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Pegasus in Space (The Talent #3)

4.02 of 5 stars 4.02 · rating details · 3,290 ratings · 48 reviews

In a triumphant career spanning more than thirty years, Anne McCaffrey has won the devotion of millions of fans. Now she has written the exciting and long-awaited addition to her classic Pegasus series--and the perfect link to her bestselling Rowan saga . . .

For an overpopulated Earth whose resources are strained to the breaking point, there is only one place to look for r...more

Paperback, 448 pages

Published February 27th 2001 by Del Rey (first published May 31st 2000)

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Sep 06, 2012 Smcleish rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in October 2000.

The third and last of the Pegasus series, linked very decidedly to the Tower series which follows but which were written first, Pegasus in Space remains a reasonably self-contained novel. It is about the adolescence of Peter Reidinger, an important if slightly peripheral character in the later novels.

The book is dedicated to Christopher Reeves, the Superman actor who was disabled in an accident, and is the story of how Reidinger regains his ow...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Ward Bond added it

...more

In a triumphant career spanning more than thirty years, Anne McCaffrey has won the acclaim of critics, the devotion of millions of fans, and awards too numerous to mention. Her bestselling Dragonriders of Pern® series is counted among the masterpieces of modern science fiction, a work whose popularity continues to grow as new generations of readers discover the literary magic only Anne McCaffrey can provide. Now that magic is back, displayed as breathtakingly as ever in the exciting and long-awaited addition to McCaffrey's classic Pegasus series—and the perfect link to her bestselling Tower and Hive saga . . .PEGASUS IN SPACEFor an overpopulated Earth whose resources are strained to the breaking point, there is only one place to look for relief: straight up. With the successful completion of the Padrugoi Space Station, humanity has at last achieved its first large-scale permanent presence in space. Additional bases are feverishly being built on the Moon and on Mars, stepping stones to the greatest adventure in all history: the colonization of alien worlds. Already long-range telescopes have identified a number of habitable planets orbiting the stars of distant galaxies. Now it's just a question of getting there.But there are those who, for selfish motives of their own, want Padrugoi and the other outposts to fail. People who will stop at nothing to maintain their power or to revenge its loss. Standing in their way are the Talented, men and women gifted with extraordinary mental powers that have made them as feared as they are respected—and utterly indispensable to the colonization effort.There is Peter Reidinger, a teenage paraplegic who happens to be the strongest telekinetic ever, his mind capable of teleporting objects and people thousands of miles in the blink of an eye. Yet all his power cannot repair his damaged spine or allow him to feel the gentle touch of a loved one . . . Rhyssa Owen, the powerful telepath and mother hen to Peter and the rest of her "children"—and a fierce, unrelenting fighter against the prejudice that would deny the Talented the right to lead happy and productive lives . . . and Amariyah, an orphan girl who loves two things in the world above all others: gardening and Peter Reidinger. And woe to anyone who harms either one of them—for the young girl's talent may prove to be the most amazing of all.Now, as sabotage and attempted murder strike the Station, it's up to the Talented to save the day. Only who's going to save the Talented?

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Jan 24, 2012 Marcia rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sciencefiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. (WARNING: SPOILERS)

There are some books you read because they whisk you away to another place. Or because they offer insight on the human condition. Or because you need the information they contain.

This is none of these. This is a book that you hold your nose and slog through because you are stubbornly bound and determined to find out what happened to the characters no matter how improbable.

Pegasus In Space exists solely to link McCaffrey's world of the Talents with her Rowan world. Ostensibly i...more (WARNING: SPOILERS)

There are some books you read because they whisk you away to another place. Or because they offer insight on the human condition. Or because you need the information they contain.

This is none of these. This is a book that you hold your nose and slog through because you are stubbornly bound and determined to find out what happened to the characters no matter how improbable.

Pegasus In Space exists solely to link McCaffrey's world of the Talents with her Rowan world. Ostensibly it is the story of how Peter Reidinger founds Federated Telepath and Teleport, but that would have required an actual plot. As it stands, the book is a bunch of characters who exist solely to provide exposition in between scenes that are told at a plodding pace at great emotional distance. Much of the book consists of being told that something happened, then pages of characters talking about it.

If you haven't read the first two Pegasus books, don't bother with this one. It has a cast of thousands - pretty much everyone you've ever met in previous books - who show up often no reason at all. If you're lucky, one of the expositional characters will fill you in on their backstory (which you already know if you've read the previous books) in gory detail. If you don't, you'll sit and scratch your head and wonder why this character is here.

Some of the new characters are familiar only because they're blatant rehashes of previous characters with new skins. Amariyah is Tirla with a new haircut and yet another never before seen Talent. She can mend nerves, and her only purpose in the book is to reverse Peter's paralysis. Ceara exists for scenery and to give Peter someone to have sex with once the reversal has happened. (The sex scene is mostly "fade to black", which is good, because for the life of me I can't figure out WHY these two people went to bed together. The author certainly doesn't show us. Or tell us even.)

The author makes every novice writer mistake in the book. Long pages of exposition about minor technical matters, action scenes that are one paragraph long using passive voice. We are told - the characters do talk a lot! - of events that take place, but we are not shown them. We are held 10 feet away from the characters' emotions. Characters are simply talking plot devices in most cases, especially all the background characters, every single one of which must be mentioned by first and last names. Character quirks which are mentioned ad nauseam but never have any further significance, either to plot or character development.

This is why I can't believe Ms. McCaffrey wrote this book, even though her name is the only one listed on it. The book was published in 2000, and that is about the time that her son began taking over the writing duties on her books. And it shows.

I originally purchased this book in 2000, but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until recently. I wish I'd waited at least another 12 years to discover how absolutely awful Pegasus In Space. This is easily one of the worst books I've read in the last 25 years, and the only reason I'd ever suggest that anyone else read it is if you absolutely must know what happened to Peter Reidinger.(less)

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Apr 25, 2011 Colleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-read

I've always liked this book best of the Pegasus series and second-best after Damia in the Talents books in general, so when I went looking for something light I loved to re-read, this was it. And oddly, I spend the entire time mentally noting where it contradicted itself, or another book. McCaffrey throws in so many little details -- probably what I love about it -- but all the little nit-picky bits don't line up neatly thrown together, and when you've read her books enough to know them by rote...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Al added it · review of another edition

SUMMARY:
Peter Reidinger was the most brilliant and powerful telepath and telekinetic yet discovered on earth. He was also barely 15 year old and a paraplegic who 'moved' his body through kinesis. When the telepaths of earth suspected a plot to take over Padrugoi, the newly manned space station, they realized they needed his unique gifts to foil the insane plans of Barchenka, the space construction manager, but even they didn't realize how strong were his abilities to read the minds of those abou

...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Hettie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fantasy lovers and those who like reading about possible futures of earth

Shelves: i-own-it, fantasy, sci-fi, space, read-2011

This book provides the final links between to the pegasus series and the tower and the hive series.

I enjoyed this book and liked following the devolpment of Peter. The detail that was included about Peters health was both very realistic and very reavealing about his character. Having read the tower and the hive series before I found it interesting to trace the emergence of people, places and companies that feature in that series. I liked the vision of life in space.

I did find some of the detail...more

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Oct 04, 2010 Yune rated it 2 of 5 stars

Re-read. Lackluster sequel to To Ride Pegasus and Pegasus in Flight. Returns to the characters in the latter, and I feel like that's the book's main function: connect Peter Reidinger with future Primes and the Center for Parapsychic Talent with FT&T. This is a very straight, boring, and somewhat incomplete line between two interesting dots.

Scenes jump around jerkily: an event like a long-foretold marriage gets a couple of disconnected paragraphs, while kids are born and grow years between si...more

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Aug 13, 2011 wychwood rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, suck-fairy, sff

To Ride Pegasus, Damia, The Rowan, Pegasus in Flight, and Pegasus in Space, Anne McCaffrey - I was lending a couple of these to a friend, and was struck by the urge to re-read them first. They have, as I'd expected, been visited by the Suck Fairy, but not as badly as some of her others; I still quite enjoyed them, despite everything. The series was written over quite a period of time; To Ride Pegasus was published in 1973, which is some level of excuse for the massive gender essentialism, astoni...more To Ride Pegasus, Damia, The Rowan, Pegasus in Flight, and Pegasus in Space, Anne McCaffrey - I was lending a couple of these to a friend, and was struck by the urge to re-read them first. They have, as I'd expected, been visited by the Suck Fairy, but not as badly as some of her others; I still quite enjoyed them, despite everything. The series was written over quite a period of time; To Ride Pegasus was published in 1973, which is some level of excuse for the massive gender essentialism, astonishing normative heterocentrism, weird racist tendencies, and ableism (among other things). Unfortunately it's less of an excuse twenty years on when she's still writing new stories; some things improve a little, but she's still accidentally (I think!) promoting eugenics, and her attitude to disability is often quite odd.

Her fetish for older man / much younger woman relationships is a bit of a squick for me. I just can't deal with women marrying men who changed their nappies for them, what can I say. I'm not keen on age-gap relationships anyway (though I do accept that they can work in the real world!), but a) it all feels terribly Electra complex on her side, and b) when he's known her all her life it ends up having almost paedophilic vibes. Especially the scene where Damia insists that Afra admire her naked fourteen-year-old body, particularly when combined with the fact that he is later described as having been in love with her since she was that age. I just - squick. McCaffrey also has a thing about babies, and women having babies, and large families; again, it's almost fetishistic at times. The standalone Nimisha's Ship is particularly bad, but that sensitised me to how much she uses it elsewhere. The stuff on Peter's "sexual awakening" is pretty terrible, too. I do get the impression that she has some... issues surrounding sex, and that's not even getting into her attitude towards homosexuality.

The biggest problem I have with the series, though, is her bad habit of having her heroes (and they usually are heroes) be self-righteous; they're always right, and the people who oppose them are stupid, evil, or both, but they tend to get very high-handed and aggressive about pushing their inevitably-correct agenda, and not very good at considering the sometimes-valid criticisms they face. They're right structurally, because the author says so, rather than necessarily because their arguments are convincing, and they have a bad habit of keeping secrets in order to score points off their opponents. There's a recurring argument, for instance, about the space station being "too noisy" for Talents, and the "heroes" don't mention until really late on that they're talking about psychic noise, and not physical noise, which puts a very different complexion on the discussion, and the arguments over whether Talents need different treatment from non-psychic workers. There's a ton of stuff like this; they won't give their opposition all the information, or proper explanations, or anything, and then they get all snotty when they reveal their obvious rightness, which is reliant on stuff that nobody else knew, because they wouldn't tell them... It doesn't make me sympathise with her poor beleaguered protagonists, it makes me think they're jerks.

Having said all of that, I did just read, like, five of them (in a very random order!). So obviously it didn't bother me all that much. I find a lot of her worldbuilding interesting; I still don't really get why the universe ends up revolving around what are essentially transportation centres, even if they are doing it with their minds, when some of the other Talents - especially Finding - seem so much more intriguing. But life in the Linears is kind of fun to read about (if, er, unintentionally racist) and I like the first-steps-into-space arc in the Pegasus books. Space colonisation is cool. Flawed but still basically entertaining.(less)

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May 14, 2013 A Voracious Reader (a.k.a. Carol) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: home-library, fantasy, sci-fi

Padrugoi Space Station is complete and now attention has been turned to building Moon Base and Mars Base. Little do Peter Reidinger and Johnny Greene know they will be instrumental in making that happen at a much faster pace than anticipated.

In the meantime, an orphaned five-year-old girl named Amariyah, is found after the floods in Bangladesh. When it’s discovered she has a lot of as-yet-unknown Talent she is brought back to the Center and raised by Dorotea. There are sinister machinations goi...more Padrugoi Space Station is complete and now attention has been turned to building Moon Base and Mars Base. Little do Peter Reidinger and Johnny Greene know they will be instrumental in making that happen at a much faster pace than anticipated.

In the meantime, an orphaned five-year-old girl named Amariyah, is found after the floods in Bangladesh. When it’s discovered she has a lot of as-yet-unknown Talent she is brought back to the Center and raised by Dorotea. There are sinister machinations going on and Peter is in danger when he turns 18 and takes up his official duties for the Center up on Padrugoi. After an accident involving Peter on his 19th birthday the true scope of Amariyah’s Talent becomes known and it’s a doozy. And when Johnny tricks Peter into teleporting a small package from Australia to Moon Base, after getting over his shock, Peter slowly begins to realize he truly can reach for the stars.

Even though this is the 3rd book in the Talents series it was the last to be written after the Tower and Hive series was complete. In my opinion, it makes a better bridge between the two series than Pegasus in Flight and I’m glad it was added since Peter’s story is as fascinating as it is heartwarming.

There is a lot going on in this book, but most of it revolves around Peter. Since Peter is the catalyst for all of the books that follow, it’s only right that we learn the history of how FT&T (Federated Telepath and Teleport) comes about. FT&T features heavily in the Tower and Hive series.

Once again the story flows smoothly and the plot proceeds quickly. My favorite characters are back, some with much larger roles and we pick up Amariyah as well as a few more. The story still fascinates me and makes me wonder how much faster we would be exploring space if we had people with Talents such as these. The mind boggles at the wonder of it all.

I’m looking forward to picking up The Rowan to continue with the series. As I’ve said before, it’s been a long time since I’ve read this series and I’m really enjoying my immersion back into the world of the Talents.

*Book source ~ My home library.
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Sep 28, 2009 Julianne rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 16, 2009 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

An over populated earth is looking to expand to space. Peter is now working on the space station using his talents to shift supplies through space. His understanding of his talent grows while dealing with threats to his life, emergencies on the moon, etc. Really enjoyed it. More technical and talks about quantum mechanics a little bit.(I didn't get much of that part!)

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Jul 18, 2012 Deirdre rated it 4 of 5 stars

Peter Reddinger grows up, gets his wish of going to space and the novel bridges between the Pegaus Series and the Hive series.
I did like it, sometimes the technobabble washed over me but mostly I enjoyed the story. I liked the story about Peter and his learning about himself. I also liked the sneaky musical reference.

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Oct 20, 2012 Al rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who insist on finishing the Pegasus series

While an adequate story for any other writer, I was expecting more from McCaffrey. The story seemed to move slow and I had a hard time getting through it. Usually, when I'm done reading one of her books, I'm disappointed that it's over. When I finished this one, I was glad it was over.

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Jul 07, 2009 Daniel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Final novel of the "Pegasus" trilogy. McCaffrey continues to give backstory to her other novels here. Plot is light and the characters challenges mostly come from within. Easy read, but probably only for dedicated McCaffrey fans who want to cover every novel.

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Feb 04, 2011 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

I really enjoy this one. The characters in the first books are coming into their own, and a couple more very interesting people are added. It can be the ending of this trilogy, or the setup for the series that starts with The Rowan.

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Sep 26, 2012 Karl Schaeffer rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like McCaffrey. She generally writes in an easy, readable style. "Pegasus in Space" is no exception. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad. The bad guys don't get too much of an upper hand. Nice predictable read.

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Sep 01, 2008 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars

Accidently I read this story first of the trilagy. The story does well to quickly explain the histories of these characters when needed. You will not get a complete history lesson in the first chapter.

Ms. McCaffery does a wonderful job of creating a world modern day can relate to with the "fantastic" of mental powers and explinations of how they might work. Semiliar to her crystal line a pitch, a tone, is brought to the attention to tune to the abilities of the mind and to that ability to explor...more

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Dec 29, 2008 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

A good story - this novel reminded me of what McCaffrey does best, with few of the drawbacks found in her later works (Skies of Pern, and any of the dreadful collaborations with Todd McCaffrey). The tale moved reasonably swiftly and continued to be engaging along the way. She made every effort to make the science understandable and reasonable, though it slowed down the narrative somewhat. Some of the plot points were not resolved between the covers, but given that the book merged two pre-existin...more

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Nov 11, 2010 Rebekah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing, i read a lot of book but when i piked this one up i just coudnt put it down the only reasone it took me as long as it did (3 days) is cause i am in school and i ahve homework

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Jan 10, 2013 Ananya Gupta rated it 3 of 5 stars

First read of an Anne McCaffrey book. I liked to storyline, and approach. It is not "unputdownable", but a good sci-fi read for those who enjoy the genre

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Nov 30, 2011 Martina the Book Fairy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychic-powers, teenage-protagonist, technology, space, mystery, murder, hospital, genetics, clairvoyant

I've had this book for years and have read it many, many times but this was the first time since I started tracking my books here on Goodreads. :-)

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Nov 06, 2011 Kathleen Dixon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

A third in the Pegasus series, this has the same generation of characters as the 2nd, and develops the young Peter very nicely. I love the psychic stuff.

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Dec 11, 2012 Sarah added it

This book connects the Tower and the Hive series and the Pegasus series. Wonderful bridge between the 2 series.

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Dec 14, 2009 Lavendersbluegreen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wowsers. This really drew the picture for me between some of her older books like the Rowan and the old Pegasus book.

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Jan 21, 2013 Bridget marked it as to-read

This book is called PEGASUS IN SPACE. !!! Clearly, I need to read it immediately.

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Aug 28, 2009 Becca R.G. rated it 4 of 5 stars

A glorious, triumphant ending. This is a good connecting book, but it's not cohesive.

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Nov 25, 2011 Denise rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

This stands alone fine, even though it's part of a series. Enjoyable.

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Jun 18, 2012 Gere Lewis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Want to know the story of the legendary Peter Reidinger? Here you go.

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Apr 25, 2010 Bryan457 rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, juv-ya, psionics, science-fiction, superhuman, own-it

Final novel of the paranormals before switching to the Rowan thread.

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Nov 30, 2008 Dwer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: f-sf

hard for me to get into, but later part was better for me

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About Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey was born on April 1st, 1926, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 1:30 p.m., in the hour of the Sheep, year of the Fire Tiger, sun sign Aries with Taurus rising and Leo mid-heaven (which seems to suggest an early interest in the stars).

Her parents were George Herbert McCaffrey, BA, MA PhD (Harvard), Colonel USA Army (retired), and Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey, estate agent. She had two...more

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Pegasus in Space (The Talent #3)

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