#DragonRiders: Chronicles of Pern

[randomisedgaming]

DragonRiders: Chronicles of Pern the full live stream!

Riven finished his playthrough of the fairly obscure SEGA Dreamcast and PC this week. Based on the Dragonriders of Pern book series by Anne McCaffrey. Released in 2001, it's an interesting game that while has a decent concept the end result is very mixed.

It reminds us a lot of Shenmue as the game is a puzzle adventure title with some RPG elements. The puzzle and story are fairly good, even if the dialogue is a bit clunky. The combat is also sadly terrible and there isn't any Dragon ridding instead that is only shown in cutscenes.

It feels like a game that could have been great if more time had been spent on developing it. The end result is somewhat mixed and feel very unfinished, half the world map isn't used and the game just suddenly wraps up, not long after you meet the main villain for the first time and gives the impression that quite a bit of the planned game was cut out or never finished.

The one thing that really does stand out is the superb music score, which is a class above the rest of the game.

All the video are in a collection on Twitch!: https://www.twitch.tv/collections/00NP7vQ8XBct_Q

First part is here:

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[joncronshawauthor]

What is Noblebright Fantasy? A Beginner's Guide

If you’re a fan of fantasy literature, you may have come across the term “noblebright.” But what exactly does it mean? In this post, we’ll explore the concept of noblebright fantasy and what sets it apart from other sub-genres of fantasy literature. What is noblebright fantasy? Noblebright fantasy is a relatively new term, first coined in 2014 by author C. J. Brightley. It’s an approach to…

[darlingdarcyday]

Now, I like the conclusion that Twilight is just batshit/trashy enough to be marketable to teens without massive moral backlash, but OP’s take is just so painfully bad.

YA didn’t exist pre HP and the early 2000s?! YA literature has been around forever. I’m pretty sure I’ve read YA from the 20s, and I know I’ve read a hell of a lot from the 80s and 90s. Not to mention the whole medium of comic books has largely been targeted towards teens for half a century, at least. My library, growing up, kept old issues of MAD Magazine in the YA section when I was a kid. A magazine geared specifically towards teens. Maybe we didn’t have the same tropes that have been popular in the last two decades, and YA lit wasn’t as readily adapted into blockbuster films, but to say Harry Potter carved out some literary niche that didn’t exist fully dismisses so many beautiful stories, and gives far too much credit to a series that has always been pretty middling in quality.

I’m actively rereading YA literature from the 60’s-80’s that I read in middle school, and it’s been reigniting my love for reading.

(Also, I have been trying to remember So You Want to Be a Wizard for ages. Thank you, prev)

So, like, the thing you have to understand is that prior to the mid-2000s, the "Young Adult" genre as we now know it didn't exist. The expectation was that you would graduate to the adult aisle of the book store at, like, 13-14. This worked because the only people still reading long form novels into their teens were precocious bookworms who were better read than their parents.

Harry Potter changed all this. The success of the Harry Potter books convinced the publishing industry that selling full length novels to normie children was a business model. The thing about the Harry Potter books, though, is that at least for the early books, the target audience was a bit younger than what we think of as the YA demographic; tweens, rather than teens. Now, the publishing very much wanted to keep all these normie kids buying books into their teens and beyond, but the previous model of treating teens as functionally adults for marketing purposes would not work; there was simply no way that normie parents were going to let their normie kids read fully adult novels where the characters, like, do drugs or have unprotected sex and stuff. So, in order to be allowed to market to the teen demographic, the YA genre was created.

However, teens have an inherent interest in reading about sex and violence and drugs, and so authors who are able to incorporate these kinds of themes into their YA novels in a discrete way such that it flies under the radar of the moral guardians are met with success. But this is a precarious tightrope to walk. Not enough "mature" themes and the teens will loose interest, to much or to blatant and the teens won't be allowed to read it. And so, it should come as no surprise, that the first person to successfully navigate this tight rope was a Mormon housewife with a vampire fetish.

[renthony]

It is SO difficult to find anyone who knows the Underland Chronicles in my day-to-day life.... when did you read them? I read them in elementary school! (It's very cool to know i was only 2 when the series came out, and yet it still holds such an important impact on my life-!) Honestly I was devastated when I read the last book in the series, for Obvious Reasons - Suzanne's ability to drive me to tears stays consistent through all her books, but as TUC was the first series i read by her, it was especially emotional for me (and triply so when I consider the fact that it would later shape how i viewed the bonds I would read about in the Dragonriders of Pern later in life, and how much I love bats, and, well.)

Thank you for reblogging that post, by the way! I got super excited because I didn't know there was even a fandom space on Tumblr (although, admittedly, I had only checked way back when I was fourteen, and it doesn't look like the TUC page was up and running suring that time, so it makes sense that I missed it)

Now I've got a treasure trove of things to read and look at..... anyways! Sorry to ramble in your inbox. I just got super excited about TUC.

No need to apologize, I LOVE talking about The Underland Chronicles! :D

The first time I read the first book, it was right after book 2 came out in 2004. I was ten years old, and right in the target audience. I was immediately obsessed, and for the next few years I checked bookstore and library shelves CONSTANTLY while waiting for each new installment to come out.

I don't actually remember how I found the first book--I thiiiiink it might have been at a book fair, but I genuinely don't remember. Something about it caught my eye, someone in my family bought me a copy, and I re-read it until it started falling apart. I'm 30 and still have my childhood copy--it's held together with tape now, but it's got an honored place on the bookshelf.

I still re-read the series every couple of years as an adult. Honestly, I'd cite them as one of my biggest influences as an author, right up there with Tamora Pierce. I want to write fantasy adventures like that, but for adults.

[infinite-tournament]

The Rules

This is a winner-stays-on tournament, so don't expect any brackets. Every week (or whenever the mod remembers), a new contender will be put up against the current champion (which will be listed in the blog's description). If it wins, it becomes the new champion! If not, then the old champion remains until something beats it. In the case of a tie, the contender failing to beat the champion will be counted as a loss, and the champion will move on. There is no set end date for the tournament, and it is intended to continue indefinitely.

Submissions can be sent in here. Submissions sent to the ask box will not be counted. There is space to add propaganda and media if you wish to. There are no restrictions on what can be submitted. The next contender will be randomly selected from the current pool of submissions, though repeat contenders will have to wait a few weeks before they can re-challenge again.

Note: Submissions are put into polls unedited, and thus may include errors.

Previous contenders below the cut

sleep (The Beginning, Champion For 1 Week) Homestar runner from homestar runner (Lost Poll) the color purple (Champion For 3 Weeks) Chat Noir (from Miraculous Ladybug) (Lost Poll) alex eagleston/eggleston from yiik a postmodern rpg (Lost Poll) duck (Champion For 2 Weeks) vanilla extract (lost poll) Garlic bread (Champion For 1 Week) autism (Champion For 15 Weeks) Reigen Arakata from Mob Psycho 100 (Lost Poll) Infinity-Sided Die (Dungeons, Dungeons, and more Dungeons (Gravity Falls)) (Lost Poll) Gay sex (Lost Poll) sage green (Lost Poll) Timothy Stoker (The Magnus Archives) (Lost Poll) The Amazing Devil (band) (Lost Poll) The hit 2011 video game Minecraft (Lost Poll) Ford Prefect (hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy) (Lost Poll) Tom Scott (Lost Poll) The SD (super deformed) Gunpla line (Lost Poll) Heathcliff (Lost Poll) shitposts (Lost Poll) Sans Undertale (Lost Poll) Dire Crowley from twisted wonderland (Lost Poll) asexuality (Champion For 4 Weeks) Lord of the Rings (Lost Poll) bears in trees (band) (Lost Poll) piplup (pokemon) (Lost Poll) aromanticism (Champion For 2 Weeks) Raz from Psychonauts (Lost Poll) Clouds (Champion For 3 Weeks) RYAN GOSLING (Lost Poll) Mike Walters (Woe.Begone) (Lost Poll) lava lamp (Champion For 3 Weeks) Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Lost Poll) @helinedmightbehere (tumblr blog) (Lost Poll) Hatsune Miku (Champion For 6 Weeks) Toffoli gate (Lost Poll) The time knife (Lost Poll) Pokémon Colosseum (Lost Poll) Communism (Lost Poll) The letter A (Lost Poll) dust motes in a sunbeam (Champion For 3 Weeks) Monster Energy drinks (Lost Poll) The onceler/The Onceler fandom (Lost Poll) Bread products (All of them) (Champion For 13 Weeks) Abed Nadir (Lost Poll) Leafcutter Ant (the animal) (Lost Poll) maroon (Lost Poll) haunted five dollar Applebee's gift card (Lost Poll) Palindromes (Lost Poll) genderqueer (Lost Poll) undertale (Lost Poll) Jamilla Gardner (Woe.Begone) (Lost Poll) drizzile (pokemon) (Lost Poll) The Goonies (Lost Poll) The Dragonriders of Pern series (Lost Poll) nurse Gerard Way (Lost Poll) Palestine (Champion For 3 Weeks) Pansexuality (Lost Poll) the concept of time (Lost Poll)

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

Suggestions:

Browne, N. M.: Basilisk

Goodkind, Terry: Wizard's First Rule

McCaffrey, Anne: Dragonflight

O'Shaughnessy, Darren: Cirque du Freak

Oppal, Kenneth: Silverwing

Pierce, Tamora: Alanna: The First Adventure

Some of these are just the first of these series. To clarify, McCaffrey's The Chronicles of PERN is a sci-fi/fantasy series but the first few books are solidly fantasy.

hello! these are all queued except Dragonflight (and no worries about Alanna: The First Adventure! there are enough things on the list that I can’t blame people for missing something while scrolling through it).

to clarify my stance on Pern:

I have read all of the Pern books except the Todd and Gigi ones; I’ve read and listened to Dragonflight, Dragonquest, Dragonsong, and Dragonsinger more times than I can count. I don’t have my copies of some of the later books to hand at the moment, but Dragonflight and Dragonquest (as well as Dragonsong) begin with prologues that explicitly and unambiguously identify them as science fiction: Pern was colonized in the space future, the dragons are genetically engineered/specially bred (I’ll grant that the prologues are vague on this front, even if the later books make it clear) forms of native Pernese fauna, the telepathy is sci-fi telepathy (the original dragonriders are identified in Dragonflight as “such humans as had a high empathy rating and some innate telepathic ability”), etc.

it’s true that the present of narration in Dragonflight is a feudal-corporatist setting with some clearly medievalist elements, but this is in the context of a) the book explicitly signaling from page 1 that it should be read as science fiction and b) an explicit theoretical interest in the question of how the science-fictional future setting described in the prologue became this — how people forget (and rediscover) their pasts:

When is a legend, legend? Why is a myth, a myth? How old and disused must a fact be for it to be relegated to the category: “Fairy tale”? And why do certain facts remain incontrovertible, while others lose their validity to assume a shabby, unstable character?

from start to finish, all of the Pern books are science fiction, not fantasy, despite incorporating some world-building elements that are also common in fantasy. as I said in the FAQ, I will die on this hill.

[ciameth]

Meanwhile, I recommend neither publishing order nor chronological order for my favorite decades spanning science fiction series, Dragonriders of Pern. Secret Third Thing (read Dragonsong and if you absolutely must have more of this setting, read Dragonsinger then jump back to the Dragonflight, Dragonquest, White Dragon trilogy with the warning that it is full of the author's poorly disguised ravishment/mating kink).

Chronological order (that is, the order in which events allegedly happen) is almost never the best order to start a new fan on a series, if it differs significantly from publication order.

It doesn't matter whether the series is overall good or bad - it doesn't even matter if the first published work is worse than the prequels. Because the difference between a first work and a prequel is not unlike the difference between original and fan work: the prequel, like the fan work, assumes you already know and care about something here.

Box sets of the Chronicles of Narnia that list The Magician's Nephew as book 1 are wrong: a key appeal of that book is finding out that this is how Narnia came to be, a thing that doesn't matter unless you know what Narnia is. The callbackfores like the lamppost growing don't make sense unless you know the lamppost. (Not to mention that reading Narnia in chronological order would involve stopping before the last chapter of LWW to read all of Horse and His Boy.)

Doomed prequels have the double-failure if read first that they are fundamentally classical tragedies: if you don't know the characters are doomed, everything hits differently than it was designed to. Which may still be a good experience! But admit to yourself that you want to study your friend's reactions for science, because you can never feel that way again.

There's also the high chance that the prequels spoil a significant plot twist from the original due to being the story of how that plot twist came about. The potential existence of Crisis Core is a major revelation of Final Fantasy VII (original flavor). (FFVII is a fascinating case study, because the Remake has to reckon with how much of their target audience knows the original.) (And reckon they do!)

Kingdom Hearts Chronological Order is a fun activity to play with your fellow fans, but unless you're filming reactions For The Bit, why would you do that to a friend? Trying to explain the KH series in chronological order is why it has the reputation for being super hard to understand. Do not do this.

[mzminola]

Got tagged by wolfiso to do a poll of my top five fave characters of all time but I'm bad at narrowing down faves so you get however many I can cram into the poll.

Recreate poll on your blog if you wanna!

[seva-over]

If you haven't played it, you should at least listen to the amazing soundtrack. The sound design in this game is spectacular, from the voice acting to the wild cats' roaring.

10/10

Quick edit: okay, to those of you who have played it, I need to know your favorite characters! Mine is definitely N'eth, I love his sweet personality.

[libraryofnika]

⋆˙⊹ Non-Arcs Kindle Haul ⊹˙⋆

Hauled some new books on my Kindle 🙈 They are a combination of Fantasy, Queer, Romance, and Horror which are one of my fave to read ✨ All of these are already released!

Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love #2)- Dark contemporary romance, with gory/ horror content. Gave the first book, Butcher & Blackbird a 4 ⭐ A Novel Love Story- A contemporary romance with magic realism in which fmc/ reader finds herself in her favorite romance book series. A Darker Mischief- The Honeys meets The Secret History in a work of dark academia like no other -- a boarding school thriller about a queer teen from Mississippi who finds himself swept into a world of old money, privilege, and the secret society at the heart of it all.

The Actor and His Secret- A queer romance where a movie star and a book publicist had a one-night stand! Only For The Week- African American Romance Novel, sister of the bride (who's also the ex of the groom 🙈) X best man! Crossroads- Cowboy, childhood friends-lovers romance!

A Feather so Black- Fantasy Romance series with Celtic Mythology! Also tagged with a love triangle with a morally grey love interest. The Sky on Fire- From the acclaimed author of the Chorus of Dragons series, this propulsive new standalone fantasy is Dragonriders of Pern for a modern audience. I think I've heard that this is gonna be a full high fantasy novel with no romance. Empire of Silence- Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy.

Scarlet- Historical fiction series set in Revolutionary France with vampires and fantasy elements. The Deer and the Dragon- Urban Fantasy with Mythology with angels and demons. Tender is the Flesh- Dystopia fiction where the government has legalized eating special meat- humans because of the virus of animal meat.

Super excited about these titles. I'm soon to be making my non arcs tbr for next month so hopefully some of these will be listed ❤

Bookstagram Booktwitter Goodreads

[barkingbonzo]

Michael Whelan Cover Art, The Cosmic Computer

Michael Whelan (born June 29, 1950) is an American artist of imaginative realism. For more than 30 years, he worked as an illustrator, specializing in science fiction and fantasy cover art. Since the mid-1990s, he has pursued a fine art career, selling non-commissioned paintings through galleries in the United States and through his website.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Whelan in June 2009, the first living artist so honored. According to his Hall of Fame citation.

Michael Whelan is one of the most important contemporary science fiction and fantasy artists, and certainly the most popular. His work was a dominant force in the transition of genre book covers away from the surrealism introduced in the 1950s and 1960s back to realism.

His paintings have appeared on the covers of more than 350 books and magazines, including many Stephen King novels, most of the Del Rey editions of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, the Del Rey edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series, Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince and Dragon Star series, the Del Rey editions of H. P. Lovecraft's short story collections, the Grand Master edition of Ray Bradbury's fix-up novel The Martian Chronicles, DAW editions of Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné books, numerous DAW editions of C. J. Cherryh's work, many of Robert A. Heinlein's novels including Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, the Ace editions of H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy novels, and Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Otherland, and Shadowmarch series and Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive. Whelan provided covers and interior illustrations for Stephen King's The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower, the first and last of his Dark Tower books.

Cover art by Michael Whelan has graced many music record albums including Demolition Hammer's Epidemic of Violence, The Jacksons' Victory; Sepultura's Beneath the Remains, Arise, Chaos A.D. and Roots; Soulfly's Dark Ages; Obituary's Cause of Death; and every album by the Elric-influenced metal band Cirith Ungol. He painted original works for the covers of Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell and The Very Best of Meat Loaf albums and several of his older paintings illustrate the liner notes of the former. In 2009, he painted the cover art for thrash metal band Evile's album Infected Nations.

[threadfall]

Fansite Links

This is a collection of links to a variety of sites that cover all things Pern, canon, fanon, or fandom, from RP directories to the Official fansite on Facebook.

The Official Dragonriders of Pern Site – Link (Facebook)

A facebook group created with official permission from Anne McCaffrey.

Pern Wiki – Link

A Meeting of Minds – Link

This used to be the official McCaffrey forum, however there are only three pages still accessible.

The Many Works of Anne McCaffrey – Link

Dragonchoice – Link

Fanlore, Dragonriders of Pern – Link

Sariel's Guide to Pern – Link ('Old' site), Link ('New' site)

Jillian's World of Pern Site – Link

Pern Connect – Link

Pernese Online – Link

Pern Home – Link

The Kitchen Table – Link (Fanlore)

This used to be Anne's Dragonrider of Pern specific forum, but it has long since closed down as has its replacement. I'm linking to the Fanlore page because it was a fandom staple and should be remembered!

Dragonriders of Pern on Abandonware – Link

This includes the Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern Ubisoft game (Wikipedia article here), and the Dragonriders of Pern strategy games on Commodore-64/Atari or DOS (Wikipedia article here).

Dragonriders of Pern on Play Classics – Link

A browser port of the 1987 DOS version of the strategy game. Manual can be found on Abandonware here.

[midnightsun-if]

can we have the most favorite media thing (like, favorite videogame series, favorite book, movie, etc) from all the ros?

Koda

Video Game: Stardew Valley, it’s just something he enjoys playing and he’s so proud of his farm.

Book: Charlotte’s Web, he knows it’s a book meant for children but he has a lot of fond memories curled up against his mom as she read it to him.

Movie: Brother Bear, it’s a bit on the nose but he loves the story, the visuals, and the soundtrack.

Song: On My Way by Phil Collins from Brother Bear.

Scarlett

Video Game: Dragon Age, she rarely plays video games but she’s always enjoyed that one.

Book: The Return of the King (LotR), A Dance With Dragons (ASoIF), or Pride and Prejudice… It’s a toss up.

Movie: Casablanca or Scream.

Song: Tchaikovsky— Swan Lake, Op.20, Act: 2, No. 10, Scene: Moderato.

Cyrus/Cyra

Video Game: Either classic Mario or Ori and the Blind Forest. They typically like platformers though.

Book: The Raven, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, or Jurassic Park.

Movie: The Queen or The Chronicles of Narnia.

Song: Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles.

Quinn

Video Game: Wii Sports, it’s always something they’ve enjoyed playing.

Book: The Odyssey.

Movie: The Sandlot or Field of Dreams.

Song: Dog Days Are Over by Florence + The Machine.

Caden

Video Game: Peggle… It’s calming to them.

Book: The Da Vinci Code, its book that they’ve read numerous times.

Movie: Good Will Hunting or The Bucket List.

Song: My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.

Sloane

Video Game: Elden Ring, it’s something they’ve enjoyed playing.

Book: Peter Pan, it’s something that reminds them of their childhood… However, painful that is now.

Movie: Hook, for the same reason as Peter Pan.

Song: Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones.

Blake

Video Game: Sims, it’s one of the few things that’s been able to keep their attention.

Book: A Tale of Two Cities.

Movie: Coyote Ugly or Pretty Woman.

Song: …Baby One More Time by Britney Spears.

Reginald/Regina

Video Game: Left 4 Dead, but they also adore Knights of the Old Republic too.

Book: Dracula (funnily enough) or The Hobbit… (The Dragonriders of Pern series has its own category.)

Movie: Star Wars (Originals).

Song: The Force Theme by Samuel Kim (Cover).

[thedaughterofkings]

Favourite fantasy book series

I'm due for a reread for several, if not most of these, and I'm really interested to see how they rank with other people!

So please vote for your favourite of these and let me know which ones I've missed!

In no particular order:

The Lord of the Rings isn't on there because it has the uncontested top place in my heart, mind and soul forever and ever anyways and I can't chance it not taking first place in a poll on my blog, I would probably literally cry.

[duckprintspress]

13 Books!

Yoinking this meme from @profiterole-reads

The Last Book I Read: I finished the YA graphic novel Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable last night.

A Book I Recommend: there aren't many books I'd recommend without knowing who I'm recommending it to, but The Alienist by Caleb Carr is fantastic.

A Book That I Couldn't Put Down: Little Mushroom by Shi Si

A Book I've Read Twice (or More): the Elenium trilogy by David Eddings

A Book on My TBR: my "next ups" are Thousand Autumns vol. 4 by Meng Xi Zhi and Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker.

A Book I've Put Down: it's been a long time since I've really had a DNF? One of the first books I can ever remember DNFing, when I was young, was book 1 of The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey, I just couldn't get into it.

A Book on My Wishlist: I don't have a wish list, most of what I want is pre-ordered and I'll get it when it's available.

A Favorite Book From Childhood: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede

A Book You Would Give to a Friend: again it depends on the friend???? idek I don't think I can answer this one, no book is universal.

A Book of Poetry or Lyrics You Own: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

A Non-Fiction Book You Own: all of Stephen Sears Civil War battle analyses are fantastic.

What are You Currently Reading: Copper Coins by Mu Su Li

What Are You Planning on Reading Next: I already answered this on the "a book on my TBR" one, didn't realize it'd come up again, oops.

Tagging: anyone who wants to play! <3

[book--brackets]

For fantasy books:

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

The Westmark Trilogy, also Lloyd Alexander

Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Dragonriders of Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine

Brotherhood of the Conch Series by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

All books I loved as a child/teen (that I don't think have made it into the bracket yet). I hope others remember them too!

I'm looking forward to the tournament - thanks for doing this!

Added them all! Just so you know, this is one is just fantasy books, not just childhood ones, so if you have any more recent favorites you can submit those too!