Collecting Highlight (6) - Roots of Pern: the story Weyr Search

[Hans]

How it all began, at least where Pern is concerned. Most of you will know that the book that was later to be published as Dragonflight, was originally published as three short stories in Analog, Science Fiction – Science Fact of October 1967 (originally sold for 60 cents). Anne’s first Pern story was a feature and John Schoenherr made a few illustrations and also did a cover with, admittedly, a hideous dragon J Anne still chuckles over the rather silly cover because held upside down, she says, the dragon resembles the male sexual organ…

The magazine isn’t particularly rare but special in the sense that it holds the first installment (the other two were published as Dragonrider part I and II in the December 1967and January 1968 editions) of the Pern stories and books ever. It usually sells for anything between about $2.50 and $10, depending on the state. The cover is apt to be damaged (the color print rubs off) because of the poor quality of paper. These weren’t called pulp for nothing.

After the story Weyr Search appeared in Analog, the text was heavily revised for inclusion in the novel Dragonflight.
NOTE: All anthology appearances, and there are quite a few, of the story use the text that was originally in Analog.
The story was nominated in 1967 for the nebula Award for Best Novella but it lost to Behold The Man, by Michael Moorcock. It was the winner of the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novella, tying with Riders Of The Purple Wage, by Philip Jose Farmer.

It has to take a place of honour in the collection of every diehard Pern fan!



These are the interior illustrations:

[Jax]

Very nice!! And I love the autograph Hansie!

[~(_'>]

I love the illustrations. The dragons seem a bit clunky, but they do seem better than others that are supposed to be Pernish. Allthough I guess the one is the watch wher.

[Cheryl]

The dragons look like winged brontosaurus to me, rather silly, but at least all the pictures match well to scenes in the books.

I'd forgotton (or rather may never have paged through my copy) that there was a map of Pern included. I'd thought that the map hadn't been drawn until later (either with "Dragonrider" or Dragonflight). Note though that most of the Holds and Weyrs not are positioned here where they are on later maps.

[Hans]

I was hoping someone would notice and react to that Should've known it would be you

[Cheryl]

It was Nerat that I noticed being wrong without checking a map (though I thought it was much closer to the tip). And Fort Weyr. Then I started comparing all the others and couldn't resist making a comparison map.

Anyone notice there are actually 8 Weyrs on the map, though only 6 are named in the legend? There's 6 on the main continent and two more on Ista Island.

[c_ris]

The dragon pics aren't all that bad, though I can certainly see the brontosaurus comparison!

[Hans]

At first glance the watchwher looks like a turtle

[Dragongirl]

Mnementh is way bigger than I thought! Imagine how big Ramoth would be?! And yes the dragon is hideous and does resemble the male valuable. hehe Hey Hans weren't you the one with the grapjic version of DF? Can I see some of the pictures if you don't mind? Please?

[Hans]

Originally Posted by Dragongirl

Mnementh is way bigger than I thought! Imagine how big Ramoth would be?! And yes the dragon is hideous and does resemble the male valuable. hehe Hey Hans weren't you the one with the grapjic version of DF? Can I see some of the pictures if you don't mind? Please?

Sure, no problem. I'll post them in anither thread though: click here

[sarahlin_13]

I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of the Analog containing Weyr Search on eBay a couple of years ago. I haven't really looked at it yet as the pages seemed rather fragile. But I do agree with Anne's description of the dragon on the cover!?

[Anneli]

Hi, sarhalin, welcome to a Meeting of Minds

[Lady Maelin]

I think that the pictures are well drawn, the consept is somewhat off for what they are discribed as looking like in the books. Though I think that the size of the dragons is pretty good, it is very close to how Anne discribes how Mnementh ,"carefully formed a cage around her with his huge talons,"and then later, F'lar leaning his hand on Mnementh's claw. I think for back then they are great, that is all we had then, no movies or great special effects like they do for so many stories these days. Just plain black and white on cheap paper, but you were thrilled to get them then. I use to read some of those old magazines back then. I could hardly wait to see what things looked like from the stories. I would hide my copies of them, so I wouldn't get, oh you read Sci-fi, while they were looking down their nose at me for not reading something more proper for a young girl of my day. Now look what they read, I wish I would have stood up for it then, but I was only a girl and I didn't know any better. Now I proudly display my copy of , what ever book of hers that I happen to be reading at the time. If there was a T-shirt, I would proudly wear that also. Hey what a great idea? Any T-shirts out there that I don't know about?

[~(_'>]

Oh yes. There are several. You can get a Michael Whelan tee shirt. There are also Sci/Fi Book Club tee shirts out there. They can be hard to find though.


At D*C two years ago, one of the guys selling tee shirts told us that he was meeting with Anne about making Tee-shirts. I never saw any last year though, so I guess that fell thru.

A pity.

[Lady Maelin]

~~( '> ,Thank you for you advice and ideas, I would love Michael Whelan anything I think he is a fabouls artist. Where would one get a T-shirt of his? I wish that there was more of Pern art out there, I have a few pictures that I am trying to figure out how to get on this thing so I can share them. So far today no luck. I will try again tomorrow. I might have to go to a professional to have photos taken so I can reduce them to be shown on here?

[Hans]

If you want to show pictures here you need to upload them to somewhere in the internet, Maelin. There are free facilities like www.photobucket.com you can use (registereing there and hosting pics there is totally free).

When you have opened an account with them (or elsewhere) you can upload pictures that are stored on the harddrive of you own computer to their server. Having done that they provide (a line of) code (you will need the IMG code for this board) for your hosted picture which you can just copy and paste into a post you make here.

It even sound more complicated than it is, trust me. Maybe you'll need a ittle help the first time but Í invite you to try on your own. It's really easy.

The picture you want to upload (read: tarnsfer from your own PC to their server) do need to be on your own harddrive in digital form of course. So you either need to have real pictures scanned or you can take a photo of it with a digital camera which you then transfer to your PC.

Go have a look around at www.photobucket.com

[Lady Maelin]

Thank you Hans, we had finally came to that realization, with a site we finally found late last night. We will have to take them and have them professionally photographed. Soon with luck we will be able to get it here!