I don't know the name of the sort story, but I do know she made a short series based off it! The Freedom's Landing books I mentioned. Yeah, there's just an awkward and uncomfortable theme of like... sex imprinting through all her stuff that I've read. Uncomfortable gender roles and an uncomfortable way of making people stuck with whoever they fall in with. THIS. How did they do that? It sure wasn't shown!
NGL I AM ALL ABOUT THE PERNESE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION The dragons literally are not used for anything but fighting Thread. And yet, the Weyrs exist by way of tribute. Particularly during the Long Pass, they enforce their demands for tribute through physical threats, while continuing not to provide anything of benefit to the Holds. For four hundred years. That's the time from the Mayflower to the present day, in American history. That's just. That's not how people work. The dragons provide overwhelming martial force, and perhaps more importantly, an effective scouting and command-and-control infrastructure that the Holds and Halls can't match. But in our world, that doesn't stop people from launching peasant revolts. I mean, there would be massive loss of life, but if you snuck up on a dragon - or on the humans in a Weyr - with enough spears and bows, you could do some serious damage. And some siege weapons, like ballistae, would be hella effective against dragons, and are not that hard to build. So either there should have been a long history of revolts, or the Weyrs need to be providing something of value to the Holds and Halls - and not just the theoretical "we will save you from Thread". I mean, compare to the Catholic church, which does regard its primary mission as ideological ("saving souls"), but which has also historically provided material benefit to the people - education, a social center, charitable works, an ecclesiastical court system, and so on and so forth. And when a religion really tries to demand goods that people need to survive, and offers only ideology in return... There tends to be a revolt in pretty short order. Personally, I would vote for using the dragons, because I think that's the most obvious use, and it would still freaking act as training for Threadfall, it's literally just "lol this is below us" that keeps the Weyrs from doing this. :| Disaster relief: Rescuing people, moving big logs, bringing in food and other needed supplies. Catching fugitives and murderers, and large, dangerous animals. Helping with famine by catching extra meat. Controlling wildfires by putting in firebreaks, dumping sand or water, and running prescribed burns to reduce vegetative buildup. Helping to move information and people from one place to another - news is spread mostly by the Harpers, which probably works most of the time, but why not have dragons transport urgent news, or news across continents or dangerous areas? Perhaps the physical remoteness of the Weyrs would make them good impartial judges in some legal cases, like the ecclesiastical courts of Europe. I would also vote for having the Weyrfolk provide most of their own stuff. It makes sense that they might not be gardening much, since, y'know, living in mountains. But before the Industrial Revolution, literally everyone was spinning thread. Nobles, priests, and monks both provided for a lot of their own needs in-house, and provided specialized goods and services to the people around them - e.g., beer, medicine, and books. I'm not a mountain person, but I'm guessing there might also be goods that are best produced in that setting. Certainly, I think it's established canonically that written records survive better in the Weyrs' climate. Also. It makes like zero sense for there to be no technological advancement for thousands of years, even with strong cultural taboos against machinery and industrialization... There are other kinds of technology. Better skin tanning! New sewing techniques! More efficient smelting! Figuring out how to maintain soil despite intensive farming! New agricultural cultivars! So while the Weyrs might see little difference from century to century, I think there sure as hell would be one, for people who know where to look.
Weyr Search, the original core of Dragonflight was published in 1967. It's a novella with just enough background--I hesitate to call it "worldbuilding"--to hold the story together. Aside from Tolkien, there really wasn't such a thing as worldbuilding at the time. Things just kind of grew because it was cool. So I don't think McCaffrey really thought out Pern as a working world at all.
I still want to fix it. I fandom largely by going no this is dumb i will write fic that does it better tbh.
What McCaffrey did is stuff all your fixes into the couple years covered in the original trilogy. People start inventing things, the dragonriders become helpful. But there is no good reason why none of that happened centuries earlier. That works for storytelling purposes, but everybody's right that it doesn't work as a worldbuilding exercise once you start looking at Pern seriously. I think I read all the books at one time or another and found the prequels and later books to be kind of tiresome. Maybe it was because I read the first six at exactly the right age (early teens). It was like she was trying so hard to fix up the obvious errors in worldbuilding that made Pern unstable that they lacked the fun of the original trilogy and Harper Hall. I don't think you can explain Pern as it existed at the time of Lessa and F'Lar in a sensible way. I still have a soft place in my psyche for the first six books and Menolly is totally my literary girlfriend and Sebell is no good for her at all!
Yeah, I agree. I think it's fun to deconstruct and think about how the setting would make more sense, but... I think that works from a fannish "lol let's write cool fanfic" perspective in a way it totally wouldn't work in the books as they exist. You can get away with really niche stuff in fandom, like "NOW I WILL WRITE A TREATISE ON PERNESE EMBROIDERY MOTIFS", which doesn't really work in standalone fiction.
I REFUSE!!! I DEMAND LESSA AND MENOLLY MAKE OUT BECAUSE I SHIPPED IT REALLY HARD WHEN I WAS LITTLE!!!
ohhhhh my gosh Pern. Pern. I talked about it recently in the book nostalgia thread but!!! Pern!!! my dad gave me this big ol' compilation with Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon all in one volume when I was like... eight? nine? it used to be his, I think—he had certainly read them—and he told me I was only allowed to read Dragonflight, not the next two, because they were more inappropriate or whatever. (I do remember The White Dragon having Jaxom sexing up a Hold girl at one point, but I also... think that the other two books had sex scenes too??) me being me, I read all three straight through anyway and came through the experience reasonably intact. I read a lot of wildly inappropriate adult sci-fi at that age, actually; I was not easily perturbed. anyway I really don't remember those very well, I should read through them again. at some later point I read Dragonsdawn (I think that's the title? the "colonists arrive on Pern, go 'oh shit Thread,' genetically engineer fire lizards" one), and it was definitely my favorite, probably because it was heavier on the sci-fi and also had child protagonists at least for a little while. then I think I read (in assorted random order) one or two of the Harper's Hall ones, the one with dolphins, Weyr Search,and one of the post-The White Dragon ones (with an AI in it? possibly???). so not a comprehensive overview. I really should go back and read 'em all again, it sounds like I missed some quality ones. anyway, my Pern OCs were girls with green and bronze dragons, respectively (even then I thought McCaffrey's gender roles were stupid), and I felt very vindicated when at one point in canon there was a female green rider. I somehow completely missed the memo re: gay dubcon orgies, though... like, I remember the queen's rider and the rider of whomever flew the queen banging, but I didn't realize the rest of the riders did also?? and I have no idea what I thought happened with green mating flights, 'cause I didn't realize that all greenriders were supposed to be gay until I read something to that effect much later. still wtfing over that. what the fuck, Anne McCaffrey. I do remember greens being dismissed as flighty and unintelligent, which in combination with the gay riders thing is certainly a bit . I just... this is so easy to fix, McCaffrey. if you're gonna insist on dragons caring who people are attracted to it is in fact really easy! if you make everybody bisexual, any color's rider can be any gender! problem solved! if you insist on the only female riders being queenriders, at least make the brownriders bi, since browns fly both greens and golds! augh! /grumbles I have nothing of substance to contribute to this, but I want you to know I laughed out loud. headcanon accepted. I quite literally think it went from "grr we dislike each other and not in a sexy way" to "shit our dragons are mating better have sex" to "oh my gosh you are my favoritist ever." like, bam-bam-bam, three scenes in a row, no transitions whatsoever. how? I want to thank you for "'NOW I WILL WRITE A TREATISE ON PERNESE EMBROIDERY MOTIFS'" as both a phrase and a concept. nothing else has so succinctly expressed both what I like to do in fanfic and what I like to see other people do in fanfic.
