Anne McCaffrey

[weyrfolk]

Sounds very interesting...I'll look it up.  Thanks!

[jackie]

I've enjoyed many of her books, but stay away from the ones with or by her son.  Disappointed.

[Cerulean]

I have a total flashbulb memory of reading The White Dragon as a preteen sitting in the back of my parents' car when it was raining during a camping trip. I think it was my brother's book and I got bored. Then I couldn't figure out what was going on half the time because I hadn't read Dragonflight or Dragonquest. I promptly corrected that when we got home. The White Dragon is still one of my favs. Although she has published a lot of books that are prequels to this original trilogy, I'd suggest reading the original trilogy first, then the Harper Hall trilogy, then going back and reading the prequels. Menolly was one of my favorite characters of all time. After those two trilogies, I'd suggest reading either All the Weyrs of Pern or Dragonsdawn next. In a way, these two are the bookends of the series. Dragonsdawn is about the beginnings of the planet starting from when the colonists were getting ready to land on the planet. I remember being terribly excited when this book came out because I could see all of the place/location names of the people depicted in book. Then All the Weyrs of Pern is about how, well, all the Weyrs, come together to find a final solution to Thread.

[Patti L.]

A rather interesting side note to the Pernese books is the art book 'The People of Pern'.  The painter worked very closely with Ms. McCaffrey to get the images right, & she comments on almost all of them in the book, including the fact that she was so struck with the image of Robinton that she bought the original.
If you get hold of it, you'll notice there are a couple of images that look like actors you may recognize.  They had to fudge a little because of deadlines.
The image that most struck me was Mirrim, impressing her dragon.  I'd swear that the illustrator had travelled back in time to get the model to pose for her, because it looked just like a girl a couple of years older than me who lived across the street where I grew up, and at that time, not when the book was produced.

[Cerulean]

Check out The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, too. It seems its in it's second edition, too. I've got it laying around somewhere ...

[Zealith]

If you're really into Pern, you should try Atlis of Pern too. It isn't just maps, but the customs of people in different regions and how their clothes differ.

[Patti L.]

I try to draw a line somewhere, so I haven't looked into that yet.  I think first I need some fellis juice.

[Zealith]

Well, I've always found fantasy cultures very interesting. So I skipped most of the purely geological parts.

[Taranis]

The only Pern books I've read are Dragon Song and Dragonsinger, both of which I found absolutely amazing.  If I ever get around to that monsterous stack of Books I Want to Read  hopefully I can delve deeper into Pern.  I know the Menolly trilogy is kind of stand-alone but do the rest of the Pern books have to be read in order?

[Patti L.]

They weren't written & published in chronological Pernese order.
But there is a general chronology.  The main story takes place in the same time frame as the two you've already read.  I'd recommend that you either find the ones that take place earlier, beginning with Dragonsdawn, which tells of the colonist's arrival on Pern, & Dragon's Eye, I think it is, & Nerilka's Story & Moreta, which are all 'historical' from that viewpoint, & read them before you go any further, or pretty much read them by publication date.
The first written were Dragonflight, then Dragonquest, which are the core of the main story, & fit just before/around the Harperhall trilogy/Menolly books.  By the by, the third in that trilogy isn't really about her, it's Piemur's story.  And The White Dragon falls just about there on timeline, too.

[Taranis]

Thanks for the info, Patti!  That helps a lot.  It's so frustrating when an author writes a load of books and you can't figure out which ones to read first!     I'll definitely try to catch some of the back story first...

[Patti L.]

It is frustrating, & one of my sisters makes that among her favorite grumbles.  But sometimes that's the way the stories come into your mind, sometimes that's the way the Public demands them.  Probably, sometimes that's the way the publisher or your agent, or the movie studio demands they be written.  These days, as they can, many authors will try to include some kind of timeline for their ficton.  But if you get hold of 2 books, for instance, 1 written a decade ago, the other last year, but missing the timeline & not appearing in the one created before that tale, you're not helped, alas. 
I've been annoyed by it on occassion, but my mind is the kind that can tuck things into slots around each other if I like the stories well enough & there are clues enough.
The ones that drive me wild are the ones that range through time within one volume, especially if you have to guess at when each chapter/scene fits into the plot.

[Taranis]

The ones that drive me wild are the ones that range through time within one volume, especially if you have to guess at when each chapter/scene fits into the plot.

ooh, I HATE that!  It gets me so confused that I'm ready to drop the book and fall into helpless tears!  If you're going to time travel then PLEASE tell me which decade or world I have just jumped to when I turned the page!!

[Zealith]

When in doubt, I suggest going by the order they were published. In fact, thats how I suggest you read Anne McCaffry's books too.

[Patti L.]

Yes, this works perfectly well with her, because she started from something like 1500 years into the human history on the world, & put dates into all the subsequent books, so you can tell where on the timeline you are.
And you don't ever get the feeling that she's jammed the same characters into new costumes & flung them onto a stage with slightly different flats, the way that you do with some people who write different periods on the same world.