Pern Discussion!

[Jenner]

...the movie reminded me way too much of the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffery. I'm waiting to hear about the lawsuit.

Telepathic dragons? Rider living if dragon dies but not visa versa? I was waiting for the Thread to start falling and F'lar to jump to the Dawn Sisters.

Though Eragon acts a bit more reserved, more like F'nor or F'lessan, heroicly stupid one moment, horrifyingly bland the next.

...the movie reminded me way too much of the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffery. I'm waiting to hear about the lawsuit.

Telepathic dragons? Rider living if dragon dies but not visa versa? I was waiting for the Thread to start falling and F'lar to jump to the Dawn Sisters.

Though Eragon acts a bit more reserved, more like F'nor or F'lessan, heroicly stupid one moment, horrifyingly bland the next.

Wow... I understood all of that.

Yes, Paolini did borrow a lot from that, it seems like... though he placed his in a true fantasy setting, rather than a sci-fi one.

If his dragons could go between, I think there would be some trouble. But I think in this case what he's done is used a good standard, sort of in the same way that authors imply Asimov's Laws of Robotics (allowable) without being to quote them (zomg no!).

I agree, if Saphira could teleport I'm sure Anne would be having a fit. Hell, she doesn't even let people write fanfiction about her stuff. She's prolly already having a fit.

Rider living if dragon dies but not visa versa?

That is not in the books, actually.

YES IT IS.


ZOMG SPOILERS FOR A 12 YEAR OLD BOOK SERIES. WATCH OUT.


L'ton's dragon is killed in a flight training and Lyton lives on, broken, but living. Later, he gets another Dragon and the bond is broken at best. When he dies that dragon dies with him.

It is the same with Firelizards! When there Impressors die they go between forever, they die. When Master Robinton died at the AI Zair died with him.

When Golanth was mauled F'lessan did not die.
But when a Weyr boy commited suicide his dragon died too.

This is Canon Pernian Fact.

Yeah, I really wonder where NextGenerationLunarFan got that from. Unless he's referring to Eragon rather than Pern? (I bought Eragon a couple years ago but have yet to so much as open it.)

The whole point of the ending of Moreta was that the dragon/rider bond was so strong that death of one pretty much inevitably led to death of the other, even if there was a delay sometimes. Brekke and Lytol were exceptions, and in the former's case she had a fire-lizard who snapped her out of it. There's also a dragonless man in Renegades, but he's clearly been traumatized by it. I don't recall Lyton getting another dragon, though, or a Weyr boy suiciding, unless it's in the most recent book by Anne and Todd, which I haven't read yet. Maybe later this year I'll reread the whole series, though I'm not sure I feel like slogging through Masterharper again. I really see them, and other sf/fantasy that I read as a teenager, differently as an adult, picking up on many things I missed before.

And twelve years? Weyr Search (part 1 of Dragonflight) was published in 1968 or thereabouts. I read the first two trilogies around 1987, and I think Moreta was published around then.

Oh, Masterharper was one of my favorites when I first read them, but I haven't read them recently, so what you say may prove the same for me. I did like Robinton... though I liked a lot of characters from that universe, so...

If I can draw another parallel to Phillip Pullman and His Dark Materials, the relationship seems similar here, with the daemons being connected to the people they're with, rather like souls. If the daemons died, the people lived a sort of half-existence that was described as nearly sub-sentient. If the people died, the daemons went automatically.

The difference between here and dragons, on the level of the link, isn't great. Lyton functions well enough, but he's wrought with depression at the same time. He's not whole, and there are ready comparisons in other sci-fi/fantasy, such as Frodo (his Witch-King wound, as well as the obvious link with the Ring which was both ultimately destructive and yet fully binding). The wound goes beyond the external. And in the case of Moretta... it's final.

(I haven't read the recent couple of Pern novels anyway, but I don't remember Lyton getting a dragon either.)

To tie it back into the topic... I don't think that the degree to which the movie borrowed should be unexpected, or from a particular place. Sometimes people write about other people that are really close to a certain figure. And so the psychic link, to the point of a bound mortality, is one way of saying, "These two - yes. It's destined. They are mutually (and in the case of the ring, parasitically) invested."

I can't remember, I thought Lyton got ANOTHER Dragon, I remember them encouraging him to go out into the Weyr and try to impress another one, maybe he flipped out instead? It has been a long time but I really need to read it again, it was my favorite series as a child and Anne remains my favorite childhood author.

( The boy who committed suicide ran himself into the thread intentionally. I remember this, because it horrified F'lessan or F'lar. I'm almost sure of it. )

My memory is so very out of it. I think I'm gonna move this into a different thread guys. We've railroaded with our nerdity!

NEW TOPIC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pern Pern Wiki

[Alunissage]

You might be thinking of Brekke... she lost her queen and fell into deep depression, and in order to try to get her out of it they (Lessa, F'nor, Mirrim, etc) arranged for her to be one of the candidates for the next queen hatching. But Berd, her fire-lizard, flew at the baby queen and got all mad at it, which snapped Brekke out of it. That might have been the same time as Jaxom Impressing Ruth.

Regarding Masterharper, I liked Robinton very much as a character. What I didn't like about that particular book is that it screwed up the chronology as established in other books (Sebell would have had to be middle-aged in the Harper Hall books, instead of the young man who had just become a journeyman), was constant tragedy, and was just plain implausible in how it tried to tie loose ends that didn't need tying, like Camo's parentage or having Robinton present as an undercover spy of sorts during the opening events of Dragonflight. I didn't know what fanfiction was when I read it, but that's what it reads like. If you read Masterharper first or without having read any of the others from that era (Ninth Pass), then it probably wouldn't seem so out of place, but as it is it just doesn't fit.

[Jenner]

Everyone loved Robinton and I think everyone wanted Robinton and Menolly to get it on with the mad humps.

Or maybe that was me