Artistic qualities that once seemed undeniable don't seem so now. Sometimes these fluctuations are only fickleness of taste momentary glitches in an artist's work or an artist getting ahead of his audience (it took me ten years to catch up to Albert Oehlen). Other times however these problems mean there's something wrong with the art.
I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need.