Anne McCaffrey
Harper Hall Triology
by Unknown author · first published 1979
45% recommend55% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Known for imaginative science fiction and fantasy, including the Pern and Dragonriders series and The Ship Who Sang books, which spark interest in the genre. Suited to younger readers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Dragon Riders of Pern.
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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I spent a good part of my youth reading Anne McCaffrey (and part of my adulthood too) RIP
on “RIP, Anne McCaffrey” ↗…and enjoyed, most of it is written by men, but I'd rank books by both Connie Willis and Ursula K. Le Guin highly. And, of course, in terms of enjoyment, I've loved much of what both Margaret Weis and Anne McCaffrey have written, even if their writing isn't exactly award winning.
on “Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read” ↗I, Robot and other Asimov books inspired an interest in AI and taught me to explore all the ways a system could go wrong. The Ship who Searched by Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey introduced me to the stock market.
on “Ask HN: What books did you read as a kid that inspired you?” ↗…million copies over its length. Its frustrating because in general these big doorstopper books are usually really bad at kid lit. Harry Potter honestly can't hold a candle to books like Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey, or Barbary by Vonda MacIntyre. John Christopher in particular wrote these tiny books that are just master classes in economy; The White Mountains and The Lotos Caves stuck with me for decades. William…
on “The Most Abandoned Books on GoodReads (2019)” ↗…by Will Wight * "The Last Echo of the Lord of Bells" by John Bierce * "Scion of Storms" by Samuel Hinton * "Waybound" by Will Wight * "Mark of the Fool" by J.M. Clarke * "Harper Hall of Pern" by Anne McCaffrey * "Mother of Learning" by Nobody103 (Domagoj Kurmaić) * "Silvers" by Brian J. Nordon * "A Coup of Tea" by Casey Blair Wrote a blog post with reviews and honorable mentions at the end: https://learnbyexample.github.io/escapist-reviews/lists/2023...
on “Ask HN: What was your favorite content or book in 2023?” ↗…books were way less popular before the movies were made. I often see them gathering dust in the library. I will be honest. For someone used to reading fantasy novels from Robert Jordan, Raymond Feist, Anne McCaffrey etc, I find the pace of the books excruciatingly slow. The details are great and the imagination is impressive but it is painful to read... (apologies to LOTR fans)
on “Jin Yong, the 'Tolkien of Chinese literature', has died” ↗Magician was super popular at the time, but having already read Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Moorcock and a few others I found it more of a join the dots exercise spotting where he pinched pretty much everything from. It was like reading a whistle stop tour of fantasy fiction from the 60s and…
on “Betrayal at Krondor” ↗Anne McCaffrey wrote a series of novels (Dragonriders of Pern) based around fire breathing alien dragons. Their method of producing fire was to digest phosphine rich rocks in a dedicated stomach and then emit phosphine…
on “Where are the aliens? Where are the dragons?” ↗…"The Slaver Weapon", with Mr. Spock taking the place of Nessus the Puppeteer. Ringworld has been in planning as a movie or miniseries at least three separate times, but never got past development. • Anne McCaffrey's Pern series. This actually got so far as casting and set building, and was within a few days of starting shooting for a pilot for a TV series for Warner Brothers Network, but when the showrunner presented…
on “Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them” ↗…watch, and I don't think I'd be alone in this. 1. Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" series [1]. 2. Richard and Wendy Pini's "Elfquest" series [2]. 3. Larry Niven's Known Space series [3]. 4. Anne McCaffrey's Pern series [4]. As far as I know, no one has even ever started development on #1. Warner Brothers announced they were going to do an "Elfquest" movie in 2008, but cancelled it because they thought…
on “Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465M for first season” ↗One of those almost became a TV series. Anne McCaffrey's Pern series almost got a show from Warner Brothers. They had cast it and were starting set building and were a few days from starting shooting. But WB requested so many changes in the final script that…
on “Four book adaptations we want instead of more Lord of the Rings movies” ↗The second chapter of Anne McCaffrey's 'Dragonflight', written in 1968, opens with: "F'lar, on bronze Mnementh's great neck, appeared first in the skies above the chief Hold of Fax, so-called Lord of the High Reaches."
on “Quote Origin: I had exactly four seconds and Google had told me it wasn’t enough” ↗Maybe because I read a lot of scifi and fantasy, despite not having read any Anne McCaffrey, but that doesn't seem particularly hard to parse or understand.
on “Quote Origin: I had exactly four seconds and Google had told me it wasn’t enough” ↗