When Women Were Dragons

Note: The supplemental historical documents are considered interstices in this study guide, and are therefore referred to as interstitial documents, numbered by order of appearance.

The novel opens with a cover page listing the title as When Women Were Dragons; Being the Truthful Accounting of the Life of Alex Green—Physicist, Professor, Activist. Still human. A memoir, of sorts.

The Prologue to Dr. Alex Green’s “memoir” includes two documents: a letter from Marya Tilman to her mother and a transcript of a speech given by Dr. Henry Gantz to the House of Un-American activities after the Mass Dragoning of 1955. In her letter, Marya recounts her abusive marriage to an insufferable man and refutes her mother’s insistence that motherhood helps to acclimate one to the pain of such a situation. She also describes the freedom in transcending her current existence and moving up and beyond the world. Marya is the first confirmed case of spontaneous dragoning prior to the 1955 Mass Dragoning event. The suppression of this instance and many others sparks the formation of the Wyvern Research Collective, a group of scholars dedicated to preserving, archiving, and understanding the phenomenon of dragooning, regardless of mainstream society’s attempt to deny or ignore it.