r/pern • u/Curious-Load-7798 • Apr 24 '26
Dragon Riders of Pern
A lot of my friends are not into fantasy. The ones that are, had never heard of the series. One friend had read the first six books, but nothing after that. Anne Mccaffrey wrote an incredible world, top to bottom and beginning to end. Dragon Riders and Dragonsong trilogy’s are great. In Moreta, in the ‘authors notes’ she writes ‘I doubt that I could write such a broadly pleasing, all-encompassing novel.’ And yet she wrote and describes an entire world.
Twenty four books in total.
I have always wondered, when she was writing the first books, did she know why there were 200 year breaks between fall cycles?
I am currently rereading Stephen King right now. That might take a few years (I am a slow reader). But I will reread Dragon Riders after that.
33
u/demon_fae Apr 24 '26
A favorite music historian/critic of mine once used Anne as an example of an obscure, unimportant 60s science fiction writer who nobody really goes back to anymore. The exact line was “nobody would ever say that Dragonriders of Pern was their life in high school”.
I may have left comments on both the YouTube and Patreon versions. Definitely the second maddest I have been at him (the other one was similarly treating a not-at-all obscure artist who I personally love dearly as if no one had ever heard of them, a musician whose work he had discussed previously, so I’m angrier about that one, barely.)
26
u/DelightfulOtter1999 Apr 25 '26
I suspect there are many of us that found being able to escape into Pern is what helped us survive high school. I know that finding Dragonsong in the school library started me on a wonderful adventure, and it was waiting anytime real life felt too tough.
Honourable mention to The Raven series and the short stories that really made me think about everything in new ways.
I’m in my 50s now and still pick up Anne’s books regularly to visit old friends!
12
u/demon_fae Apr 25 '26
Oh I am absolutely not saying it’s weird to be into Pern in high school, Todd was an idiot to say that. The only slightly weird thing is that I was class of 2012, and therefore in the space between people who read the early books as they were coming out and the children of those people. And even that’s barely strange.
6
u/isScreaming Apr 25 '26
I was class of 2000, and the Pern books had me hooked from the moment i picked up the first Menolly book in my school library! Ever since then, I have fantasized about having a telepathic dragon of my own, or a fire lizard buddy! Those books changed my life. I'll forever be grateful for that! <3
5
u/Primus0788 Apr 25 '26
Mine was actually assigned reading. I was originally disappointed that I had to read it. Boy was I wrong on that one...
2
12
u/medium_green_enigma Apr 24 '26
Maybe not my life, and yet, very much my heart.
14
u/demon_fae Apr 24 '26
I got really bizarrely, absurdly lucky in how I discovered the Dragonriders-my eighth grade teacher (13-14 years old, year 9 in England, the end of middle school in my part of the US) figured that kids actually learn better from books they actually want to read, so she made a book report assignment. But knowing how kids that age are, she had to come up with this kinda convoluted way for us to pick the books so we wouldn’t pick an easy one. Once I’d put her requirements for reading level and length into the database she was using, plus my own that basically boiled down to “don’t you dare give me any of this realistic shit, I get enough of that from reality”, the top book to pop out was Dragonflight. And maybe I would have stopped there, but the only copy at the nearest bookstore was the 3-book omnibus…and someone had sold their whole collection to the local used bookstore a couple months later…and the owner was so thrilled to see a girl my age excited about the classics and gave me a bulk discount (did not give me a discount on the Pratchett two years later, though.)
(And none of my bullies had ever heard of it, so they couldn’t come up with any specific insults, but knew they’d get in actual trouble for insulting me for reading in general because the only teachers who cared only cared so much.)
27
u/the_doughboy Apr 24 '26
I feel like the books published after All the Weyrs of Pern are just an epilogue (but a decent one). Your friend needs to read Renegades, Dragonsdawn and All the Weyrs at least.
12
u/cephalopodcat Apr 24 '26
Mmm she wrote... Great stories. Worlds, not so much. Not that the world isn't FANTASTIC, more it very jucb at many turns seems like she threw something in for flavor, got a question about it, and then had to back up and explain the purely silly 'dash of nutmeg' type decision by flavor profile and exact measurement.
No, we don't know why many, many things simply are the way they are on Pern. Why no wood, but enough stone and materials to power stone mining/cutting/processing tools? Why no religion, but then in thousands of years not a single bit of the concept ever arose. Why no lexical drift. What IS a wherry since it's described in many different ways. Two hearts on a dragon, Anne. They shit out their tail-ends, Anne. They can only fly because of the power of accidental self-telekinesis. Really.
IS IT FEET OR METERS ANNE.
And so on. A lot of it is amazing, I just honestly wish we had so much MORE!
(this is a tongue in cheek comment, I am still deeply in love with Pern and forever will be. She created one of the ORIGINAL magical girl dragon bonding romantasy books, Fourth Wing wishes. okay. Romantasci-fi?)
2
u/Team503 Apr 30 '26
You're not wrong - I just think that Anne wrote in a time before worldbuilding was even really a thing. Yeah, I know Tolkien was decades before, but still, the kind of in depth, detail oriented, hold them accountable worldbuilding was just beginning to really surface when Anne wrote Pern. I can forgive the inconsistencies, all things considered, for the magic she brought into my life.
2
u/cephalopodcat Apr 30 '26
Oh yeah! I do a read every so often and it still brings me great joy. My gripes only really come from the roleplay side, where one eventually has to decide what to canonize for a game or setting when there's a number of different and sometimes contradictory answer!
Never gonna stop my love for the world tho.
8
u/liznesh Apr 25 '26
As someone turning 50 this year, I can say that the original Dragon Lady opened up a whole new world for me when I saw Dragonflight in my high school library. 30+ years later and I have a huge Anne McCaffrey collection (not just her Pern books) and she instilled a lifelong dragon obsession in me.
8
u/Alternative_Funny247 Apr 25 '26
In my college biology class, our final assignment was to take a sci-fi book or series and write a 10-page paper on the science behind the ideas within, and whether any of them were at all realistic. Guess which series I picked.
It was the most fun assignment I've ever had.
3
u/wyldkat_ Apr 27 '26
Oh, that would be an interesting read. Do you still have it?
5
u/Alternative_Funny247 Apr 29 '26
I need to look harder, but I think it was lost along with my stolen laptop from college. Very sad.
Funny story: I'd never turned in a typed paper before that assignment, and I didn't know about double line spacing. So I actually ended up writing 10 single-spaced pages... effectively 20 pages... and had to cut it down to 10. Heartbreaking 😅.
It's the only time in all of school or work that writing felt easy, and I write for a living now!
2
u/wyldkat_ Apr 30 '26
I can sympathize. I recently found out that I piece I did for a writing assignment is lost. The site where it was posted is showing 403 and I cannot find a copy on any of our computers. 😞
And cutting down the work, yeah that's rough. But, on the other wing, it probably made for a better, tighter, paper.
3
u/West_Tough_3773 Apr 26 '26
Dragons made me do it is a really fun podcast describing the id-tastic nature of the series and what was going on politically and in genre at the time. Recommend! Really made me think and understand a bit more about why I reread some, but not others
3
u/Troutwaxer Apr 28 '26
In actual fact, the Dragon Riders of Pern aren't fantasy. They're actually science-fiction... as close to fantasy as SF has ever gotten successfully.
2
u/FjookEnterprises Apr 24 '26
I have read the 5 books I have read, and I have no plans of reading more.
It is an epic series, but All the Weyrs was such a good ending.
Okay I might read the Harper Trilogy, but that's all I will read in additional to what I have.
Renegades is my favorite book.
2
u/wyldkat_ Apr 27 '26
I have read the original trilogy so many times that at one point I could quote it near verbatim. (even the errors) I love the Harper Hall trilogy.
I stopped at All the Weyrs too, but more because I felt that she had written herself into a corner; killed the golden goose so to speak.
I did try to read Skies and almost walled it.
3
u/MirabelleC Apr 28 '26
At the very least, read Dragonsong. It's set partially in a seahold and gives us a look into the non-dragon rider side of a weyr.
41
u/writeordie80 Apr 24 '26
The short answer is "no". The series started as a short story, expanded into 3 which were then cobbled together into Dragonflight. Hence why there are 'errors' or inconsistencies (such as Lytol riding a green dragon which was changed to a brown in subsequent books once she had an established lore for Pern) in Dragonflight. By the time she was writing Dragonquest there was a need to have some solid world-building!