Map of Pern

I found this map of Pern on the ‘net, have no idea who to credit it to. My Weyr, Kahrain Steppe Weyr, and Singing Waters Hold are not on it, as I have no permission to modify.

However, as the Southern Continent is far larger than this map shows, if you imagine a line descending from Monaco Bay, on the northeast coast, follow the coastline southeast. Kahrain Steppe weyr is on the coast, southeast of Monaco Bay. Singing Waters is at the tail end of the river that Landing is situated on.

The original creator of the Southern Continent was NOT Anne McCaffrey. She copied it from a strange book titled “Islandia”, by Austin Tappan Wright, published in 1927. It was a sort of cult book during the 60’s, hippies and college professors claimed to have read it almost as a rite of passage. I tried reading it a few years ago, when I picked up a copy at a garage sale. If you suffer from insomnia, I promise you, three pages of “Islandia” will have you comatose.

What prompted me to buy the book after idly picking it up was when I opened it to a map of a continent named “Kahrain”…a large, unexplored continent somewhere south of North America.

The resemblance to McCaffrey’s “Southern Continent’ was obvious. She’d changed the names of the geographical figures, but otherwise it is the same.

I don’t know if McCaffrey purposefully – or unconsciously- violated Wright’s copyright. In those days, copyrights expired after 25 years, thereafter anything published was considered public domain. Or perhaps she did obtain rights to use the map with changes. Or, it may be a case where she didn’t have a map created until her dragon books became insanely popular and she was forced to map out her weyrs and holds.

So I kept the name Kahrain, and that of Lord Dorn and his Hold, Singing Waters.