Ask Lemmy

I read the original two trilogies in the 80s so I’ve forgotten some bits, but what were the things that would be problematic today? I don’t think I remember any details relating to the above. Lessa is always one of the first people I think of when someone says “so and so was the first strong woman in scifi” and it’s a character that came 30+ years later.

So, when the books were originally published, it actually was pretty feminist/forward-thinking that Lessa got to lead Benden Weyr as an equal partner, and she's the one that saved Pern, and she's the heroine who gets songs sung about her. Sure, F'lar "saved" her by slaying Fax and bringing her to Benden, but she mind-manipulated him into it so it was really her using him as her tool, and then she went on to save the WORLD all on her own. And that was all pretty forward-thinking, when most SFF of the era had ladies being damsels in distress, or running around in chainmail bikinis.

The bits that haven't aged well today is how Anne McCaffrey writes romance. Basically, back when the books were written, there was this cultural trope that "good" women didn't want sex. Like, even if the main gal obviously wanted the romantic lead, you had to put up a show of resisting, of saying no, for some dramatic tension or something, because if you said yes too quickly you were a slutty slut just slutting around or the like. Good girls don't say yes, even to the people they want, too quickly. And it was "romantic" for the man to be pushy and not take no for an answer.

So McCaffrey has a lot of her lead men "ravishing" their partners in some way after the female resists or says no, which reads as really rapey with today's understanding of sex and consent. F'lar grabs and shakes Lessa physically at times (I don't recall if he outright hits her at all or not--he might, once or twice. I'd have to re-read). And Jaxom basically rapes Corana--she says no, but he's just so horned up by dragons and goes ahead anyway, and the whole scene seems to be some attempt by the author to "show" that Jaxom is as virile a lead as any other dragonman, even if Ruth is asexual. It reads as if she were afraid Ruth not being a bronze would make people doubt Jaxom's manhood or something, so she writes a scene to supposedly "prove" it.

And then the dragonlust thing during mating flights initially suggests between the lines the queen rider is going to have sex with the bronzerider whose dragon catches her queen, whether she wants to or not. "Aliens made us do it" is totally an old-school SFF trope especially any time a human or alien is telepathic, but again, in modern eyes it's super-rapey since consent and being able to say no is important.

McCaffrey rolled the rapey sort of thing back in later Pern books as social mores changed going into the 90s--but the books written in the 60s and 70s mostly didn't age great when it came to romance/sex. So there's inconsistencies between the Pern portrayed in the early Pern books, vs. the ones written before her death in the 2000s, with the early Pern having some of the "heros" doing kinda awful things, and the later ones sort of forgetting or erasing that.

I don't think it'd be going against the spirit of the books to update the mores here, though, for a modern audience. Anne McCaffrey was obviously trying to be forward-thinking with certain things, and it's honestly really hard to be ahead of your time when it comes to the social/cultural stuff, esp. in the pre-internet era.

Personally, if I were to update Pern for a modern audience, I'd keep some of the dragon mating stuff, like I'd purposefully keep some of the huge downsides of being telepathically bonded to a mind that is not fully human and which can cause a human to act in inhuman ways when the dragon gets over-emotional. Mostly so there can be this cultural tension between the Weyrs and the Holds so that the Oldtimer storylines work better. Dramatically-speaking, it'd be a great scene to watch a dragon get hurt--but it's the dragonman howling and clutching his eye or something, when he clearly isn't bleeding at all and is getting feedback from his dragon. (Or, dragonwoman...I think I'm recalling Brekke right there.) And there'd be a huge contrast between the weyrs who have fluid relationships with other riders that start and stop on a whim, and the Holds that are very traditional and still do arranged marriages and such.

Also, if the Weyrs are seen as hotbeds of greed and depravity, it'll be easier to take Pern through a story such as Dragonquest where the Holds and Halls start to rebel against the people who saved them from thread. The Oldtimer storylines from the books. Cultural friction, where the planet's heroes also act in ways that are strange and different to ordinary men and women, and a way to play with modern cultural concerns too.

But I'd do away with things like the Jaxom and Corana plotline because there's tons of other ways to make Jaxom an appealing lead character that don't involve the future Lord of Ruatha Hold abusing his power over a peasant girl. I don't think a modern audience would consider Jaxom weak or feminine just because Ruth is ace/nonbinary. In fact, him having a possibly nonbinary dragon might be a super-interesting story to follow. ::shrug::