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language: English
country: USA
year: 1991
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Dragonriders of Pern, #11
dates read: 9.8.13-10.8.13, 27.9.21-1.10.21, 4.9.24-8.9.24
for a book where so many things happen, Anne McCaffrey’s All the Weyrs of Pern sure is just…kind of boring? which isn’t to say that I was bored, as such: it moves at a brisk pace and there’s plenty of banter. but fundamentally it is a series of only tenuously connected episodes strung together by an overarching plot: an ancient artificial intelligence is helping the people of Pern rediscover the scientific and technical skills necessary to eliminate the threat of Thread.
here we return to Jaxom as protagonist, with just a few forays to F’lar and also — a pleasant surprise — Sharra, who is involved in one of AIVAS’s — the AI — projects in her capacity as a Healer. unfortunately, now that Jaxom is, like, “self-actualized”, or whatever, he’s not really very interesting, and the book doesn’t actually seem particularly interested in him, either, even when the narration is notionally focalized through him. instead, large portions of the novel are very distant third-person narrations of long periods of time where various people are conducting chemistry experiments, learning how to type, designing space suits, and similar. a weirdly large amount of this book is snapshots of AIVAS giving lectures about chemistry, biology, and physics to students. it’s weird and not really very interesting!
the highlights of the book are, first, when it attends to the political implications of this project (“the Plan”, as it is occasionally referred to): not everyone in this feudal society appreciates the rapid changes to social and political structure, and there is a strong antimodern reactionary movement that attempts to destroy AIVAS and prevent the proliferation of new (or, rather, rediscovered) technologies, techniques, and bodies of knowledge. unfortunately this is paired with some things that again expose deep flaws in the underlying political structure of the planet (e.g., the fact that the only accountability mechanism for feudal lords is sanctions, which of course first and foremost affect the lords’s clients, who have no control over their feudal overlords’ behavior, or else exile-tantamount-to-execution). for a book that is so much about the necessity of a unified planetary government capable of organizing society for a common purpose and the betterment of all, it sure has no interest in actually reorganizing society. in fact, its stance is explicitly that the largely feudal-agrarian society of Pern is actively a good thing (especially compared with “industrial society”). yikes!
second, dragon space exploration. I want way more of this — it’s the most conceptually interesting development in the series since the establishment of its core world-building. the dragons get to do free fall (which is very cute), and help out during EVAs, and visit another planet! I think they should get to visit more planets and do more stuff in space. I’m hoping some of the stuff in The Skies of Pern, when I get there, might satisfy this itch at least a little bit, though I know it won’t be to the extent I want to see.
perhaps my pettiest complaint is that there has been no indication at any point in the series that Pern has fiction. lyric, sure; narrative poetry, yes, but all entirely historical. this feels like a bizarre oversight, and I’m particularly frustrated that in this book, with an enormous database of cultural material available to them, the only things people access are factual accounts of history (mainly just Lytol), some recordings of music, and scientific instructional information. the one time AIVAS makes a literary allusion it is to the Bible (which it describes as “the greatest book ever written by Mankind”. hello???). when they build a printing press, its function is explicitly to disseminate technical information and textbooks (and maybe musical scores) — there’s not even any indication that they consider using it to report history or current events. it is simply bizarre to me that in a book that to a nontrivial extent is about the beginnings of a kind of industrial revolution (albeit sans industry) she gives no thought whatsoever to one of the other major features of industrialization, namely the development of mass media, which seems like it should be relevant to a book that’s very interested in social change!
overall, not the worst book — certainly it’s way better than Renegades — but also definitely not the best.
moods: hopeful, reflective