"Perched a-dragonback, the Wingleader soars high above the morning mist, his wingmates and their mounts ever vigilant for signs of Threadfall."
If any SF/Fantasy fans don't recognize this as a scene from Anne McCaffrey's highly successful Dragonriders of Pern series, they should hand in their union cards right now!
Ms. McCaffrey's telepathic dragons and their riders have been with me since I first started buying speculative fiction. While my personal opinion is that Ms. McCaffrey hasn't 'stretched' her talents for many years, and therefore I haven't read the most recent volumes in the series, I'm relieved that the books are still popular. So popular, in fact, that a 'Pern' TV series has just been announced (thanks to the CGI wizardry evidenced in such films as Jurassic Park, Dragonheart, and Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace). Apparently, the series will focus on the characters we've come to know, love, and be frustrated by over the past decades! And, woo-hoo(!) - it's being partially produced here in Toronto! Check it out here!
Well, OK, it's now a year later - and the series has been announced not once, but twice!, by different creative teams. Both efforts have gone down in dragonflames! Drats!
Okay, so my version of a Pern dragon is probably a little less complex than those in any forthcoming TV show... Nonetheless, I had to tweak the head of the Zygote Dragon to make it more like the description of the dragons of Pern. It's still not perfect, though; perhaps in the future I'll try to create an actual morph target...
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