Get Off The Unicorn

The usual collection of rape, slut-shaming and misogyny from an author I used to think was pretty cool.

TL;DR

Not Terrible: Horse From a Different Sea, The Great Canine Chorus, Finder's Keeper, Apple.
Avoid At All Costs: A Meeting of Minds, The Thorns of Barevi, Honeymoon

Lady in the Tower: This later became part of the novel The Rowan. It's actually less terrible on its own, but still kinda cringe-y.

A Meeting of Minds: In which the daughter of The Rowan eventually realizes the dude who was formerly, unrequitedly in love with her mother is in love with her, ew ew ew.

“And he was suddenly a very different man. A man! That was it. He was so excessively masculine. How could she have blundered around so, looking for a mind that was superior to hers, completely overlooking the fact that a woman's most important function in life begins with physical domination?”

That's when I threw the book across the room, but sadly, I eventually retrieved it and read the rest.

Daughter / Dull Drums: This actually had some promise, as it's about a young woman studying to be a computer scientist, and kicking ass at it, despite her father being a misogynist and a seemingly endless stream of dudes manhandling her “affectionately”. But then it transpires that she has TOO MUCH EMPATHY to be a scientist!!!! And needs the men in her life to paternalistically tell her to change majors, because they know better than she what will make her happy. ARGH

Changeling: I knew this was going to be... interesting... when McCaffrey's introduction emphasized how many “homosexual male friends” she had.

I don't really know what to say about it, because on the one hand it's... almost... a pretty positive polyamory story, but ALSO this woman is in (unrequited) love with the gay dude and agrees to have his child and then she goes into labor and he kidnaps her to a mountain cabin instead of taking her to the hospital (despite her protests) and it's just... all a little weird. Also stories about giving birth give me the heebie-jeebies.

Weather on Welladay: First non-terrible story! Though personally I found it a bit dull.

The Thorns of Barevi: In which a woman gets kidnapped and enslaved by aliens, escapes them, then reveals herself to aid one....... who shows his gratitude by raping her. AUGH NO STOP BAD

In her introduction to the story, McCaffrey states that it was “an attempt to cash in on the lucrative market for soft- and hard-core pornography in the 60's”, so, that's charming.

Horse From a Different Sea: Okay actually kind of funny.

The Great Canine Chorus: Probably best thing in this collection.

Finder's Keeper: Another pretty okay story, though the ending was pretty weak.

A Proper Santa Claus: I give McCaffrey credit for not pulling the punch at the end of this grim tale, though I found it needlessly depressing.

The Smallest Dragonboy: It's like someone asked McCaffrey to write the most generic Pern story possible. Like you know from the very beginning that Keevan is going to Impress a hatchling – it's in the title, ferchrissakes – which pretty much undermines any dramatic tension this extremely straightforward underdog-gets-his-comeuppance story could possibly have.

Apple: Another pretty good telepath story, similar to “The Great Canine Chorus”, although I'm getting a bit tired of this “women Talents are all unstable psychopaths” thing??

Honeymoon: The Ship Who Sang is actually pretty cool, except what is this nonsense where she is worried her “brawn” will rape her, and then some weird alien stuff happens that seems to amount to “he and a group of aliens pressured her into having sex with him”?