The Girl Who Heard Dragons

Pern #8.5

by Anne McCaffrey

paperback, vg++

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Dragons, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Anthologies

449 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Anne Inez McCaffrey was an American writer known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction (Best Novella, Weyr Search, 1968) and the first to win a Nebula Award (Best Novella, Dragonrider, 1969). Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science-fiction books to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.
In 2005 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey its 22nd Grand Master, an annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction. She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on 17 June 2006. She also received the Robert A. Heinlein Award for her work in 2007.

Reviews

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t be sure if I read this story (novellette?) already or not, but at any rate, it is a lovely story. Set in the familiar world of Pern (before the SF shift) with familiar characters on the periphery. This made it a comfortable read, but I’m not sure someone coming in cold, not having read any of the previous Pern novels would understand it much or the significance of certain events as mentioned. But for this reader, having read everything set in PERN written by Anne McCaffrey herself, this was an easy, gentle, cozy read.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enjoyable collection of short stories by the late sci-fi author Anne McCaffrey. The first (title) story is set in her famous world of Pern, but the others are non-related to Pern. There is a good variety of fantasy, science fiction (of the Star Trek/Star Wars variety), fairy-tale or magical stories. The one story that has no sci-fi or supernatural elements is 'Habit is an Old Horse', and it is a real tear-jerker, so be warned! There are a few stories that are connected together - 'Duty Calls', 'A Sleeping Beauty Humpty Dumpty', and 'The Mandalay Cure' are set in an interstellar war between the Alliance and a weasel-like race called the Khalians. These three appear consecutively in the book. 'A Flock of Geese' and 'The Bones Do Lie' are also connected, but are not near each other in the book; they involve time-shifting.

If you enjoy Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, you will be interested to see what else she has up her sleeve.

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of 15 stories by Anne McCaffrey. They are of all sorts of types of stories and characters, including one from the point of view of a horse. They range from excellent to so-so. Oddly, the one with the least amount of fantasy was one of the best and took place during the American Civil War. The title story may have been expanded into an entire Pern novel but I'm not positive. I found it pretty good.

I wasn't impressed enough to keep the book. You can tell I wasn't that interested by how long it took me to finally finish this. I'll be donating this to the Friends of the Library.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew this was a book of short stories - a point some readers first missed, but like some others I was surprised that there was only one story of Pern included - the titular tale. I found it a pleasant surprise, for although I'd have loved at least another dragon story or two, I enjoyed seeing the wide range of McCaffrey's talent. I have been reading McCaffrey since I was 10 or 11, but I was captivated by this eclectic offering.

I'm curious when the stories were written. The anthology appears to be published just two years before McCaffrey's death. Only one story includes a note about its time, but it's an important distinction. It's a story about a successful surrogacy and the uproar and implications once it's discovered, which doesn't seem like much of a big deal these days... but it was written nearly 30 years before the first gestational surrogate pregnancy. I have some memory of it being all over the news at the time, and her story rings true, with the added complication/ twist she's thrown in. Other stories here also seem out of place in this time, and it would be fascinating to have the context of the time they were written in, if I'm not mistaken.

It's easy to forget that McCaffrey is a science fiction writer, not a fantasy writer, if all you remember is her dragons and not their origins. And this is not spoon fed sci-fi. So much seems written for ever shortening attention spans these days (my own included in that, unfortunately). It was refreshing to read something that gave the reader some credit, and was more than just a surface read. Impressive, for short stories.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this book. I wasn't expecting it to be a collection of shorter stories, a fault on my part, but I was disappointed when the first story was cut short. In general I found some of the stories to be excellent and some I could hardly get through. It is a good book if you're looking for a mixture of everything since it ranges from dragons to space travel to time travel to normal life on Earth, but I didn't find it to be that fantastic.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

An uninspired collection further weakened by Ms. McCaffrey's inexplicable need to begin her book with an oddly long essay about every single time a stranger or acquaintance recognized her name. Frankly, Anne McCaffrey, I don't much care.

[Abbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an abridged audiobook. Only three stories. The printed book apparently has fifteen stories. So that was super disappointing. But the stories were fine.

[Analie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like the Pern series. However, this book's title is a tad misleading since it only contains one story about Pern and dragons. The remaining 288 pages are a hodge podge of short stories that got very strange very quickly. I knew it wasn't my thing when I read the story about the humanoid plants demanding a human sacrifice.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not know that this was an anthology when I first started reading this.

The first section is a bit of autobiography. So, I thought the whole book was an autobiography for a dozen pages -- and with the title "The Girl Who Heard Dragons" who can really blame me?

Then we got to the title track, with Aramina as the girl who could hear dragons. I just thought the biography was a sort of preface then, and settled in for a decent tale based on her. She played a role in the first Dragons of Pern trilogy, but damned if I could remember what exactly it was. Would you believe that I cried when Lessa and her dragon made her appearance? I had missed Pern so badly! And, I thought, joyfully, and I had a whole Pern book again!

And then that story was over. Ugh!

So, there were other stories here. I am biased to anthropomorphic and transformation fiction, so let me mention those:

Velvet Fields... humans land on a green planet with buildings and technology... and a few years into colonizing it, they realize that the aliens are there... its furry in its own way, without giving away the mystery of it.

Duty Calls... take place in the Ship Who... universe where the extremely damaged or birth defect peoples are given cyborg bodies in the shape of ships (and sometimes, space stations). I count this as both anthropomorphic and transformation. There also a Furry here in the form of a Brawn (an unaltered alien who reminds the ship of an Ocelot). This was good, especially as the books in this universe that I'd read were all extremely deformed from birth and thought of the ship as themselves. Bil was a pilot and he'd gotten blown up really good at some point. He still thought of himself as a pilot and not a ship.

The rest of the stories are great, but it is late and I need to go back to bed.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very diverse collection of short stories.

I've only read a few McCaffrey Pern novels so I'm only familiar with her high fantasy style. I did have to read the title story twice, the second time allowed me to fit the characters back into what bits I remembered of Pern.

After that I experienced a bit of stylistic whiplash - high fantasy, SF horror, absurdist humor, space opera, sociopathic time-travel, magical realism (yeah, yeah), fairy tales - that made it hard for me to "settle" into the book. The most settled I felt was stories 4-6, all set during an intergalactic war between the Alliance and the Khalians (think WING COMMANDER or any of the major Star Trek storylines, ie, Federation vs Borg/Dominion/Klingon/Romulan empires) but with different characters and situations. All the stories are very well-crafted and worth reading (with the possible exception of "The Greatest Love" - written in 1956, the subject of surrogacy and in vitro fertilization is quite dated by 2012 (the world's first test tube baby is my age) and the story serves as an example of why scientific ignorance serves no one).

The introduction "So You're Anne McCaffrey" is priceless.

[Douglas Milewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Girl Who Heard Dragons (1994) collects a series of short stories by Anne McCaffrey, most of the SF, a few fantasy, and a few horse stories. The stories had been published over McCaffrey's career, but unfortunately, there's no documentation on when.

While a few of these stories shine, I found too many rather dull, or composed of flat character, and thus dull. One story ranked as astonishingly stupid.

The title story is a Pern story, one that's been republished before, and certainly a draw to any McCaffrey or Pern completist.

The whole thing is quite sikippable.

[Carley Termeer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not usually a fan of short stories, so I wasn’t sure if even my favourite author could bring me around, but she did to a large extent - although I still wish they weren’t so short! I got into pretty much all of them and didn’t want them to end. I particularly enjoyed the ones that involved the time storm, an awesome concept for a sci fi story, and then was surprisingly taken in by the story of a surrogate mother on regular old Earth. I only wish there was more!

[Enzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Containing a few stories from Anne McCaffrey and the titular story based on Pern. This is a nice fast read. The problem at least with me is I wanted more Pern! But I'm ok with it because it is a nice story and reminds me that I should get back to reading the others I always promise myself I'll tackle.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great books, great writer, great story. A classic fantasy series. If you like dragons, fantasy and sci-fi you should read these books about the planet Pern, its human inhabitants, dragons and dolphins.

[Susan1566 · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a book with 1 pern story which is about Aramina, a girl who can hear and speak to all dragons. the rest of the short stories are enjoyable.

[Kristen (belles_bookshelves) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Nothing is impossible."

So while I'm tagging this as 'dragons' (because that's where I've shelved it on my bookshelves because of Anne McCaffrey and the title of the book, there are only actual dragons in the first story here. It's the only one that takes place in Pern, the bulk of the rest of the stories went over my head.

The Girl Who Heard Dragons: Aramina & her family are holdless after Fax. I've never really liked that if you could hear all dragons they basically drafted you without your choice
Velvet Fields: Is this dystopian Earth? The most intelligent life is basically a Tree of Life Ent species & people eat their juvenile form & are punished
Euterpe on a Fling: I'm not sure what is going on here except that it's about singing
Duty Calls: All I got here is there's an Alliance and a ship called the Ocelot
A Sleeping Humpty Dumpty Beauty: a combat surgeon
The Mandalay Cure: I'm guessing there was a plague here or something?
A Flock of Geese: what the hell is a time storm?
The Greatest Love: random story about artificially inseminating a woman
A Quiet One: training horses, but make it space
If Madam Likes You...: all I got from this is soldiers playing a guessing game with slogans
Zulei, Grace, Nimshi, and the Damnyankees: I can't tell if this slave story is during the Civil War or in the future
Cinderella Switch: something about dancing
Habit is an Old Horse: this is a depressing story about an old horse getting abandoned
Lady-in-Waiting: a magical chest?
The Bones Do Lie: vikings? time-winds? Love the title though.

[Bonnie Owen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories, with only the 1st story (which bears the same name as the book) has anything to due with the dragons of Pern. Most of the other stories were in the Science Fiction genre with a few being just plain fiction, and those were the ones I enjoyed best. Although I really didn't care for most of the stories in this collection, there were a couple that I really enjoyed. One was "A Greatest Love", which delves into surrogacy before it was a regular practice and the ramifications of such experimental science. Another was "Zulie, Grace, Nimshi, and the Damnyankees", which is set in the old south during the time of slavery and how one family took care of their people and the incredible bond that was created, resulting in their people actually taking care of the family in mysterious ways. My favorite was a very sad tale called "Habit Is an Old Horse", which dealt with the death of the family matriarch, but told from the perspective of her elderly horse as he tries to understand why madam doesn't visit him anymore.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author has a notable place in fantasy history, therefor when I came across a stack of mass market paperbacks in a winding second hand store a few weeks back, I knew I had to leave with one. The problem with that is I didn't know where to start. Therefor I decided to pick up this anthology of short stories to get a taste for her writing and see what type of stories from her I might enjoy. There is the risk with any anthology that you are going to like some of the stories and not the others, and that was definitely the case here. That being said I look forward to delving into her dragon books and need to check if the time storm stories are part of an already established story, because I would love to read that too.

[Bookguide · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised to find these were short stories, only the first of which was connected to the Pern universe. The stories range fro
sci-fi and fantasy to fairytale retelling and more realistic stories, though even those may have something magical. It took me a long time to read the whole book because I often get distracted from short story collections. This was a wonderful collection, apparently written throughout Anne McCaffrey’s career. I took it on holiday with me to Cornwall, hoping that it would inspire me to finish it, and it did!

I’m hoping to add a full review to my book blog later.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up based on the title. The first story, which is in line with the title of the book, was interesting and a little confusing (I didn’t know it’s part of a larger series). I wanted more. When I kept reading and noticed it’s a collection of her short stories, I was disappointed. This book should’ve been titled something different. And her introduction to how people don’t recognize who she is and how she’s so famous seems redundant, I don’t know who this author is and it turned me off.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed in the book, mainly because it wasn't what I expected it to be. Based on the title and advertising, I expected either a side story about Aramina (the girl who hears dragons) or a series of short stories about Pern. There is one story about Aramina - and then a lot of other short stories, of which there are two pair and the rest all vary wildly. If that's what you're looking for, then you will probably like this book more than I did. If you're looking for stories about Pern, you can safely skip this and no harm done.

[Sean O'Leary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great story. Very short but lots of fun. A repeating theme in her books is misogyny and also bullying. We see in this story how afraid the family is and how they expect everyone to be mad at them. This story throws us back in time to the early books in this turn. It recalls a time when Fax had taken many holds and was hurting many of the holders. This family fled and was on their own, trying to survive. The main character is a young girl named Aramina who can not only hear dragons but they can hear her as well. It was a nice story and showed the kinder side of people on PERN.

[Sherrill Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

See Melissa's review.

The title is "The Girl Who THE Heard Dragons" ????? Makes no sense! I guess the typesetter meant to make the word "dragons" smaller, and thus put the "The" lower and larger. Ugh.

Unevenly okay; 24 illustrations by Michael Whelan, done in B&W, leftovers from his portfolios, I guess. The first story ("The Girl Who Heard Dragons") was good, others not so much. Interesting story written in 1956 about "exogenesis" (in vitro fertilization?) endorsed in the story by Father Peregrine Dickenson, a Presbyterian minister, in one of the only religious references in Ms. Caffrey's books.

Unlike another reviewer, I liked Ms. McCaffrey's "So You're Anne McCaffrey" stepping out of her author role and into her own self, on tour. Her sons, and her brother were delightful, as well as a TV appearance after Ethel Merman.

[Landon Villarreal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so disappointed with the change in the story in the second chapter. I had gotten so involved with the first chapter, I couldn't wait to see what happened next. But, regardless, I love the first story. A bit hard to understand, but once I started to understand I really enjoyed what I was reading.

[Penny Geard · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few stories in this anthology with amazing concepts and even a few stories that I genuinely enjoyed reading. This is despite still struggling with Anne McCaffrey's writing style where every sentence seems purposefully set up to hide the point. Definitely more sci-fi than you might expect from the title and the cover!

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Girl who Heard Dragons - 3 star, a subplot of The Renegades of Pern.
A Quiet One - 2 star, sci-fi about horse, uninteresting.
If Madam Likes You... - 2 star, sci
-fi about match-making, difficult to follow at first, then so-so.

[Kate H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anne McCaffrey is the quintessential writer of fantasy books pertaining to dragons. These books are always wonderful, well written, and perfectly characterized. All of her series are great but the ones that take place on Pern are the best of all. A thoroughly fun and engaging read.

[D.M. Domosea]

I could just NOT get through these past the first one or two stories. Have my reading tastes changed from my youth? We'll see...I have the Dragonriders of Pern three-book megabook on my TBR shelf for a re-read.

[Evelyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

24-28th Jan
Disappointed as thought this would be short stories about Pern. It wasn’t! A rather disjointed mixture which I felt had just been put together to fill up a book. Also some of the stories seemed as if they needed more explanation.

[Paul Bartlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The titular first of this collection of short stories is an excellent example of Anne's writing about the inhabitants of Pern.
The others are all good, many very good and a few surprising in their subject matter or setting.