Considering I've been writing fantasy pretty much my whole life, I really haven't messed with dragons all that much - I can only recall one very short piece that's featured a dragon. However, with my new novella, Kaydana and the Dragon Prince - well, the title rather gives it away, doesn't it?
Why are dragons so fascinating? Well, the name dragon has been given to a wide range of creatures. In China, for instance, they're flightless creatures of great wisdom, whereas European dragons are fierce, winged predators with an obsession for treasure - perhaps the best known is the dragon Fafnir, killed by Sigurd/Siegfried. In modern fantasy, they range from Tolkien's Smaug to LeGuin's wise but dangerous dragons in the Earthsea books, to McCaffery's extraterrestrial creatures of Pern, to the noble Draco in the film Dragonheart, and even a bad-tempered Hungarian Horntail. To name but a few.
Perhaps the fascination is their alienness. Even the strangest and most dangerous mammal has a familiarity about it, but there's something unnerving about a reptile's cold-blooded body and impersonal stare. It's not surprising that snakes are one of the most common subjects of phobias, and the name dragon derives from the Greek and Latin words for a snake (drakon and draco respectively).
There's a strange link, though, between what we fear and what fascinates us, and what's more terrifying than a vast reptile that can attack from the skies? Not to mention that they breathe fire. They're the ultimate predator - and predators are sexy. It's probably not a coincidence that they have a particular taste for carrying off beautiful maidens. Fantasy is the perfect medium for dealing with unacceptable desires that you'd never want to actually experience, but still... Perhaps abduction by a dragon is the ultimate sub fantasy.
The modern tendency is to make dragons wise and misunderstood figures, as with that other great fantasy predator, the vampire. Maybe that comes from a fundamental difference between traditional and modern societies, that we try to understand the alien, rather than vilifying it. Quite apart from the horrors of twentieth century intolerance, we're now used to the idea, at least, that we might share the universe with many strange creatures, and that we could even meet them. It's natural if we prefer to think that we'll be visited by ET, rather Martians with their death-rays.
There's nothing wrong with this, and it's a fertile way to explore an ancient symbol in a different way. I hope, though, we don't entirely lose sight of the magnificent predator soaring the sky, ready to swoop down with his breath of fire to wreak destruction and carry off the most beautiful maidens.
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