In 1968, a book by Anne McCaffrey known as Dragonflight was published. It was derived from s short story she published earlier on called “Weyr Search”. Dragonflight was followed by two more called Dragonquest and The White Dragon. Today there are over 20 books in the Dragonrider’s of Pern series, the latest two being co-written by her son Todd McCaffrey.

A brief history of Pern:

A few decades ahead of today (I want to say in the 2040s, but I don’t remember), a group of people are sent to colonize a planet known as P.E.R.N. They come in three spacecraft and settle there, with no way to return due to the fuel capacity of the ships.

Eventually trouble begins. Thread, an omnivorous fungus-type thing, starts to fall from the sky. It came from a cloud trailing an erratically orbiting planet (dubbed “The Red Star” by Pern’s inhabitants). Thread dissolves/eats pretty much anything carbon based, so the only safe places from it are caves, buildings made from non-carbon plastics, and underwater (not a good option). Fire burns the Thread, killing it. Unfortunately, Thread can’t be allowed to touch the ground. It starts eating the plant matter and animals, multiplying and burrowing into the ground as it does so.

To combat the Thread, the colonists (a large group of farmers, scientists, builders, geneticists, etc) at first use HNO3 devices in combination with “hoversleds” to char the Thread before it hit the ground. They continued to do this while their geneticists looked to a better solution.

Based off a native species known as a “Fire Lizard”, the Pernese created dragons. They were telepathic and could breathe fire after eating phosphine-bearing rocks. This proved to be the solution they needed until the Thread stopped.

The Thread did stop after a few decades, but it started again after. It turned out that the Red Star reliably passed by Pern on a regular basis.

Dragonriders of Pern is almost certainly my favorite Sci-Fi series. I haven’t yet found a Sci-Fi book, other than Dragonriders, that was this good. Dragonriders is very realistic as you read it (very believable), and unlike other Sci-Fi books it isn’t bleh. The complex storyline unfolds over the large number of books, ending in…well I won’t spoil it. Give it a try.

If you want to learn (x)HTML and CSS, you need a book that teaches you thoroughly. The best book I’ve seen is HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition by Elizabeth Castro. The book was previously published under the title HTML 4 for the World Wide Web, Fifth Edition. It teaches (X)HTML and CSS in an easy to understand way, and it works great as a reference book too. It’s organized well, and explained nicely. There’s no reason not to know (X)HTML and CSS. Don’t rely on a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. They don’t work anywhere near as well as good old hand-coded (X)HTML. Learn it.

Tamora Pierce is an author who has written tons of books set in a fantasy realm known as Tortall. Terrier is the latest of them, featuring a better character and more interesting storyline. The setting is a few hundred years previous to any of the other books, tying in with the history of a character mentioned in an earlier book unrelated to Terrier. In Terrier, Beka Cooper is a trainee for the Provost’s Guard, the law enforcement organization in Tortall. The book deals with the finding of a mass murderer who strikes several times during the book…and is hiding in plain site. It takes awhile to figure out who the “Shadow Snake” is, but you can figure it out if you think right.

Terrier is one of Tamora Pierce’s best books (not to mention one of the longest). Some of her earlier ones were kind of…bleh. One thing I don’t like about Terrier is it’s lack of magic. What’s a fantasy book without tons of magic? Some of Pierce’s books are loaded with magic, though personally I still think Terrier is better (it still can’t compete with Harry Potter though ).

Read Minerva66 of BookAdvice.net’s take.