:

  “Anne Mc-Caf-frey,

  open your golden gates!

  I can no longer wait!”

  Isaac poses

  Red with embarrassment, eyes brimming with tears of laughter and joy, Anne leaped up from her seat and, as she made her way to accept the award, joked to the room, “Never trust a tenor! Isaac, I’ll get you for this!”

  And she did.

  She had her opportunity a lot sooner than she expected — at Boskone, the local Boston science fiction convention, about three weeks later. Isaac had been asked to give the E. E. “Doc” Smith Award. Naturally, the occasion allowed him to make a few more remarks. He was then going through a painful divorce and was nervous and depressed. His initial statement to the crowd went like this:

  “I am always happy to give awards though I’d be happier to receive some myself. Right now, among all my societies, it is you … and science fiction … whose good opinion I require. I want you to love me, love me, love me.”

  With a sudden burst of joy, Anne from the back of the room shouted, “Live, Tinkerbell!”

  Through the laughter, Isaac shook his finger at her. “Five minutes alone with you and I’ll prove that I’m no Tinkerbell!”

  Which, of course, got even more laughs.

  Anne says, “I can’t remember now — though Isaac would, God rest the man — when we started our traditional duet of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. It would have been at one of the New York City or Boston cons, but it became a feature. We were goaded to sing together at every convention we attended.

  “Isaac always tried to pitch it higher than I could sing, but I could hit — on my good days — E above high C. There was a rough transition that ruined my voice — as I mention in Crystal Singer and Killashandra — but Irish Eyes was always lustily rendered whenever Isaac and I were together.”

  Like the poor sailboat, spring storms swamped Anne’s marriage. Many factors made it rocky — the boys were teenagers, Anne’s career was taking off, Wright’s career was stalled. In the hot summers, bitter arguments broke out across the dinner table. Wright would retire early to his room to play classical music and drink wine — to the relief of the rest of the family.

  Wright’s ideas of discipline were typical for a child of the Depression — a belt, a shoe, a cane reed, and, only as a last resort, the back of his hand. As teenagers after “The Summer of Love”, we found none of those methods to be welcome or effective.

  The defining moment for Anne was different than the defining moment for me. Anne remembers talking to me one night. She recalls that I said, “I know why Dad hits me so much — Alec would hit him back, and he’d leave marks on Gigi’s face.”

  I remember one night when we were all at the kitchen table after dinner, drinking coffee. Dad and Mum were bickering back and forth, facing each other across the table. He was nagging her to get a letter which she said she’d do when she had finished her coffee. He kept nagging. She threw the dregs of her coffee at him. He responded by throwing the last of his coffee in her face. Alec and I started up from the table, but Mum waved us back down. “That didn’t hurt,” she said. Then Wright threw the empty cup at her face.

  This time Alec and I were on our feet before Mum could say anything. It didn’t matter who did something like that — it was too much. It was Alec who told Dad he had better leave.

  Not long after that, Wright moved out. In August, two years after coming back from her first trip to Ireland, Anne filed for divorce and flew down to Tijuana.

  Divorce in 1970 was still considered uncommon and uncouth. Having accepted the inevitable and acted upon it, Anne was further unsettled when Peggy Isbell asked her to leave the huge house in Sea Cliff, when the school year was over.

  Wright suggested that Anne move down to Princeton, New Jersey, where the school system was known to be good. He was an alumnus of Princeton University.

  That didn’t happen. Irish eyes were smiling. The Irish Taoiseach or Prime Minister, Charles Haughey, had just passed in 1969 a bill making resident artists and writers exempt from Irish taxes.

  Harry Harrison, a science fiction writer who had just had one of his books made into the film Soylent Green, took residence in Ireland and was happy to extol its virtues. At the time the price of food, clothing, and housing were half the U.S. price.

  Anne checked her finances. She couldn’t make it — even with the contract for The White Dragon from Ballantine and the steady trickle of royalties from her three books. She was just about a book contract short. Magically, Betty Ballantine realized that Ballantine Books would be happy to publish a collection of recipes from science fiction authors — and would Anne be willing to edit such a book? Anne, who loved to cook and had a large supply of her own recipes was thrilled — and Cooking out of this World was born.

  So in August 1970, divorced, Anne handed over the post of Secretary-Treasurer to Roger Zelazny, and packed to leave her home of five years and her country of birth. Todd and Gigi were coming with her: Alec, who was starting college, would remain behind.

  Because of the lengthy (and expensive) six-month quarantine period, it was decided that none of the family pets would come to Ireland.

  Ever since our original three cats in Wilmington, we’d had an orange marmalade born and raised at home. The current one was not the best representation — we name him Maxwell Smart (because he wasn’t). Alec took him to Stony Brook. Unfortunately, Maxwell, lacking in brains, did not recognize his good fortune and escaped, never to be seen again (I think his defection broke Alec’s heart).

  Alec Johnson

  Wright took the two cats, Tasso and Silky Blackington, and the family’s French poodle, Angelo.

  Labor Day weekend is the traditional time for a Worldcon, but in 1970 — as with every fourth year — the Worldcon was held outside North America, this time in Heidelberg. However, whenever the Worldcon is outside North America, a secondary convention — the North American Science Fiction Convention or NASFic — is held. In this case, the NASFic was held in Toronto. Anne was invited as co-Guest-Of-Honor with Isaac Asimov. Happily, the convention paid her way to Toronto. And it was cheaper to go to Ireland by way of Toronto.

  Anne and Isaac — “Never trust a tenor!”

  It certainly was more heartening. Isaac Asimov and Anne had a great time trading “insults” to the delight of the con-goers, singing duets, and generally having a marvelous time.<
br />
  Anne’s arrival in Ireland did not begin auspiciously. Gigi got terribly sick — maybe with food poisoning — and Anne’s arm was ruined from lugging her IBM Selectric typewriter and three other pieces of hand luggage through the airport to the airplane. The plane was supposed to stop in Shannon and fly on to Dublin. But Dublin was socked in with fog, and Shannon only barely less so. We de-planed and waited for hours in the arrivals lounge while the airline figured out what to do.

  Anne’s first trip to Ireland had been much more pleasant, and the plane had gone straight on to Dublin. Perhaps it was the thinking of it, or just pure luck, but she glanced up in time to see Pat Brown, her chauffeur from her first trip. Pat was delighted to see her and pointed the airport nurse her way before reluctantly taking his own party on their tour. With some ginger ale, Gigi’s stomach became less queasy, but she was still very ill. The airline finally decided that there would be no break in the weather at Dublin and so decided to bus all the Dublin passengers to the Shannon train station and then up to Dublin by train.

  In all, what would have taken forty minutes by air, took over seven hours. They arrived Heuston station late that night in fog and light rain and took a taxi to their hotel.

  The diminished family spent the next couple of days recovering. The Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire (“dun leery”) was a warm, friendly place and the staff were quite convivial with the three “Yanks.”

  The Irish culture, particularly in Anglicized Dublin, has a strong overlay of English culture. Both are different from the cultures in the United States. Anne and the kids first realized this when they were served cold toast. At first they passed it off as a fluke, but as the days went by they decided that the distance to the kitchen was so great that the toast cooled before it was served. Finally they began to wonder if the rumors of lazy Irish were true — only to discover that the staff would not rush to serve them toast because it had to cool! It was then that they learned that in Ireland and England, it’s considered impolite to serve hot toast.