Pern is a fictional planet created by Anne McCaffrey for the Dragonriders of Pern series of science fiction books. It is said to be "Rukbat 3", the third planet in orbit around the star Rukbat, counting outward.
As of June 2011 there are two collections of Pern stories and twenty-two novels, some written jointly or solely by Todd McCaffrey, the series creator's son. The figure to the right shows the habitable portion of Pern's northern continent and a tiny portion of its southern continent, which are the setting for the first novel Dragonflight (1968) and its sequel Dragonquest. East–West it shows approximately the known hemisphere. It does not show the abandoned region of "Landing" and early colonization, further to the southeast, whose rediscovery and resettlement is one unifying theme of the stories that follow Dragonquest in Pern historical time, perhaps one third of the series.
The Atlas of Pern (1984), a companion book produced by Karen Wynn Fonstad in consultation with McCaffrey, provides geographical detail for a region extending that extends further south and east. In their geographical scope The Atlas maps cover the settings for all but the latest book, Dragon's Time (2011).
Read more about Pern: Planetary System Data, Geography, Ecology, Human Settlement Patterns, Thread, Social Structure