A friend of mine asked me what I thought of the Pern series, and since everything I think is pure gold, I figured I should enlighten ya’ll at the same time:
The Pern books, specifically the Harper Hall of Pern series, were among the very first sci-fi books I ever read. I got them in a single volume when I joined The Science Fiction Book Club; at the same time I also got the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.
That’s a true story.
What I really liked about the Pern series was that they were easy reading, beach reading, and they created an imaginitive world full of dragons and fire lizards and man-killing worms ultimately descended from our own. The characters were involving and the stories interesting.
The Harper Hall series came a little later in the series and was aimed at a somewhat younger audience; the earlier books were a little rougher and earthier. Anne McCaffrey is a bit of a cheese-meister, in the same way that Anne Rice or Casablanca are a little cheesy, but there’s plenty of bread and butter to go with it. It’s formative sci-fi that shaped and continues to shape the genre all the way to today, and I highly recommend pretty much anything she wrote.
Also I forgot to mention that she likes the sex. If you read enough of her short stories, there’s a furry one in there somewhere. I don’t know what it is with sci-fi writers and furry sex.
