I know a lot of people probably think the Pern books are lame, but I loved them
I like the idea that, even though there’s plenty of conflict, it’s mostly socio-economic. I like the more complicated conflict. They don’t just kill each other for the sake of the battle.
I like the fact that, even though there are conflicts, they can unite against a common enemy, the thread.
I also like medieval feel to the society.
I think they would make a great series of movies. What do other fans think?
Would you start with the immigration, or backflash the history, as the author did?
I don’t think that they’d make a good movie series because, like you said, the majority of the dramatic conflict involves the finer points of the sociopolitical conditions on Pern and not the actual thread fighting (which is even actually kind of boring when you think about it).
My guess; because whoever holds the rights has seen what happened to books/series like I, Robot, Earthsea and Starship Troopers once Hollywood got it’s claws on them.
Also :
While true, and part of what makes the books good, that’s not something that translates well to movies.
I just wanna see the dragons and fire lizards brought to life. I’d agree in general that it’s more the social and political aspects of Pern that make the story great to read, but c’mon people! Dragons! Fire lizards!
In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the company which published Vicky Wyman’s Xanadu comic series acquired the rights to do a graphic novel series based on The Dragonriders of Pern, and the publishing company fucked things up royally, from my understanding. Given that I’ve had dealings with Lex Nakashima, who ran the company at the time, I don’t doubt that they did screw it up royally. So no doubt, Anne McCaffery has no desire to be bitten twice. Although, now that I flog google, it seems that as recently as last year there were plans for a film version.
Also, while I think that original trilogy and the Harper Hall series are great reads, the later books aren’t worth the paper their printed on. I would, however, pay real money to read this unpublished work.
My impression, a couple of years ago, when I was looking for information on McCaffrey, was that fear of Pern becoming the backdrop for another Xena-type series was a bigger concern. I believe the information I found, which I don’t feel like looking for now, indicated that someone came very close to making a tv series based on Pern. And then it fell through, and McCaffrey was not enamored with the thought of starting fresh.
According to Wikipedia, a TV show was nearly started in 2002 but the WB network altered the pilot so badly that the writer refused to continue. The article also says: “In May of 2006, it was announced that the rights to the entire Dragonriders of Pern series was optioned by Oscar-winning production company Copperheart Entertainment. Copperheart announced their intention to bring Pern to the big screen.”
I think Pern would make a better TV series than a movie, if they could make the dragons look decent. It would give more time for character development. I’d definitely start with the plot of the first book, and probably never get around to the immigration business (I don’t like the later books).
I’m having a hard time imagining thread fighting on film, but I’d really like to see the fight between the two queen dragons (Wirenth and Prideth) during the mating flight, from the second book. Maybe a movie would be better, to get the best special effects for this.
They got so far as to be filming some green screen and had some CGI video and images up. I remember seeing one with Anne on a saddle before a green screen. This was awhile back though, and I haven’t heard of anything since.
Okay, I see that it is, as I strongly suspected and hoped, a joke.
You see, Dick did sort of write the same book over and over again in a sense*, so it wasn’t completely unbelievable…
-FrL-
*And he wrote some other books as well… And somehow, even the ones that “echo” each other’s “themes” shall we say, nevertheless, tend to be really good independently of each other. Just so I’m not misunderstood here…
Ron Moore, creator of the new Battlestar Galactica was the one developing Pern as a television series for the WB. There were, apparently, significant “creative differences” that wound up killing the project. On the BSG blog, Moore writes:
He goes on to describe being on a panel with Harlan Ellison who, when asked for advice to writers said, “Don’t be a whore!” Moore took the advice to heart, he wasn’t, and Pern died.
Seeing what he’s done with BSG, I wish I was Bill Gates wealthy, so I could just throw obscene amounts of money at Mr. Moore and tell him, “go do what you want with Pern, and send me the bill.” I admire the man’s devotion to the source material.
Your mistake was in thinking that they fit into either genre.
I’d say that McCaffery fits into the “Girl’s Own” genre, if anything. Sort of like Mercedes Lacky. Where “Girl’s Own” = protagonist girl who is misunderstood perserveres with the help of her special magical animal friend until everyone recognizes her specialness and awesomeness.
Occasionally, the girl protagonist is instead a sensitive young man protagonist. And there seems to be lot of “unwilling young virgin girl drawn into sex almost-but-not-quite against her will, who finds it leads to True Love.” (as with Pern’s rape-by-proxy-via-dragon-sex situation)
But the genre seems to have young girls who want to be Mary Sue squarely in its sights. Science Fiction and/or Fantasy are just there to explain the special powers that make her special – just as her silver hair or long luxurious black hair or lavender eyes or whatever are there to show that she is special.
Science Fiction and Fantasy can work quite well together, thank you very much. But go read Gene Wolfe for it, not Anne McCaffery!
Well, you know, you could do like those guys who tried to save Enterprise did and start a fund to raise the money. The budget for a season would be $30 million or so, and given that Anne’s probably sold that many copies, if you got everyone who bought one (or read one) to kick in a dollar, you’d have the money. If a network wasn’t interested in picking up the series, it could always be sold as a DVD.
Alternatively, you could do like what the guys at Star Trek: New Voyages have done, set up a non-profit organization which does fan films. Lest you think that it’s bunch of geeks running around in bad costumes and shooting “Mary Jane” episodes, you need to take a close look at the site. The sets look identical to those on the original series (built with donated money/material/labor), the costumes are authentic looking, and since they started doing the episodes, they’ve managed to get members of the original cast to star in some of them, and some of the original writers are now writing for them. Some of the acting is absolute shiite, but they’ve got a massive following.
