Goodreads asked R.E. Andeen:

If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?

R.E. Andeen Pern. No question.

Middle Earth is probably the most compelling, fully-realized world I've ever encountered, and Le Guin's Earthsea is on almost the same level. I'd love to visit either, even travel around for a few years, but I don't think either place would ever feel like home. Their stories are too big.

Anne McCaffrey's Pern, on the other hand, is a place where you could settle down and make a life. I'm not presumptuous enough to imagine becoming a dragonrider, even if I were the right age, but I could easily imagine Impressing a fire lizard, a little bronze or even a golden queen, which would be delightful company.

The modern Pern of most of the books (a few look back in Pern's history) is an interesting place because it's at a watershed moment in its history, a bit like Europe emerging from the middle ages. The old rigid hierarchies are bending and falling away, and the potential for the future, with the combination of the technology of the ancients and the abilities of the dragons, seems limitless.

Also, I want to meet the people who inhabit Pern, perhaps more than any other set of characters I've read. Lessa, F'lar, Robinton, Menolly, Jaxom, all of them.

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