And most of us admit that it's essentially flawed. From the mistakes that Anne made in measurements to the bad science of the 'ichor' and whatnot, adding whatever she felt like exploring at the time (dolphins! DNA! gypsies! they're cooool!). Aside from the fact that most of the books are pretty poorly written, of course, the world itself has always proved fairly fun for people to gather in and write about. It's a big world, with a long history.
... But I would so have written Pern differently.
I'd like to explore at least in *my* post, how I'd have changed the world of Pern and written essentially the same planet with updated differences. I'd love to hear what YOU lot might do or change, but not JUST for the Pern stories. Is there a set of books, a movie, a TV show, etc etc that you love but just have Issues with? Please - by all means... Show off your choices and how you'd Do It Better.
*** and now, my world of Pern. ***
(((Disclaimer - some of these are just my opinions and they're probably not everyone's, so just keep in mind it's MY 'how I would.'
)))***
Let's start from the beginning. Anne McCaffrey began writing the Pern series in the late 60s. The world SHE lived in at that time was a very different place indeed, than the one which I live in now. Things that were purely science fiction were impossible then, and are rapidly becoming reality as we go into the new century. Things like genetic engineering, space travel, hypersleep, and terraforming. However it's not just the technology that's markedly different here. The very world which the colonists would have sprung from *is* a different one than she'd be exposed to then.
So with the changes in place, I obviously have a different view of how Pern would have been colonized at all, and how those colonists might have behaved.
First shot: Colonization is hard work but it's not for the peasants.
-- The bulk of people in McCaffrey's Pern seem to have devolved back into a fanciful midieval society regardless of their origins as space farers from an advanced culture. While I don't have problems believing that the events which *she* described would have led to this, I wouldn't have allowed them to come to pass in the first place.
-- Colonists = scientists. Load that ship with the raw materials in order to provide safe shelters, labs and terraforming equipment that will give them a leg to stand on in the new world. Scientists are not farmers. Don't treat them as though they must be in order to colonize a new planet. They're not the bulk of the people who are meant to show up *later*. Colonies grow after all, but they must have a good footing first. Enough crops that are varied, dna and embryonic life, and the chemicals necessary to alter the planet's atmosphere if need be (not in bulk, but perhaps in a domed area, a cordoned off place if the rest of the world is that inhospitable.
Scientists are smart. Technology today far surpasses what it used to be. If I were in a scientific colonization effort I'd want to make *damn* sure that the world I was on was safe tectonically, geologically, radiologically and whatever else before setting one toe on it. I'd certainly have made a detailed examination of all the bodies in the nearby system to make sure another planet might not be a *better* choice. So at this point we have one major divergance.
"That big ass red thing sure has an erratic orbit, and sure does have a close pass to the planet we're meant to be landing on. Let's detail it's gravity and radiation effects first."
They might not have discovered the Thread's 'function' when sending probes to the Red Star, however they certainly would have discovered viral/bacterial materials in the gaseous planet. On bringing them back to their ship, perhaps, they'd find the Thread growing at an alarming rate - or maybe they wouldn't.
Second Shot: Or maybe, they'd put two and two together. Here is a planet, now named Pern, that shows *no old-growth forests* and a lot of strange pockmarking that's clearly not because of spaceborne impacts and meteor showers. Seeing how the Thread bacterium has a casing that (apparently) dissolves at high heat and accelleration - mmmmm, atmospheric entry? They'd be able to see first hand how organic material is affected by this spore-like stuff. But again, that's kind of a later effect. For now, let's go to the nest step.
Third Shot: They wouldn't build in a volcano no matter *how* desperate they were. A volcano is a volcano. 'Extinct' volcanoes on earth - like the Yellostone Basin - explode all the time. A simple computer simulation of the geological topography would reveal 'hey that's a volcanic crater/bowl'. Much better locations would be available. Since Anne didn't leave Pern with any viable equatorial land, both poles will be the only place to head, so the community is going to have to be cold most of the time. I don't know all that much about Pern's axial tilt (my DLG2P is in storage) but the idea that the Southern continent is so lush and warm... is bunk. As anyone who lives in Chile or Argentina will tell you... Most of the land mass that is described in the DLG is non-equatorial, temperate zones. Good for certain crops, lousy for others.
Fourth Shot: Now, assuming that the scientists are building their homes, labs and shelters from the ready-made equipment in their ship, lightweight metals and probably 'spraycrete' like insulation materials are already a mainstay of prefab homes today. I can't see why they in the time between 'now in real life' and 'when they leave earth' newer even more compact materials wouldn't be invented.
There is not going to be a severe loss of life or technology because some dumbass decided to land on a volcanic crater. The volcano will still *go off*. That will lead to the typical dark skies, rain of ash, and smog just like earthly ones do, but life will easily go on. But by now they will likely have discovered that a lot of their favorite animal life and plant crops are *not* suited to the land.
They're genetic engineers for gawd's sake. You're gonna tell me that Kitty Ping couldn't have found a way of making orange trees grow on that soil? ... Mmm, soil samples! Say, there's that weird residue of that spore crap we found in the gas of the Red Gas Giant. 1 + 1 = 2. woah, this planet's plant life grows at *an astonishing rate!*
*Because it's wiped out every 200-400 years.*
Well THAT sucks arse, doesn't it! Is the clock ticking? *checks the trajectories and orbits on the computer* OH CRAP!
Fifth Shot: Assuming that they're not dead from the volcano... The colonists are starting to work on new food stuffs, either by breeding or by engineering them. Try out a few of the local things...
((( An aside: I'm going to ignore the appaling bad science of 'ichor' for the moment. If it's so damn different, not even based in the same chemicals as us, *we could never possibly eat it*. I'm gonna just ... gloss that over.)))
Wherry - big ass ostriches? We've got ostriches, what about *cross breeding them*? Maybe, maybe not. Whatever works. Assume that the colony will have enough food to last them until they've got several generations of small food stock like chicken or pig. (or the local equivalent.)
But in the meantime, the hardcore scientists are working out this Red Planet menace thing. The clock IS ticking. Saaaay.... those little bitty flying lizards are adorable. They act like ducks - impressed to their parent if the parent sticks around... Fly almost the moment they hatch, good at catching insects... And they breathe fire. Well, with some help. Like some parrots in jungles that eat 'hot foods' (spicy chemicals found in the berries and pods) they use calcium deposits on river banks to settle their stomachs. It appears that these little Fire Lizards do a similar thing with the coal-like deposits around the grounds. But why?
Why develop something like this?
... A few years later, of course, the answer will be obvious. These creatures are a natural 'antibody' to their local area. They grow just as quickly as the plant life, which is probably by now overtaking some of the colonists homesteads. Ever watch a jungle plant grow in its ideal conditions? It's not like watching paint dry, it's more like watching a sped up stop motion picture. The biology of the animal life is similar, exceptionally fast growth spurts.
Now, aside from the fact that any scientist today would just set up a kind of laser satelite array to deal with Thread, let's say they don't have THAT much spare parts. They're going to have to deal with Thread no matter what.
So Kitty to the rescue right? But Kitty's smart. (And safe, not under a bloody volcano.) She will want bigger versions of fire lizards all right.
But not *that* big.
Sixth Shot: Size counts? Not here. It's always been a pet peeve of mine that the people of Pern bred for size and not speed. A large number of quick, durable and small dragons could do the job of those gigantic breeders, easily and with less stress all around.
One: they're smaller and therefore eat less and take up less space. If they are bred for small size and quick speed, they do not have to worry about gigantic wing-size. Displacement issues are key here: a queen has something like 5 times the surface area of a green, yet she *cannot flame* and has no business being in the air in the first place. All that wing mass is sweeping through the SAME air that Thread is moving through.
A small fast dragon on the other hand, one with a wingshape like a swift or a falcon's, instead of a condor's, would be able to avoid most clumps of Thread far more easily than a big one. Who fucking cares if the dragons aren't huge? They don't need brains - they need to do their job.
Two: domesticated animals = better than wild animals with a lobotomy. Dragons would not need either intelligence nor empathy to survive. All they'd need is the domesticated habit of getting food from humans, praise perhaps, and they'd be easy to train their own basic fire lizard instincts up into combat-worthy troops. I can see these domestic, small sized dragons remaining about the size they were with the first clutch, draft horses with wings. And draft horses are keenly intelligent, that's about all you'd need for dragons.
Three: breeding them would be quick and painless. Why bother with queens? Greens *are* fertile, the fertility thing was (as I recall) something bred into them, was it not? It doesn't matter if you have one large clutch of 40 or 10 clutches of 4. They'll grow up in a matter of two or three short years, and be fertile. A large clutch requires a large amount of space. Small dragons = small space for not only living and eating, but breeding as well.
If large sized dragons are a must-have, they'd certainly become the transportation and construction workers of the dragon world. Not the fighters. Queens are, as of the last few books and eras in Pern, the size of a 100+ passenger JET AIRPLANE. One person cannot take care of a dragon that size. One person has a hard time taking care of a Clydesdale horse alone. (And these are scientists, remember, not stable hands.) Two disparate races of dragons might be grown at leisure, but certainly not in the first Pass.
Seventh Shot...: Because the society isn't essentially wiped out and taken by surprise either by a volcanic eruption or Thread, the society on Pern digs in and maintins itself as a well-educated one.
One of the biggest pet peeves I've had about the world of Pern, is that the people devolved dramatically into a world just like the one which Anne was familiar with (of course). One which is Feudal, brutal, and wholly un-friendly to women.
Kitty Ping would have had a few things to say about that, I think. As a group of scientists, I'm positive that they'd not neglect their children's educations. They would expect their children to excell just like they did, in a field appropriate. Continue experimentation, continue to learn, fleshing out the biological surveys of the world, and continue most sure, to study the Red Gas Giant. They wouldn't let that thing out of their sight - not that it'd go away...
Birth control would be used, encouraged, to control the rapid growth of humans until they're sure to have a strong foothold. A *democratic* form of government would likely evolve, though possibly Socialist (I can only dream of that), but certainly not feudal. Are these scientists kids so stuck on themselves that becoming 'landed' on a planet where *no one owns anything yet* is important? I would assume that a community built by scientists would not have a problem *sharing*. Especially when it means *surviving*. If cockroaches can do it, so can we.
***
This might bring up some very keen differences between Anne's pern and mine. Would they have ever developed 'timing it'? Why would they need to? If they have a viable guard force against the threat, they really woulnd't much need it. However, teleportation is one of those elusive things that perhaps Humanity hasn't explored in their history. Maybe they couldn't do it with technology, but with the natural ability that the Fire lizards have, teleportatation might become the next issue of dragon breeding.
In the years between a Pass, when dragons aren't needed for defense, but are certainly already a part of the community, like warhorses they could become something new. Breeding for speed and *racing* them. Breeding for endurance, or teleportation distance... By the time the next Pass occurred, you might very well have dragons that can teleport 3 or 4 times the distance they'd done in the last. That makes them even more valuable, protective and workable as a species.
Would the dragons develop strong empathic urges? Who knows. I don't know that it's necessary - if a dragon dies and its rider doesn't, why would a perfectly good rider need to die along with them?
No, in my world, dragons and humans are hardly the 'symbiotic' pairs of Anne's Pern. Humans bred the things, humans control them. They're *not smart enough* to 'rebel' and they're *not inherently volitile enough* to turn on the Humans. Maybe about as much as a horse gets ornery, but it is clear to both parties that cooperation is necessary for survival. Breeding the bad ones out is just as easy as breeding the fast ones in.
When a dragon dies, another is there to take its place. They breed quickly anyway. Perhaps a longer lifespan and a longer growth period may mistakenly be put into place during the off-Pass times, but they are still fast enough and in enough numbers that pretty much 'herding' them might work.
Quantity first, quality next. Size doesn't count in my Pern.
.... I think that's it... We wind up with a highly technological world with small sized fast-winged dragons (likely bred into great color schemes based on those blues and greens, too), that doesn't abuse its women or expect to sell them off for land, and that isn't merely a reflection of times better left to Earth's past.
Commentary?
