Dragons Made Me Do It: Episode #19: “Weyr Search” (1967)

Tequila Mockingbird: And welcome to Dragons Made Me Do It, one of potentially many podcasts about Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, but the only one by us.

Tequila Mockingbird: And I’m Tequila Mockingbird, and today we are going back to the beginning and reading “Weyr Search,” which is the novella that McCaffrey wrote in 1967, published in Analog magazine, that eventually became Dragonflight.

Tequila Mockingbird: You might say, “You’ve already read Dragonflight!” Yes.

Lleu: Yes. It is slightly, but in some cases significantly, different, as we will discuss. This is also gonna be our recap of the podcast as a whole. Technically, there is one more Pern story that we are not reading, namely, “Dragonrider,” but that’s because it makes more sense to go right back to the beginning.

Tequila Mockingbird: Obviously, they are both slightly different from when they were eventually turned into Dragonflight, but I think I’m more interested in the little screenshot of McCaffrey stepping into Pern for the very first time.

Lleu: Agreed. As a warning, in this episode we will be discussing suicide in addition to our usual general content warnings. So, “Weyr Search” covers the first section of Dragonflight. It begins, as Dragonflight does, with a prologue that differs from the prologue in Dragonflight in some small but significant ways. It begins with the same prologue that’s in Dragonflight with some small but striking differences. In particular, where Dragonflight refers to the Pernese settlers’ “forgotten Terran forebears,” the “Weyr Search” prologue refers to their “forgotten Yankee forebears.”

Lleu: Which is wild, and extra funny because she makes them Alaskans in Dragonsdawn. Anne…

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah… I think that distinction reflects, to me, at least, more of a generic sci-fi of the period feeling.

Tequila Mockingbird: Calling something “Terran” is, to me, this very, “Oh, yeah, we’re in that mid-century sci-fi, baby!” vibe.

Lleu: Oh, wait — I was gonna say the opposite, actually. I feel like the “forgotten Yankee forebears” feels much more “Oh, this was published in a mid-century American science fiction magazine,” whereas “Terran” feels a little more open-ended to me.

Tequila Mockingbird: I don’t know. The reason to swap, right, is to try and make it less specific, or less American?

Tequila Mockingbird: Or to try and make it sound more formal — I think that’s what it is for me, is that it sounds more like “This is official sci-fi talk.” As opposed to “Yankee,” which is just, like, what are you doing?

Tequila Mockingbird: She does reference “Irish know-how” in Dragonsdawn.

Lleu: Truly, it’s like, “Many of our ancestors were Alaskans, so we’ve got that Alaskan pioneer spirit in our blood,” because being Alaskan is genetic…

Tequila Mockingbird: I don’t think I know anyone from Alaska, but I suspect they would not prefer to be referred to as a “Yankee.”

Lleu: But somehow I am pretty sure that she means “Yankee” in the sense of “someone from the Northeast or New England specifically,” rather than the sense of “an American.”

Lleu: So, that’s a little funny, but I do just want to double down on: she’s been telling us literally since the second paragraph of the first publication of any Pern content that this is science fiction. And I do think that the fact that there are dragons is probably why she felt she had to do that.

Tequila Mockingbird: It does definitely feel like it’s very intentionally staking a place for itself in a science fiction magazine, and I think that, as we discussed in our very first episode, the rather roughly hewn faux-medieval caricature cultural stuff going on is maybe why she felt like she had to signpost it that much. It’s not just the dragons, but it’s the dragons and the serving wenches and the fires and the hangings and the rushes on the floor and all of that, is very much speaking that language of fantasy.

Tequila Mockingbird: I am continuing to be on the hill where, uh, I have died, especially since you made me read a stupid ghost dragon short story, that these are a fantasy series. Deal with it.

Lleu: Part of what’s going on, too, as we talked about in our recap episode, is that this is the period when fantasy is becoming a distinct marketing category from science fiction and when the kind of planetary romance that Pern is is starting to be on its way out more and more.

Lleu: So she’s also staking her continued place in science fiction and saying, like, “No, I’m still writing a planetary romance story. I’m still doing sword-and-planet. I’m not doing… the sword-and-sorcery revival that’s happening at the same time. I’m not doing the early consolidation of a fantasy canon in the late ’60s. I’m still doing this other thing.”

Tequila Mockingbird: And she kept doing it for 35 years, so it worked for her.

Lleu: She sure did — although, also, notably, it gets a lot less planetary romance as it goes on.

Lleu: It gets a lot more, now we’re just doing normal sci-fi. There’s spaceships, there’s flying cars, there’s blowing up rocket engines on far-off planets.

Tequila Mockingbird: And I think, rereading it, I had some fun nostalgia — not that I ever read the short story as a kid, but for the parts of Dragonflight that I loved, because I was a #LessaGirl, and so all of that that I loved so much was already here in “Weyr Search.” What really stuck in my head was this scene of Lessa in the bath, changing and washing up and getting ready and then running out onto the hatching ground. I feel like that and, “Of course queens can fly; that’s why they have wings” are the two moments from Dragonflight that have always stuck with me the hardest.

Lleu: Interesting. What I was really struck by in reading “Weyr Search” is the extent to which, while there are still some F’lar sections, the emphasis is really on Lessa. Like, this is a story about Lessa.

Lleu: And, also, F’lar is there, but this is a story about Lessa. And, to some extent, that’s still true of Dragonflight, but I feel like the balance in Dragonflight is much more 50-50 between them.

Lleu: Maybe 60-40. And, crucially, she’s added more F’lar in Dragonflight. So, “Weyr Search” is missing two particular F’lar things: one, his conversation with Fax when they get to Ruatha, where Fax is like, “Haha, here’s Ruatha that you had such high hopes for!” and F’lar’s like, “Fuck, was I that obvious?” That’s not in this. We just get a brief two-sentence summary of it when F’lar is talking to F’nor later. And, second, the scene when they’re at Benden, while Lessa is bathing and getting changed, F’lar and F’nor, in Dragonflight, have a conversation where F’lar is like, “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine,” and F’nor’s like, “I know you’re pretending everything’s fine, but I have to tell you that T’bor and K’net and R’gul brought other candidates, and they might also be good,” and F’lar’s like, “No, no, it’s fine. I have the one.” That’s also not in “Weyr Search,” so that was added for Dragonflight, whereas I think the only Lessa thing that was added in Dragonflight is the scene where Lessa and Gemma interact —

Lleu: The balance of added material is skewed towards F’lar, which tells you that the balance of original material was a little more Lessa.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah, and I feel like, both from Dragonflight but also for the whole book series, Lessa is the specialest girl on Pern.

Tequila Mockingbird: That never changes. She continues to get to be the specialest girl, even when she’s an older character, even in comparison to other very special girls in other books. There’s some magic in Lessa. And it’s fascinating and baffling that McCaffrey doesn’t seem to want to let any other female character be as unapologetically themselves and weird and powerful and aggressive and compelling as Lessa, because I really feel like she did something really cool there, even though Lessa is an awful person.

Tequila Mockingbird: And Menolly comes close, I think. Menolly and Moreta also get to be very special, but…

Lleu: — but Menolly also stops being a main character after Dragonsinger.

Tequila Mockingbird: And even though Lessa’s never the protagonist again, she punches above her weight, I think, even in later books in the Ninth Pass. She still gets point of view scenes; she still gets things to do.

Lleu: Yeah. I’m trying to think if there are any other female characters who get that much recurring page time, and I don’t think there are. Menolly has —

Lleu: — her bits and pieces in Dragondrums, and I think that’s it. In Dolphins we maybe have, like, two scenes that are focalized through her and that’s it, and none in Skies of Pern.

Lleu: So there are other female protagonists, but no other enduring female protagonists. There are people who are there who are present for one book. There are people who are at the center of things for one book, but never get a POV scene — Aramina — but not any other female characters who get to keep coming back and who we get to keep seeing the world through.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. And we’ve talked before about the fact that it’s possible some of that was a purely pragmatic publishing decision. She definitely tilts the lens a lot more towards male characters as the series continues.

Lleu: Yeah, even in All the Weyrs of Pern Jaxom and F’lar collaborate to sideline Lessa and make sure that she doesn’t get to help with the Red Star mission.

Tequila Mockingbird: So it’s possible that that reflected a shift in McCaffrey’s interests or priorities, and it’s possible that was just what she thought was gonna sell. I don’t think it is ever the only thing that is relevant in a creative work, but I do think knowing things about the author at the time that they wrote it is interesting. And so I posed the question about whether Lessa is the creation of McCaffrey’s divorce.

Tequila Mockingbird: This entirely intransigent, uncooperative woman who gets to continue to be so, is in some way an expression of that.

Tequila Mockingbird: And she kind of wrote it out of her. She’s done; she’s good. She’s got a farm in Ireland. Life’s great. But maybe that’s too much armchair psychology.

Lleu: As we observed with Dragonquest, it seems striking that McCaffrey published Dragonflight, and then within three years was divorced and had moved to Ireland to write her next book. Whether Dragonflight was the instigator or not, it certainly happened at a turning point in her personal life.

Tequila Mockingbird: And the fake good version of Pern that only lives in my head definitely has a lot to do with how Lessa is treated in this book series and by the narrative around her.

Tequila Mockingbird: I think she should be allowed to do as many murders as she wants.

Tequila Mockingbird: It’s not really that there are specific people, although numerous Oldtimers, I’m definitely like, “You know, that would be fine by me.” Yeah, the problem is all of the villains are kind of anemic. Like, I guess she could murder Thella if she wants to.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah! There we go. That’s the right answer, yes. Lessa should be allowed to murder Toric.

Lleu: Yeah. The only other person I feel like Lessa would actively want to murder, unfortunately, is Meron, but I don’t think he deserves it. He’s horrible, but not murderable.

Lleu: Whereas Toric is, like, less horrible but also more murderable, I think.

Lleu: Yeah. Among other broad sets of changes and retcons that jumped out at us here, one is the portrayal of violence between “Weyr Search,” and by extension Dragonflight, and the rest of the series. So, looking back on it, some of the stuff that happens here is wild. I mean, the Impression scene…

Tequila Mockingbird: I feel like in other Impression scenes, what we get is that the dragons accidentally harm humans because they’re trying to get to the right human and this other human is in the way.

Tequila Mockingbird: But Ramoth actively goes away from Lessa, mauls or murders two random teenage girls, and then Lessa has to go up to her and be like, “Hey, I’m over here!” —

Tequila Mockingbird: So it’s very much not “Ramoth is trying to find the right person.” It’s “Ramoth is murdering whoever comes close to her until she finds the right person.” And while, on one hand, that’s very Ramoth, on the other hand, that’s just not, I think, the vibe that we get even when other hatchings involve violence.

Tequila Mockingbird: ’Cause the dragon accidentally walks over a male candidate, and then another dragon comes up and is like, “Oh, no!” And he’s like, “No, no, it’s just a scratch! It’s okay!”

Lleu: Which is a level of violence that we don’t see from the dragonets later. It’s more, they’re clumsy; they trip over themselves; they trip over other people. They’re not throwing people around.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. And I think that also lines up with what we see about violence in human societies. You pointed out that the Warder is carrying a whip —

Tequila Mockingbird: — when he’s talking to the drudges, and, to be fair, we don’t spend a lot of time with drudges, but we don’t see that in either of the two scenes where our protagonists are pretending to be drudges, either in Nerilka or Piemur in Dragondrums.

Lleu: Yeah, and, really, if it were gonna happen anywhere, surely it would be happening at Nabol in Dragondrums, and it doesn’t seem to be. Not that there isn’t still corporal punishment, because there is — people are getting hit.

Tequila Mockingbird: And people are getting treated pretty brutally in Dragonseye, but in that it’s specifically supposed to be horrific and shocking and bad —

Tequila Mockingbird: — where this is treated very much as if it’s normal.

Lleu: Yeah. We know from Lessa’s perspective that the current Warder is particularly ineffective, but there’s no indication that the fact that he has a whip is remarkable. Even from F’lar’s perspective, it doesn’t seem like anything that’s happening at Ruatha is totally beyond the norm of how servants could be treated in a context where the servants have performed their work inadequately, as Fax takes to be the case here.

Tequila Mockingbird: And we spoke a little bit in, I believe, our Masterharper episode questioning whether this distinction between the Pernese worlds that we see in Dragonflight, at least with the human society, is supposed to be “this is Pern under Fax,” versus “this is Pern in a more normal context,” right? Is this supposed to genuinely be different, or does that reflect a shift in McCaffrey’s intentions and writing style as she developed and as the series developed? I think the fact that the dragon energy also changes is maybe an argument that it’s McCaffrey retconning, rather than an intentional choice to place “Ruatha Hold under Fax’s rule” as distinct from the rest of Pernese society.

Tequila Mockingbird: Because I think we also have the knife fights. In the original trilogy there’s a knife fight per book. We have Fax and F’lar in Dragonflight; we have —

Lleu: Oh, yeah, okay; so there’s two — well, it’s not really a knife fight. I would say, F’nor gets stabbed, but F’nor has not also drawn a knife.

Lleu: The only knife fight in Dragonquest is the F’lar-T’ron duel at Telgar — RIP to Telgar Hold, as always.

Tequila Mockingbird: It’s just a violent place, clearly. Sallah’s legacy lives on in just shooting first and asking questions later. And then F’lar and T’kul in, in The White Dragon. And we also have the suggestion of a knife fight in Dragonsinger, but, if I recall correctly, they don’t actually draw the knives; it’s just a fistfight.

Lleu: Yeah, correct. Menolly has her hand on her dagger, which seemed to me was less, like, “I’m prepared to draw my knife on you, Pona,” and more —

Lleu: Yeah, except the F’lon incident in Masterharper, but that also is back in this same period.

Tequila Mockingbird: So, yeah, does this imply that there was, during the Long Interval, a fad for knife fighting, and then once they had Thread to worry about, they were all just like, “Actually, that’s very stupid; we’re not gonna do that anymore”? Or does it imply that McCaffrey felt like it wasn’t necessary or engaging to have that as a world-building element?

Lleu: You know what — something that we do know from later books is that punishments are harsher during a Pass than they are during an Interval, in that during a pass, you can be staked out to be eaten alive by Thread —

Lleu: So, it’s possible that, from McCaffrey’s perspective, that’s a deterrent, and people don’t get in duels anymore because it risks you getting exiled for murder, if the circumstances around the duel are not legally up to standard.

Tequila Mockingbird: So, basically, when there’s no Thread, chaos reigns, but as soon as the threat of Thread is available people buckle it up?

Lleu: I don’t think that is realistic, but that’s all I’ve got, explanation-wise. But, in any case, there’s obviously been a shift in the way that the series is thinking about violence, and I think part of that is maybe because as the series goes on, and even as Dragonflight goes on, she gets a lot more interested in the overarching social structure and a lot less interested in the specific interpersonal-political dramas.

Tequila Mockingbird: But why does nobody fight Toric with a knife? Is the question that I come out of this with.

Tequila Mockingbird: If anybody should be fought with a knife, surely it is Toric.

Lleu: Well, he’s on the verge of drawing his knife on F’lar later, right? So it’s not totally beyond the realm of possibility. Knife fights could still happen; they just don’t.

Tequila Mockingbird: What I’m realizing now that we’ve laid it out, though, is that the throughline here is F’lar and his dad —

Tequila Mockingbird: — with Menolly as, perhaps, an outlier, but, again, there’s no actual knife fight in Dragonsinger. So maybe it’s just that F’lon loved to fight people with knives and passed that on to his oldest son, and they’re just violent freaks.

Lleu: So, aside from the F’nor thing, there is one other initiated knife combat, which is when G’lanar attempts to stab Jaxom in All the Weyrs of Pern, but that —

Tequila Mockingbird: That feels more like a political assassination, though.

Lleu: — it’s that he sneaks up on Jaxom’s tent in the night and wakes him up trying to stab him.

Tequila Mockingbird: So, yeah, I think I’m just gonna decide that F’lon and his sons are a little bit wild with the knives.

Tequila Mockingbird: And that they’re also just wild in other ways. This is not a healthy family dynamic.

Tequila Mockingbird: I also loved the line here where F’nor is like, “Wow, this is my first piece of evidence that F’lar feels emotions.” And I’m like, you guys are in your 30s. What the fuck?

Lleu: Well, Lessa has the same thing — but she’s only known him for a couple hours, so it’s more forgivable.

Tequila Mockingbird: Right. Lessa’s only known him for a couple of hours. That’s a very standard romance trope — “Oh, wow, he’s actually vulnerable and has feelings, but he’s just tough on the outside.” F’nor has been his little brother their whole life. That’s not okay.

Tequila Mockingbird: You saw him Impress! He wasn’t happy when he Impressed, F’nor?

Lleu: One other thing that jumped out at me here that is also in Dragonflight but that I had forgotten, is that, in F’lar’s first POV section as they’re arriving at High Reaches and he’s looking out in disgust at all of the greenery, we get this:

Lleu: “When this Search was over and the Impression made, there would have to be a solemn, punitive Council held at the Weir. And by the golden shell of the queen, he, F’lar, meant to be its moderator. He would replace lethargy with industry. He would scour the green and dangerous scum from the heights of Pern, the grass blades from its stoneworks. No verdant skirt would be condoned in any farmhold. And the tithings, which had been so miserly, so grudgingly presented would, under pain of firestoning, flow with decent generosity into the Dragon weyr.”

Lleu: So, that’s really interesting, because in the next section, “Dragonrider,” they do have a conversation about this, and using firestone to motivate people is suggested, not by F’lar, and everyone is horrified with this. F’lar is opposed to it. So it’s kind of wild —

Lleu: — that here F’lar is like, “Yeah. We need to instill fear in the masses in order to make them respect the Weyr again.”

Tequila Mockingbird: “Just murder people by setting fire to them with our dragon.”

Lleu: Well, also, surely it’s not actually, “I’m gonna burn people with this” but “Either you give us your produce, or we burn your fields and you starve,” I feel like, is the takeaway here, because the Holds are made of stone and metal. They can just go inside —

Tequila Mockingbird: Well — I mean, yes. And you don’t want to get me started on siege tactics.

Lleu: It would be difficult, I think, for 140 dragonriders to besiege every Hold on the planet.

Tequila Mockingbird: More pertinent, perhaps, is the way that, in every other context, dragonriders are framed, very intentionally, it seems, as having this sacred duty to protect all of Pern.

Tequila Mockingbird: In Dragonseye they explicitly are like, “Oh, we’re allowed to rescue refugees who are being treated badly and defend them from their own Lord Holder, because we have this implicit duty to ensure the safety of every single person on Pern from Thread,” and that that carries over to “from mistreatment” as well.

Lleu: F’lar says as much here, right? So, first, we get the dragonriders — they serve as legal binding legal witnesses to oaths. But also that, at the end, when F’lar finally catches Lessa, he’s like, “You know, if you’d just told me, I would have been ready to fight Fax myself.” And his perspective says that’s not entirely true, but then he follows it up with, “A dragonrider can champion anyone whose cause is just, provided they present their case to him.” And there’s nothing that indicates that that’s not true, and I think a lot to indicate, over the course of the series, that that probably is true, that dragonriders can serve as neutral advocates, because they are not bound to any Hold.

Tequila Mockingbird: And I do feel like it makes sense for Pernese culture for them to build those fail-safes in, because, as we’ve discussed, when you have a portion of your population that has a giant fucking dragon, you, as a society, really have to figure out, okay, why are these people not just gonna become tyrannous overlords who can murder anyone at will?

Tequila Mockingbird: You cannot overpower someone with a dragon very easily, and it seems like there’s a lot of checks and balances in Pernese society, some of that being the tithing and the fact that dragonriders don’t really have an independent income stream, some of that being this cultural inculcation of a dragonrider as a champion of the common man —

Tequila Mockingbird: — to prevent that from ever happening. So the fact that F’lar is just casually like, “Oh, fuck these peasants” is…something.

Lleu: Yeah, and while I hadn’t remembered this specific moment, the tone of F’lar in this first section of Dragonflight, and so in “Weyr Search” —

Lleu: — is really what defines F’lar for me as a character, this extremely “I’m going to make the Weyr great again” fascistic vibe that he has at the beginning of the series.

Tequila Mockingbird: Interesting. Here’s my question: is F’lar Lessa’s romantic interest in this novella?

Tequila Mockingbird: Does McCaffrey know that they are going to fall in love?

Tequila Mockingbird: Right? Because I feel like you get basically the same interactions, including the not stated but very clear implication that Lessa is concerned he’s going to sexually assault her.

Tequila Mockingbird: Moments where she’s realizing she can’t get down without a dragon, where she’s like, “I don’t want to talk to him in a room with a bed.” It’s not subtle, even if it’s not spelled out in so many words.

Tequila Mockingbird: And I see a little bit of resonance there, too, with the fact that, in Dragonflight, the Lady Tela is presented as a companion that Fax provides F’lar, but I very much assumed, reading that, that it was a social companion: she’s sitting with him at dinner. Where “Weyr Search” makes it very clear that he is allowed and expected to have sex with Lady Tela.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah, which made clear why the fact that she was pregnant already was an insult, which I remember, in Dragonflight, being like, why do you care if she’s pregnant? Like, what does that have to do with anything?

Tequila Mockingbird: So, just that extra layer of overt sexual commodification of women that we see in “Weyr Search” that seems to have faded by even just Dragonflight.

Tequila Mockingbird: And there is the fact that F’lar is like, “Oh, you should be the Weyrwoman,” but we don’t get anything about mating flights in this novella.

Tequila Mockingbird: So, it’s entirely possible that McCaffrey has not yet decided that the Weyrwoman is the person who fucks the Weyrleader, and the fact that F’lar is super confidently “I’m gonna be the one to be in charge by the time we have that conference” sort of suggests that she hasn’t, because there is no way that Ramoth could come to sexual maturity and there could be a mating flight before he’s imagining that conference, right?

Tequila Mockingbird: So, if he’s thinking, “I’m gonna be the one to be the moderator, that sort of suggests that being the “moderator” or being the Weyrleader —

Tequila Mockingbird: — is not linked to the sexual interaction with the queen rider yet in the world-building.

Lleu: — the mating flight, yeah. So it’s possible that she already was sort of working it out, but, yeah, she clearly cannot have had all of the details already in mind about how Weyrleadership works.

Tequila Mockingbird: Because, again, as someone who has read a lot of romance novels, I do think there’s an implicit positioning where F’lar is clearly the male character with the most screen time and who has the on-page interactions with Lessa, where, if you are reading this in the context of an expectation for a heterosexual romance subplot to develop, he is the obvious person it’s gonna develop with.

Tequila Mockingbird: But I don’t know if you are reading it with that expectation.

Lleu: It’s not like this is being published in a romance publication; it’s being published in one of the “hard” science fiction publications, so I don’t know if that framing would have been on the majority of readers’ minds.

Tequila Mockingbird: He could have just been the antagonistic mentor character.

Tequila Mockingbird: I don’t know enough about how the average Analog reader would have interpreted this. As we mentioned in our episode on Dragonflight, the romance novel as a genre existed; it just wasn’t really sexy yet, although it was becoming sexy at the same time. But Georgette Hayer novels existed, and it’s definitely not out of keeping with the romance genre as it existed for there to be an antagonistic meeting between the male and the female character — the Pride and Prejudice model, as we discussed. So, I don’t think it’s outlandish, in any way, for him to be both antagonistic and the future romantic lead.

Tequila Mockingbird: But I also do feel like, if I don’t come into this being like, “Oh, and they’re gonna fall in love”...I don’t really know that that’s the vibe.

Lleu: — feels more marked here, yeah. F’lar is clearly a 30-something who’s got an established professional career, and Lessa is a 20-year-old who has been living for the last ten years in hiding as a servant and has to be told, “You can eat as much as you want. You’re a woman, so of course you eat first.” So, again, not that that would foreclose the possibility, but it feels to me more like F’lar is her mentor — and that there is a 1960s gendered dynamic, right? Lessa comes out of the bath all clean, with her hair combed out, and F’lar’s like, “Oh, you’re prettier than I expected.” But in a way that does not, to me, necessarily feel like flirting, and more just him being like, “Huh.”

Tequila Mockingbird: “You were using psychic powers to make me think you were old and ugly. Wow.”

Lleu: And also a certain amount of, like, “You really are a woman,” in a way that, to me, felt more like, “Oh, you could be a good Weyrwoman.”

Tequila Mockingbird: Yes. Obviously. Pernese society collapses if the Weyrwoman is not hot.

Tequila Mockingbird: This is what was wrong in the Long Interval. Jora was not hot enough.

Lleu: In Dragonflight do we get the specific comment about the fact that —

Tequila Mockingbird: Well, obviously, your skinny female protagonist has to have disproportionately large boobs. Everyone knows this. She can’t be skinny in a way that’s actually unattractive.

Lleu: I feel like in later books she’s described as not having especially prominent breasts.

Tequila Mockingbird: Well, it says, “does not entirely reflect the gauntness.” It doesn’t necessarily…

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. I also feel like — and, again, I think a lot of this is because we’re inside Lessa’s point of view — I don’t think it really emphasizes how short she is, in a way that almost all of the other material does.

Tequila Mockingbird: So maybe there’s just some stuff that McCaffrey decided would be fun, because I feel like the point where we start getting more physical descriptions of her, they are more focused on how just tiny she is.

Tequila Mockingbird: And maybe, concomitantly, she’s got a little less going on in the bust, because McCaffrey’s reconceptualized her as tiny and naturally just petite, where here it feels like she’s maybe of average height but underfed.

Tequila Mockingbird: Though, also, here’s some just broader historical context: that is kind of what childhood malnutrition can do to you.

Tequila Mockingbird: And obviously, she was well fed until she was ten, so I don’t know if that would have the same effect.

Lleu: So there are a bunch of more general changes and retcons. One of the perhaps funniest is she had no idea what was going on with the geography in “Weyr Search.”

Lleu: Yeah. Even already in Dragonflight she’s settled on a lot more things, but here we get a description of, first of all, Fax’s Hold is east of Ruatha, and Ruatha, it can get the wind coming off Tillek —

Lleu: Right — Igen is in the far north. It’s wild times over here in “Weyr Search” Pern. But it speaks to a broader ambiguity about the geography. I mean, it makes sense that it’s not clear — the first map didn’t show up until Dragon Quest in 1971, and it is very different from the later maps.

Lleu: It does have Ruatha sort of in the “right,” quote-unquote, place, but many other things about it are very weird, and the final map doesn’t show up until the 1978 hardcover edition of The White Dragon, so it was a solid ten years before we got the “final,” quote-unquote, version of Pern.

Lleu: Telgar is all over the place. In the 1971 map, Telgar is way down south, not on the coast but near the coast, and Crom is kind of where Telgar is in the final map.

Tequila Mockingbird: Mm. And I think they’re supposed to be near each other, aren’t they?

Lleu: And Nabol doesn’t exist. And by the mid-’70s books, like, by Dragonsong, again, Ruatha is sort of moving around a little bit, and Telgar is kind of migrating more north as things go on, and then finally, in 1978, we get the one where, oh, yeah, okay, Telgar’s up in the north, Crom is not that far away, Ruatha is —

Lleu: Yeah. She doesn’t have a location for Nerat Hold on the earliest maps, but the Nerat peninsula is labeled.

Lleu: It seems — and this is something that’s already true in “Weyr Search,” actually — it seems, in the 1971 map, that a lot of the labels are less about Holds and more about regions.

Lleu: So, they’re a little vaguely positioned, and it does seem — this is something that we were talking about before we started — I mean, you were asking about the way she’s using High Reaches and talking about Holds here.

Tequila Mockingbird: Mm, because it felt to me like “the High Reaches” was multiple things, as opposed to a single place.

Tequila Mockingbird: I was sort of wondering whether it was supposed to be the term that referred to all seven of Fax’s conquered Holds, because they call them the “High Holds,” or whether that “High Holds” was just to distinguish Ruatha, Crom, High Reaches, and Nabol from three minor Holds, or what.

Lleu: Yeah. To me, it definitely seems like she’s meaning “High Reaches” as a region here, rather than thinking that there’s a “High Reaches Hold” —

Lleu: — and that maybe when it came time to assemble things for Dragonflight, she was like, “Eh, it’s too much trouble; I don’t have a full map yet. It’ll still be High Reaches, but we’re gonna pretend that it’s one Hold now.” But even at the beginning of Dragonflight there’s still a certain amount of, like, “Ah, you have the High Reaches,” and that referring to all of Fax’s domain.

Lleu: But I think you could sort of reinterpret that as being, like, “Oh, well, it’s called the High Reaches because High Reaches is the —”

Lleu: — but also because High Reaches is his “original,” quote-unquote, Hold.

Lleu: — as the Ottoman Empire expanded you could talk about the sub-regions in it, but “the Ottoman Empire” would cover all of it.

Tequila Mockingbird: I also noted that we get a lot more of “Ruath Hold” or “Hold Ruath,” and that persists in Dragonflight a little bit.[1]

Tequila Mockingbird: But by the time we get to Dragonquest it’s pretty consistently “Ruatha.”

Lleu: Yeah, and I think, even in Dragonflight, I don’t think we get “Hold Ruath,” or “Hold Ruatha”; I think we just get —

Lleu: And then by Dragonquest, yeah, it’s always just “Ruatha,” I’m pretty sure.

Tequila Mockingbird: And some of this, obviously, is just the editing that happens when you take a novella and turn it into the beginning of a novel.

Tequila Mockingbird: And I think, mostly, those edits were for the better. I noticed one great little moment when F’lar is talking about how brave Lessa is, where in “Weyr Search,” it’s just, “Oh, you have courage enough,” and in Dragonflight it’s “courage enough to fly with.” And I liked that addition, because I think it presages what’s gonna come out of “Dragonrider” —

Tequila Mockingbird: — the short story where her actually flying on Ramoth is a point of contention, but I really liked it.

Lleu: — also, I think, is really good, in part because we do get, in “Weyr Search,” the comment when F’lar is, like, being pointed to her about Gemma — Lessa reacts, and F’lar’s like, “Oh, so she does actually regret Gemma’s death.”

Lleu: And it’s nice, in Dragonflight, to have a moment of them actually interacting, so that we get Lessa realizing that this woman is in —

Lleu: — not the same situation as her but not a dissimilar situation to her and that she has ill-used Gemma.

Lleu: Mm…no? Not in gendered terms, anyway. The only other one that comes to mind is in Dragonsong, when Menolly’s fire lizards show up, and Lessa sends everyone away, and Menolly’s, like, having a breakdown, and Lessa’s like, “It’s okay. We just needed to know that they existed, and now we do.”

Lleu: “It’s fine.” And Menolly’s like, “They’re gonna send me away!” and Lessa’s like, “If you can impress nine fire lizards, you belong in the Weyr.”

Lleu: That’s the one other moment that jumps out at me as Lessa actually having a…

Lleu: Yes…that’s not immediately followed by kidnapping her, like Aramina.

Lleu: And not a, like, “I’m having a personal moment with you.” It’s not like that with Manora.

Tequila Mockingbird: “I am slightly your daughter-in-law and also your boss.” Although there are some things that I think were lost in the editing which I think are a shame. When F’nor is thinking about how cool and macho and what a good knife-fighter his older brother is, he does think the sentence, “F’lar had tumbled every man in the Weyr, efficiently and easily.”

Tequila Mockingbird: And I don’t know why that was taken out for the publication of Dragonflight! Tragic.

Lleu: I think the only reading of this has to be that my F’lar/R’gul story is canon.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yes, absolutely. The other change, which I’m not sure if it was good or bad but is definitely marked, is instead of “Clothmen” and “Leathermen” we have the Weavers, as a Craft. But that doesn’t happen until after Dragonflight, right?

Lleu: So, in “Weyr Search” and in the beginning of Dragonflight, when they visit Lytol, they’re going to the “Clothmen’s Hall,” with capital C. And when they leave Lytol in “Weyr Search,” they’re going to the Leathermen’s Hall, capital L. In Dragonflight they’re going to the (lowercase) leather-dash-men’s hall. So it does seem like she hadn’t yet settled on the Craft structure, but by the end of Dragonflight, she had —

Lleu: I…don’t think so, because I don’t think we know who the Mastertanner is at any point, actually.

Tequila Mockingbird: ’Cause I think we know that there is a Tanners Crafthall.

Tequila Mockingbird: Exactly. But yeah, I think maybe Tanner Ligand is the first official introduction we get.

Tequila Mockingbird: And that felt very much of a piece with all of the weird, deliberate neologisms that we see throughout Pernese culture. “Runner beast” and all of that stuff.

Tequila Mockingbird: “Clothman” and, eventually, she apparently was like, “That’s too silly,” or “That doesn’t work,” and just went with “Weaver.”

Tequila Mockingbird: In her defense, Leatherman the multi-tool brand was not founded till 1983, so maybe they got it from her, as opposed to the other way around.

Lleu: So there are two other specific things, in terms of editorial choices, that we wanted to flag. One is, again, the question of dragon genders. Larth, Lytol’s dragon, first of all is described as a green here — we’ve talked about that before — second of all, is referred to as “he.” Much though I would love to believe that Larth is a he/him lesbian dragon, it seems a little bit unlikely that she had that in mind.

Lleu: And tumblr user threadfall did point out after our first episode? Question mark?

Lleu: Yeah, one of our early episodes — that this persists in Dragonflight, in fact, but by the end of Dragonflight we do get references to greens being female.

Lleu: Yeah. So it seems like also she had not fully worked out the dynamics of dragons at this point and even by the end of Dragonflight, maybe, was still…

Tequila Mockingbird: And that, I think, circles back around to, I don’t think that she knew that it was a “you have to have sex” situation —

Tequila Mockingbird: — that made the Weyrleader the Weyrleader. All of the mating stuff seems probably still not fully realized in this one, at least.

Lleu: Yeah. The other big change that jumped out at us here — “big” in relative terms; it’s a 30-page novella — is about the death of the watch-wher.

Tequila Mockingbird: As they are about to leave, Lessa’s a little reluctant; she pets the watch-wher, and Filar’s like, “Yeah, yeah, let’s go.”

Tequila Mockingbird: “He took her hand again to help her to her feet and lead her back to Mnementh. As they turned, he glimpsed the watch-wher, launching itself at a dead run after Lessa. The chain, however, held fast. The beast’s neck broke, with a sickeningly audible snap.

Tequila Mockingbird: “Lessa was on her knees in an instant, cradling the repulsive head in her arms.

Tequila Mockingbird: “‘Why, you foolish thing, why?’ she asked in a stunned whisper as the light in the beast’s green-gold eyes dimmed and died out.

Tequila Mockingbird: “Mnementh informed F’lar that the creature had lived this long only to preserve the Ruathan line. At Lessa’s imminent departure, it had welcomed death.”

Tequila Mockingbird: And then she takes off the collar, pats it once, and walks to Mnementh without a single backward glance and leaves Ruatha.

Lleu: “He took her hand again to help her to her feet and lead her back to Mnementh.

Lleu: “In one split second he was knocked off his feet, sprawling across the stones and trying to roll to his feet again, to face his adversary. The force of the initial blow, however, had dazed him, and he lay sprawled on his back, startled to see the watch-wher, its scaly body launched—straight at him.

Lleu: “Simultaneously he heard Lessa’s startled exclamation and Mnementh’s roar. The bronze’s great head was swinging around to knock the watch-wher aside, away from the dragonman. But just as the watch-wher’s body was fully extended in its leap, Lessa cried out. ‘Don’t kill! Don’t kill!’

Lleu: “The watch-wher, its snarl turning into an anguished cry of alarm, executed an incredible maneuver in mid-air, turning aside from its trajection. As it fell to the stone yard at his feet, F’lar heard the dull crack as the force of its landing broke its back.

Lleu: “Before he could get to his feet, Lessa was cradling the hideous head in her arms, her face stricken.

Lleu: “Mnementh lowered his head to tap the dying watch-wher’s body gently. He informed F’lar that the beast had guessed Lessa was leaving Ruatha, something one of her Blood should not do. In its senile confusion, it could only assume Lessa was in danger. When it heard Lessa’s frantic command, it had corrected its error at the expense of its life.

Lleu: “‘It was truly only defending me,’ Lessa added, her voice breaking. She cleared her throat. ‘It was the only one I could trust. My only friend.’

Lleu: “F’lar awkwardly padded the girl’s shoulder, appalled that anyone could be reduced to claiming friendship with a watch-wher. He winced because the fall had reopened the knife wound in his shoulder and he hurt.

Lleu: “‘In truth a loyal friend,’ he said, standing patiently until the light in the watch-wher’s green-gold eyes dimmed and died out.

Lleu: “All the dragons gave voice to the eerie. hair-raising, barely audible, high keening note that signified the passing of one of their kind.

Lleu: “‘He was only a watch-wher,’ Lessa murmured, stunned by the tribute, her eyes wide.

Lleu: “‘The dragons confer honor where they will,’ F’lar remarked dryly, disclaiming the responsibility.”

Lleu: And then she looks down at the watch-wher, removes the collar, and walks away without a backward glance. But there’s this whole other level of what happens that’s not present in “Weyr Search.”

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah! And I think it’s a lot better in Dragonflight —

Tequila Mockingbird: — both in the sense that the death is both sad and meaningful in Dragonflight, wherein we “Wery Search,” it’s just like, “Ooh. That’s kind of bleak. Yikes!”

Tequila Mockingbird: But also, Lessa feels kind of brutal in “Weyr Search,” in that it kills itself because it’s so sad that she won’t be there, and then she’s just like, “Man, that sucks.”

Lleu: Well, no, not even that it’s sad. It’s just, like, “Now I have no purpose in life. Goodbye.”

Tequila Mockingbird: Ahh! And then she just kind of walks away. I mean, she still takes the collar off, but I feel like doing that after the dragons have paid tribute to the watch-wher feels more, removal of the collar is her agreeing with them and aligning the watch-wher with dragons in nobility, or, like, it served a noble purpose —

Tequila Mockingbird: — where here it doesn’t quite hit that note for me.

Tequila Mockingbird: This also really seems like an early indicator of McCaffrey’s preoccupation, which we’ve discussed, with suicide or suicidal intentions as the only real marker of grief —

Tequila Mockingbird: — that is permitted within the narrative, which is, uh, interesting to see, like, right out the gate.

Lleu: Yeah. Either you have a purpose and a meaningful connections with people, or you don’t, and you kill yourself. Yikes!

Lleu: Another question that I had, in sort of the vein of “did she know that F’lar and Lessa were gonna get together in this story?” is, did she know that the time travel plot was gonna happen, do we think?

Lleu: I also don’t think so. There are some things that I’m like…maybe? We do get the specific reference to, “No one knew why the other five Weyr were empty…”

Tequila Mockingbird: And we do get the scene where Lessa feels the premonition of doom, which in Dragonflight is retroactively explained as being caused by time travel.

Lleu: Yeah, but it’s not quite enough to make me confident that she knew that that was where it was going.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. I would believe she just left the empty Weyrs as a fun dangling thread for herself — just kind of adds atmospheric vibes.

Lleu: Yeah, and now I’m kind of mad, because I think the books could have been way cooler without the Oldtimers.

Lleu: I think if there are only 140 and then 176, or whatever, dragonriders, that’s a much more compelling “We have to figure out how to deal with this impossible emergency situation,” than the deus ex machina of, “Oh, we’ll just go back in time and bring 2,500 other dragons forward in time. Don’t worry about it.”

Tequila Mockingbird: I do think the time travel, in some ways, ends up causing her problems. that she hadn’t realized, both in “What do I do with all these Oldtimer characters?” — and we’ve talked about the weird villain transition and the way that that doesn’t quite work —

Tequila Mockingbird: — but also, anytime you introduce time travel to a story, the question then becomes, well, why aren’t you using time travel to solve every single problem?

Tequila Mockingbird: And I think she gestures towards that with making it genuinely risky and also a very closely held trade secret that explains why, at various times, people have not known that time travel was an available option to solve their problems, but…still.

Lleu: Yeah, and it doesn’t explain anything in the Ninth Pass afterwards, though, because now everyone knows, ’cause there’s literally a ballad about it.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. And so, you get this awkward weirdness where we get to Skies of Pern and they’re like, “Well, we have to save everyone from the tsunami with time travel, but we can’t tell anyone that that’s what we’re doing.” And I’m like…

Tequila Mockingbird: And also, frankly, while that whole sequence is written incredibly well and the tension works and I’m not judging it from the inside, when I step back, I’m like, why are we in a hurry? Just time travel more, better.

Tequila Mockingbird: You could time travel a whole day early and evacuate people with incredible ease.

Tequila Mockingbird: And, again, they do, I think, a solid job of explaining why that won’t work — people won’t believe you, or it’s painful to be in too many times at once, you know, blah blah blah.

Tequila Mockingbird: But fundamentally, it’s still a little bit, like, okay…

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. And now we come to Dragons Made Me Do It. I can safely say that this was not what I anticipated would happen when we first discussed this in 2013?

Lleu: Yeah, same. In many ways. I wasn’t even thinking about any of the short fiction at that point. I was really just thinking about the novels —

Tequila Mockingbird: You’re just trying to walk it back. You just don’t want to admit responsibility.

Tequila Mockingbird: But this is all Lleu’s fault, and you should let him know that. Rereading them all has been really interesting.

Lleu: Yeah, and I… I had read-slash-reread most of the series in 2013, but I skipped some of the ones that I didn’t really like. I don’t remember if I reread Dragonsdawn at that point, because I was just like, “Eh, not really that interested.”

Lleu: I didn’t read Dragonseye. I hadn’t read Dragonseye until 2019, I think. It’s really striking, and really, in some ways, frustrating, and in some ways cool to see both how much and how little the series changes over the course of 35 years —

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. I feel like reading it all gives me a better sense of what she was good at and what she wasn’t.

Tequila Mockingbird: Because some of the things that I would have said, “Oh, McCaffrey’s good at this, broadly,” I’m now gonna say, “Eh, she was good at this in this specific situation.”

Tequila Mockingbird: She did it really well once or twice, and that’s what stuck with me from when I was 12, and so I walked away being like, “Well, she writes really incredible female characters.” Now I don’t know that I can say that, actually.

Lleu: Yeah. I do think that one of the things that I thought already that she was good at, she is actually really good at, and that is giving you a sense of the world as a thing with social variation —

Lleu: — where class matters, where the kind of economics of production matter, and that has changed over time and could change again.

Lleu: She is consistently good at that. The world that she portrays is not necessarily consistent —

Lleu: — it is consistent. That, I think, is probably her biggest strength, for me, as a writer.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. Some of the books pull me in. Some of the books just don’t. And I really don’t know how much of that is the nostalgia factor and how much of that is genuine variation in quality.

Tequila Mockingbird: I think, nostalgia completely aside, Dragondrums is just a bad book.

Tequila Mockingbird: I don’t know if Dragonsdawn is a good book. I definitely think I love it better than it merits.

Tequila Mockingbird: Right. But I think having kind of looked at the entire series it gives me a better sense for the highs and the lows and the in-betweens.

Tequila Mockingbird: Oh. I gotta be a Dragonflight girl. I will be a Lessa girly forever, and there’s nothing to be done about that.

Tequila Mockingbird: Same with Dragonsdawn. I gotta be true to who I am. Are they good? No. Do I love them? Yes. I do think Moreta is actually good. And… Ooh. After those three, I guess Dragonsong, which I also think is actually good.

Tequila Mockingbird: But even though I read it as a kid and liked it as a kid, I did not have that same emotional attachment to Menolly that I did to Lessa and Sorka.

Tequila Mockingbird: And then rounding it out as number five…probably Chronicles of Pern: First Fall, mostly on the strength of “The Second Weyr.”

Lleu: Ours are gonna be completely different. My top, I would say, is Dragonsinger and then…hm. What do I think is second? I’m trying to be a little objective about it? Sort of?

Lleu: Never mind, I’m not being objective about it. I would say Dragonsinger at the top, for sure.

Lleu: After that, not necessarily in order, Dragonsong, Dolphins, Dragonquest, and then Moreta.

Lleu: I’m going back and forth between Dragonquest and Dragonflight, actually, because I do think Dragonflight is…(a) I think it’s of historical interest. It’s worth reading for that reason.

Lleu: I do also think it’s an engaging book — if you click with the characters or the world-building at all, it’s an engaging book.

Lleu: But I do, so it’s engaging for me. I do think Dragonquest is maybe more successful overall, in spite of its bizarre pacing —

Lleu: — and it has what for me is one of the best scenes in the series, the mating flight scene.

Lleu: Although I would put the Skies of Pern rescue scene over any of those except Dragonsinger.

Lleu: But I just wouldn’t put The Skies of Pern as a whole above any of those, for me.

Tequila Mockingbird: I think if we agreed on everything, it would not be an interesting podcast.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. We just have to be deranged in the same way in order to do the podcast.

Lleu: Yeah. I’m gonna miss it! Like, I already am a little bit like, “Huh, I don’t have any more Pern to read. I’ve read all of it now…” Whereas until a month ago, or whatever, when I read “Beyond Between,” I had not read all of Pern.

Lleu: And even before that I’d never read any of the stories in A Gift of Dragons.

Lleu: That’s true. I mean, I don’t hate “The Smallest Dragonboy.” It’s fine. But that’s the only one I feel anything more than “Eh, I guess that exists” about. And what I feel about it is “It’s fine.”

Tequila Mockingbird: Alright, so we’ve had our top five. What are your bottom three? Two’s too easy.

Lleu: And, for me, honestly, All the Weyrs of Pern. I just don’t like it. No, that’s a lie — sorry, I forgot. All the Weyrs of Pern is not as bad as Nerilka.

Tequila Mockingbird: Okay, I think, for me, my bottom two is Dragondrums and Renegades and then A Gift of Dragons.

Tequila Mockingbird: It bothers me. All the Weyrs of Pern, there’s some stuff that’s good.

Tequila Mockingbird: Novels specifically…uh, honestly The White Dragon is down there for me.

Tequila Mockingbird: Nerilka is frustrating because I think Nerilka, the character, was really cool in Moreta and I want her to have a better story.

Tequila Mockingbird: Where The White Dragon, I’m just like, I don’t want to be here.

Lleu: I don’t know. Jaxom makes me insane and Nerilka does not make me insane.

Lleu: She could if the book were ever so slightly more self-aware about the possibility of lesbians or bisexuality —

Lleu: — but it’s not, and so, as a result, I’m just like, “Ugh, Nerilka, you could have been good, but you aren’t.”

Lleu: Whereas Jaxom I’m like, “Oh, you are so, so, so, so close to being good, and you’re still not, but you’re — ugh, it’s just, like, a couple more inches and you could be there!”

Lleu: That was by far the thing I was most surprised by of anything that came up as we were reading.

Tequila Mockingbird: For me, one of the biggest surprises was how much the series as a whole does slant towards male protagonists.

Tequila Mockingbird: Because I absolutely had not picked up on that, and some of that was about which books I didn’t read as a kid.

Lleu: — and then I had the abridged Masterharper of Pern, but it was abridged in a way that included a bunch of the Merelan stuff, so she felt like she was still a main character.

Lleu: And then Dolphins, but the balance in terms of what I listened to most was very much Dragonsong and Dragonsinger —

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. A lot of the racism went over my head, and the ableism went over my head, when I read it as kids, but I was not at all surprised to come back to it and find it there, if that makes sense?

Tequila Mockingbird: Because, unfortunately, a lot of the stuff that I read as a kid and enjoyed is very racist, and only as an adult am I looking at it and going, like, “Oh. That sucks.”

Tequila Mockingbird: But I was expecting it to be a lot more feminist than it actually was, I think.

Lleu: Yeah. I definitely was already ambivalent about identifying the series as “feminist science fiction,” just because of how much of a mess Dragonflight is —

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah, when I say I was expecting it to be more feminist, I’m not saying I expected it to be feminist. It’s just that I thought it was sort of in the middle in an interesting way, and it’s…it’s barely even there sometimes.

Lleu: Rereading all of it, everything from start to finish, has really driven home how unhinged a lot of Pern scholarship is, because so many people seem to approach the series from the perspective of, “Well, McCaffrey was a woman writing sci-fi relatively early, in terms of the professional scene, after the transition from short fiction to novels, so obviously it must be feminist science fiction!” I’m like, well, if you read the book, it’s not, though. If you read the books, it’s really not.

Lleu: I had already thought that about specific things, but it really becomes more apparent as the series goes on, even after the dramatic beginning.

Lleu: And some of it is just, there’s not a lot of recent Pern scholarship, so it’s not that surprising, I guess, that people haven’t really dealt with the later books.

Lleu: But I really feel like even in the earlier books, if you were working in the mid-’90s, you probably should have looked back and been like, “Huh.”

Lleu: And not like, “Yeah, this is a model for a good romantic relationship.” Rally? F’lar and Lessa? That’s…?

Tequila Mockingbird: We were very much expecting for this to just be something we did for fun, and the fact that there are even three or four people who are not our friends who are listening to this is wild to us.

Lleu: Yeah. I hope that you all have enjoyed it as much as we have — because we have, as you’ve probably been able to tell — had a blast —

Lleu: — with this, even when it’s involved reading “Beyond Between.”

Tequila Mockingbird: And we’re not completely done, because we are currently intending to do a Season 2, if you will, which will be at a slower pace, probably, because this is not quite sustainable for us, and will be content that we think is in dialogue with Pern books in an interesting way and some more bonus episode-style thinking and discussing the world-building and the context in which it was written without, obviously, linking that to a specific book, because we’ve run out of those.

Lleu: We will not be reading Todd books. You will get to hear, probably at some length, at some point, about the fake, good versions of Pern that live in our respective heads. So that’ll be something to look forward to.

Tequila Mockingbird: One single person was like, yeah, read the Fourth Wing, and we caved.

Lleu: Well, no, multiple people have been like, “Oh, have you read Fourth Wing?”

Lleu: And both of us were like, “Ugh, fine, we’re curious enough.” We are also maybe gonna release a blooper reel episode for Season 1, if we can figure out a good way to do it. It’s a little harder to imagine what that entails with audio, but we’re pondering.

Lleu: You may also be able to look forward to some Zoom transcript outtakes. Zoom has been extremely useful and also extremely creative with its interpretations of character names, sometimes in very funny ways.

Tequila Mockingbird: And in the end, having done all of this and read all of those, I do not recommend that you read Pern.

Lleu: I’m gonna be honest, I do recommend that you read Pern. I’m sorry —

Lleu: — I’m tired of pretending that I don’t. I do think people should read Pern. I think it’s of historical interest; I think some of the books are genuinely good. I can’t keep lying about this.

Tequila Mockingbird: There are other, better things to read. There are other, better things to spend your time reading.

Lleu: It’s true that there are other, better things. I think people should read a couple Pern books. I don’t think people should read the whole series.

Lleu: I do, however, have a recommendation — I was thinking about “Weyr Search” and the way that it’s balancing science fiction with fantasy elements, and I would recommend Elizabeth A. Lynn’s short story “The Gods of Reorth,” which is a science fictional premise but also with fantasy trappings, about a woman who is stationed on a distant planet acting as a kind of god-slash-oracle but aided by her technology.

Tequila Mockingbird: Thanks for listening to this episode of Dragons Made Me Do It! If you enjoyed it and want to hear more, you can follow us on tumblr at dmmdipodcast.tumblr.com for updates, or to send us questions or comments, and you can find our archive of episodes, along with transcripts, recommendations, funny memes, and more at dmmdipodcast.neocities.org — N E O cities.

[1] Lleu observes that “Ruath” is actually more grammatical in Irish, as átha, which McCaffrey presumably borrowed from Baile Átha Cliath, the Irish name for “Dublin,” is technically a genitive (possessive) form — Rua-átha would mean “of the Red(-haired)-ford,” rather than “the ford of Red(-haired),” whereas Rua-áth is still nonsensical (“Red(-haired)-ford”) but is at least grammatical.