Dragonriders of Pern: Difference between revisions

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The first Pern story, ''Weyr Search'', was published in 1967. [[Anne McCaffrey]] kept writing them for another forty years, though later in collaboration with her son.

Subsequent books dealt with the culture clash between the old-fashioned time-displaced dragon riders and the people they had come to save, and with the gradual rediscovery of technology, which led to the unearthing of the original spaceship, and a final end to Thread. There are also several prequels, describing how various aspects of Pern society came to be. Some of the books overlap with each other, covering the same events but following different characters.

There was also a [http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/23879/nova-games-english-edition board game from Nova Game Designs].

* [[Action Girl]]: Female dragonriders in general -- Moreta, Sorka, and Mirrim, in particular.

* [[Adam and Eve Plot]]: Averted in the short story "Rescue Run".

* [[Alien Blood]]: Pernese native animals have green, copper-based blood.

* [[Alien Sky]]: The Red Star, of course, but Pern also has two moons. Plus, Pern is far enough away from Earth that the night sky would look very different, with none of the familiar constellations.

** Menolly is accepted by ''almost'' everybody in Harper Hall...but the ones who object to her presence make her life hell. A rare example of the protagonist not winning everyone over; instead, she settles for getting her own back.

** Piemur's example is worse: after his voice breaks, he's sent to become a drum apprentice until his voice stabilizes. However, he's also made Master Robinton's apprentice, which often involves being sent on very confidential missions. Determined to prove that he's not just a joker and a slacker who coasts by on natural talent, Piemur makes a decision to stop playing around and start working -- and the other drum apprentices, who were expecting the joker, don't take it well, especially when Piemur learns drum measures at a speed most of them probably couldn't match. His going on said missions, including one to a Gather at Igen Hold and, as far as they knew got a free day because of a Hatching at Benden Weyr<ref>In truth, he went the Hatching but knew that would make things worse.</ref>, just makes it a ''lot'' worse<ref>Starting with finding his belongings and bed soiled with urine upon his return and ending with them greasing some steps so he nearly killed himself returning up the steps.</ref>. Further problematic was the Journeyman who was generally on watch never believed him on any matters.

** Dragons' colors denote gender, size, and rank, exactly as their fire lizard ancestors. Gold = Queens, the dominant females and the primary egglayers; Bronze = the largest and dominant males, ridden by wingleaders; Brown = smaller and weaker males, tend to be ridden by wingseconds; Blue = the smallest, fastest, and least intelligent males; Green = the smallest, subordinate females, who are typically infertile due to firestone consumption.

** The various Holds and Crafts have traditional colors and shoulder knot patterns that denote rank and affiliation. About the only color ever consistently mentioned is that Harpers are associated with a light shade of blue known as "Harper Blue."

* [[Despair Event Horizon]]: The death of a dragon or its rider will send the living member of the pair into despair or insanity. If the rider dies, his dragon will invariably commit suicide by going ''between''. If the dragon dies, the rider may become [[Ax Crazy]], [[Driven to Suicide|suicidal]], an [[Empty Shell]], or all of the above.

* [[Development Hell]]: The Live-Action adaptation has been stuck in it since 1995.

* [[Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off]]: Menolly's father beats her in this manner for the grave sin of improvising her own music.

** While F'lar doesn't go ''quite'' this far, he has a tendency in the earlier books to shake Lessa when she upsets him.

* [[Feminist Fantasy]]: Well, the installments written in the 1960s and 1970s were, [[Fair for Its Day|by the standards of the time]]. The goalposts have been moved considerably since then. (See [[Victim Falls For Rapist]], for one thing.)

* [[First Guy Wins|First Girl Wins]]: Robinton's short-lived wife Kasia still haunts his dreams. When he becomes involved with Silvina, he offers to marry her when she informs him that she's pregnant. She refuses (gently) because it's Kasia's name he still says in his sleep; he never recovers from losing her.

** Jaxom and Sharra's relationship begins this way, after she treats him for Firehead Fever.

** When Lessa is treating F'lar's knife wound, she can't help but notice his manliness.

* [[Growing Up Sucks]]: For Piemur, puberty ends his sheltered life as a boy soprano.

* [[Guile Hero]]: F'lar and Robinton, later Lessa. Also Sebell. It seems that this is one of the traits required to become MasterHarper. Menolly and Piemur to lesser degree.

* [[Heroic Albino]]: Ruth

* [[Hide Your Gays]]: Half averted. Homosexual men are not uncommon on Pern, and in fact most (if not all) blue riders fit the bill. There is never a mention of homosexual women, however.

* [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place]]: ''Between'', the dimension used by dragons and fire lizards when they teleport, is devoid of sensation, airless, and brutally cold.

** And also apparently prone to causing miscarriages if a female rider is still in the early stages of pregnancy when she goes ''between''.

* [[I Have Your Wife]]:: How F’lar manages to convince the Holders to cooperate with Benden Weyr after the Long Interval -- he sends dragons to abduct their wives and daughters.

* [[Jackie Robinson Story]]: Menolly becoming the first female Harper in the Harper Hall Trilogy.

* [[Medieval Stasis]]: For about two thousand years, Pern was medieval with very little structural/social change. Justified by the fact that most of the colonists' technology was lost or worn out after two hundred years, and the whole "Thread trying to eat everything organic" situation made them more concerned about ''surviving'' rather than technological advancement. When this incentive is removed after ''All the Weyrs of Pern'', they begin to reclaim their lost technology with the help of the records and instruction provided by AIVAS.

** Also justified because Pern was settled by [[Space Amish]] who wanted to get away from technology and develop a more agrarian society, though they didn't want to decay quite as far, hard or fast as they did.

* [[Multiple-Tailed Beast]]: Pernese dragons have forked tails.

* [[The Napoleon]]: Lessa

* [[Parental Incest]]: Steve Kimmer, in ''Rescue Run''.

* [[Patronymic]]: Somewhat turned on its head. Many (though not all) Pernese children, particularly those born in the Weyrs, are given names which are meshes of the names of their father and mother. For example, F'lar's birth name was Fallarnon, after his father Fallon and mother Larna; his half-brother F'nor was Famanoran, after father Fallon and mother Manora. Sometimes other people's names are used in the convention, such as Menolly and Sebell's youngest son Robse (the first part of his name being in honor of Robinton).

* [[The Plague]]: The plot of ''Moreta'' and ''Nerilka's Story'', as well as ''Dragonsblood''.

* [[Planetary Romance]]

* [[Science Marches On]]: Millennia in the future of our day, the world of Pern is finally saved with ''DOS''. An AI version of DOS, but still...

* [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]]: Distances seem to change at the plot's convenience, and either dragons in the Ninth Pass are ludicrously huge (bronzes and golds being much bigger than ''blue whales'') or someone said "meters" when they meant "feet."

* [[Shoulder-Sized Dragon]]: The fire-lizards.

* [[Space Amish]]

** In ''All The Weyrs Of Pern'', Oterel's death requires the other lords to vote on his successor. Thanks to petty political bickering, they have a lot of trouble getting consensus on the one son who isn't blatantly an idiot or wastrel.

* [[Synchronization]]: Riders and their dragons.

* [[Technician Versus Performer]]: Petiron vs. Robinton/Menolly.

* [[Tele Frag]]: One of the risks of going ''between'' with a poorly visualized destination.