Trivia / Dragonriders of Pern

• Defictionalization: McCaffrey worked with real-life musicians to produce at least two albums attempting to depict Perrnese music.
• Development Hell: The Live-Action adaptation has been stuck in it since 1995.
  • With Warner Bros. having bought the film rights in August 2014, there might finally be hope.
• Executive Meddling: In a rare inversion of the typical trope, a studio executive actually stopped production of a TV series based on the novels a few days before shooting due to lack of fidelity to the source.
  • Specifically, in 2002 writer and producer Ronald D. Moore had written a pilot script and sent it in for network approval. The production was mere days from shooting the pilot. When the script was re-written, Moore objected to the new dialogue which felt more in line with Buffy the Vampire Slayer than the source material. Eventually the network agreed with Moore and pulled the plug.
• Fanwork Ban: The author was legendary for her adamant opposition to fanfic, and while she permitted roleplaying games, attempted to exercise editorial control over what could be done even in people's individual RPs. (The latter was less successful; even today, "pink dragons" are something of an in-joke in the fandom.)
• Science Marches On: Pern was available for colonization due to its lack of resources, categorized as metals and fuels, which would in theory preclude an industrialized society. This motivated the creation of a biological Thread-fighting solution in the Dragons. Forty years after the first books were published biofuels, high strength carbon composites, bio-engineered fibers and all manner of other scientific advances would make a highly industrialized society on a traditionally "resource poor" world not only possible, but also environmentally sustainable.

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