Talk:Pern

Red Star
I removed the link on "Red Star" because the article it was "supposed" to link to does not exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.69.4.20 (talk) 01:54, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

PERN
It's a small point ... but I'm sure I'd read that "Pern" was first an acronym for "Planet Earthlike Resources Negligible".

But twice I've had to change it from "Paralell Earth Resources Negligible".

Am I wrong? I can't find the reference, but my DoP series isn't complete these days (too many loans). Please, if you know better, correct it, and post here with the documentation, it's bugging me. BigFatDave 21:06, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * My copy of Chronicles of Pern: First Fall has this quote on page 17 (in the story "Survey: PERN"): "they were all three quite willing to let Castor initial it P.E.R.N.-parallel Earth, resources negligible." --CAnderson 17:29, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Ahhhh ... That's one of the one's I lent out and never got back. Thanks C.A. BigFatDave 23:30, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Crafts
I went in and fixed a few typos and such, and added a bit of detail. Good job on this article, though! BTW, I assume "telsopce protect" in the final section is a typo for "telescope project", but I've never read 'Skies of Pern' so I wasn't sure enough to change it. --Swartzer 03:43, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

One thing this article lacks is any info on the printer craft and the computer craft (they may be called something else, but they do exist and are recognised as being independant of their parent crafts, i think).

Dragonettes and Fire-Lizards
Dragonettes (with a thumb and only two hook-like fingers) were the original native stock. There are no dragonettes left in the world by well before the time of the 9th Pass. Fire-Lizards were the stock modified by Kitt Ping, giving them pendactyle (five fingered) claws, blunter noses, and a higher brain development. The Fire-Lizard possessed dominant traits and the original Dragonettes simply bred out of existence.

Someone needs to stop switching the text back, trying to state that dragonettes were modified from Fire-Lizards.

24.239.94.33 23:17, 10 October 2006 (UTC) Angel the Techrat


 * At a guess the confusion is caused by the tendancy to refer to immature dragons as dragonettes. And the fact that the original settlers still referred to the modified fire-lizards as dragonettes in 'Dragonsdawn'.  If I remember right it was Sean Connell who first started calling them fire-lizards and it took a while for the name to catch on. Danikat 23:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Anne McCaffrey is co-author of The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern (see below). It is one essential source for this article and on this point. --P64 (talk) 21:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Notability
Could who ever put that tag on this article please explain why? The Chronicles of Pern series is very extensive, and a lot of detail about the planet is described. The amount of information available about Pern makes it foolish to suggest it isn't notable. It is as worth of an article as Arrakis or Discword, if not more so, due to the amount of work Anne McCaffrey has put into developing the planet as a character. Laurielegit (talk) 15:21, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's Notable. In fact, I agree it's Mid-Importance for F/SF.
 * The article is no longer tagged for that issue, only for the lack of references and the in-universe standpoint. Probably it should be tagged for original research also. --P64 (talk) 21:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

pern as a reference to the motif of Thread in the Pern novels
While it's true that pern means spindle in Ireland, the origins of the word have nothing to do with the Dragonriders of Pern. I'm removing this assertion right now.
 * interjection: Good. I suppose it's more accurate to say this seems to be "original research" about something we can't know this until the McCaffreys tell us.
 * (I have reformatted the rest of Xavier's comment to avoid using a footnote.) --P64 (talk) 21:21, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

The word was already in use in the 19th century, during the youth of W. B. Yeats, as he told us in the notes of his poem "Shepherd And Goatherd" [reprinted in Later Poems, Forgotten Books, 1924. google books edition, page 302]

When I was a child at Sligo I could see above my grandfather's trees a little column of smoke from "the pern mill," and was told that "pern" was another name for the spool, as I was accustomed to call it, on which thread was wound.

— Xavier, 14:15, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Considering how many Irish words and references McCaffrey uses (Ruatha, for example, is a not-quite-grammatically correct Irish translation for "Red's ford") I imagine "Pern" as the spindle for "Thread" was indeed intended as an injoke. However I don't believe anyone's asked this at any cons, at least not on record, so it's speculation. The continued use of the word in the description of the Weyr Bowl at High Reaches (Seven Spindles) makes me think that it was on her mind at least. But again, this is conjecture. Wildefae (talk) 17:08, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Dragonlover's Guide to Pern
Anne McCaffrey is co-author of The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern by Jody Lynn Nye (1989, extended 1997). Despite "errors" the Guide is one essential source for this article (not a secondary "reliable source" as we say, but part of the canon it seems to me).

Regarding errors, see Various errors found within The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, evidently by fan Cheryl B. Miller. last update 11/28/2005.

By the way, Miller(?) says that "the first edition is included in the second without any changes to it, and with the same page numbers". --P64 (talk) 21:51, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup?
With today's news of the death of the author this page is likely to receive more attention. Perhaps it is time to brush it up a bit? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.11.220.178 (talk) 08:16, 23 November 2011 (UTC)


 * One of the major complaints on the article is "It relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications." I don't know how this is likely to change, nor how it's relevant. It's not as though people have written scholarly articles on the landscape of a fictional planet well-developed in a longstanding series of books. That said, one of the major sources outside the series, The Dragonrider's Guide to Pern is co-written by Todd McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye as well as Anne McCaffrey. Wildefae (talk) 17:08, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Dragonlovers includes one chapter openly by Todd (Threadfighting), one short story written by Anne and Nye (Nye primarily, she says). The book is published and catalogued Nye with Anne; Nye's account inside says that her team worked one week with three McCaffreys. [I must stop here, better to spend some McCaffrey time getting Dragonlovers from user to article space.]
 * The Atlas of Pern is another companion book catalogued as reference in the ISF DataBase. (Now I provide its own section here.) My local public library does catalogue such works as literature, not fiction. The American Library of Congress may not agree.
 * "I don't know how this is likely to change, nor how it's relevant." People may write little non-fiction about Pern but that is not and will not be simply because it is fictional, only if and because it is judged unworthy in some sense. (If there is no such work, contrast Sherlock, Middle-earth, and Harry Potter.) --P64 (talk) 18:18, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Atlas of Pern
The Atlas of Pern is another important guide. Karen Wynn Fonstad worked with Anne McC, primarily by mail it seems clear to me. The book is "authorized" and published by Del Rey Books, not third-party as the template requests.

Fonstad was also independent in ways Nye and company clearly were not. (For skeptics on one point, The Atlas of Middle-earth demonstrates that she didn't need to work closely with the author in order to produce an Atlas of quality like Pern's.) The Atlas is not academic but it is scholarly in providing pages of endnote references to support chronologies, maps, and drawings. The author had worked professionally at cartography, and taught some university classes.

This is informative, I hope, but not much argument how it should be used as a source here. --P64 (talk) 18:18, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Biography, Series, Planet
What should be the purpose of this article in contrast to the biographical Anne McCaffrey and the literary(?) Dragonriders of Pern (DoP)? The latter may be intermediary whence we have here only one half of a two-part question, namely
 * 2012-11-03 restatement ... and the bibliographical Anne McCaffrey bibliography with its section 2.1, Dragonriders of Pern series. DoP is naturally intermediate between that bibliography and this article Pern. So,

what should be covered here rather than in that article on the series? For example, do some paragraphs of the DoP article belong here or some of these paragraphs belong there?

May it help this discussion to paraphrase someone's old suggestion that this should be a ghetto? Pern rather than DoP or AIM is for in-universe writing that can never be "Good" work in wikipedia? The recent incorporation of Thread (Pern) in this article suggests that the process possibly at work, to gather and segregate here all of the wrong kind of stuff. --P64 (talk) 18:18, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps that comment was hurtful rather than helpful.


 * The series article Dragonriders of Pern (DoP) is primarily about the books. Two sections are in-universe, the Overview (short section 1) and Dragonriders of Pern (long section 5). Thematically the latter fits this article's Pern (sec 7); they are not evidently related by derivation. Perhaps the theme should be covered only here and in "main articles" linked here, and merely summarized at DoP.
 * I have changed the targets of some redirects from DoP to this article Pern. Namely, three versions of "firelizard", so that all(?) five versions now redirect here; and "Red Star (Pern)", which now shares target section Pern with Thread/Threadfall and Long Interval.
 * current Redirects to Pern (here)
 * current Redirects to DoP (book series)
 * The redirects now jointly imply orderly division of content with this article the primary home of in-universe content, only.
 * --P64 (talk) 22:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Could we view this article as an companion to Characters in Dragonriders of Pern, providing descriptions of anything other than a character which do not "deserve" their own article and a summary of anything which does? The question of "in-universe" can be addressed by improving the writing style. --Mirokado (talk) 09:13, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Merging etc
Some of the articles providing background information linked to here and in other related articles were the subject of this multiple deletion request, closed as "keep, with no prejudice against merging some of the content." The comments clearly indicated a need for tidying up of many of the articles describing aspects of this fictional world, including possible merges and removal of superfluous content. This section is intended as a central place to record progress in response to the AfD comments. I also suggest this talk page as an appropriate location for any centralised discussion involving these improvements. --Mirokado (talk) 21:52, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Updated articles working list
 * Pern
 * Holds of Pern
 * Ruatha Hold – redirect to anchor in updated section in Holds of Pern
 * Fort Hold – redirect to anchor in updated section in Holds of Pern
 * Weyr
 * Fort Weyr – redirect to anchor in updated section in Weyr
 * Benden Weyr – redirect to anchor in updated section in Weyr

Others are welcome to update this list if they wish, I will tweak format etc as necessary. --Mirokado (talk) 01:28, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Date of death
The second paragraph states "No Pern fiction has been published since July 2012, several months before Anne McCaffrey's death." but didn't she die in 2011, which would either change the year to 2011 or make it something like "several months after A.M.'s death."? 90.224.74.129 (talk) 20:10, 16 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. "several months after", as we say elsewhere. I also changed July to June, relying on our source ISFDB. We do say July elsewhere, presumably to fit the UK release that we treat as the first edition (Sky Dragons). ISFDB gives "Year:" 2012-06-26 and 2012-07-05.
 * IIRC all of the books after Red Star Rising (UK, 1996)/(US, 1997) Dragonseye were published simultaneously in a sense now routine for purposes such as defining awards eligibility, and at least Anne McCaffrey has several times acknowledged both Ballantine/Del Rey and Transworld/Corgi editors. Only in a few of the articles I partly addressed the issue in a Note. --P64 (talk) 21:49, 16 December 2014 (UTC)