Dragonflight – AMcCMRR

Twenty years or so ago I was smuggling this very book to junior high by tucking it into the (freaking huge) inner pockets of my trés cool (snerk) denim jacket.

Okay, the jacket was not the least bit cool but, by George, that thing was functional. I could store a week’s worth of food in those pockets or, more commonly, a couple day’s worth of food and a hard cover book. I would brazenly have the book out in class and be nigh oblivious to whatever was going on. I was the definition of the stereotypical bored G/T kid. To the best of my memory, this loathsome, despicable habit (see, teachers, I did learn my lesson! Eventually.) started with Dragonflight.

Twenty years ago I’d have been unable to say whether Dragonflight is fantasy or science fiction. On the one hand it has Dragons! (That teleport! And breathe fire!) Lords! Swords! And no guns! On the other hand its preface very explicitly states that the planet Pern is the third out from its star, Rukbat (“a golden G-type star”) colonized by humans some 2,500 years before the story opens and the dragons were genetically engineered in order to fight a menace known as “Thread” that falls from Pern’s skies due to the “wandering planet” or “Red Star” that swings by every 250 years. These days I don’t hesitate to classify it as science fiction, especially in light of later books in the series which I’ll be getting around to eventually.

For those of you who have not read any of these books, be warned: I’m not going to make any effort to avoid spoilers. The initial trilogy is older than I am and the statute of limitations for spoilers is long past.

Dragonflight is unusual for a main sequence Pern book. Only it and All the Weyrs of Pern have a coherent, linear driving plot; the other volumes follow the men and women of Pern as they react to and overcome the problems caused by Thread. Dragonflight is a straight Save-the-World-by-Breakfast story.

When the story starts, no thread has fallen in four hundred years — twice the normal interval — and most think it is gone for good. Bolstering this view is the fact that instead of six full communities of dragonriders (known as “weyrs”) there is only one whose last breeding female dragon is dying. Her final clutch of eggs, fortunately, includes the egg of a new breeding queen dragon and groups of riders are searching through many of the planet’s Holds for suitable candidates to Impress her (i.e. form a life-long telepathic link with the newly hatched dragon).

Gah!

I’m really not interested in writing a play-by-play synopsis of the book so I’m just going to assume you’re just as familiar with it as I am (you can look it up on Wikipedia or something if your memory needs to be jogged).

So the world needs to be saved because Thread is coming but only a tiny handful of riders even believe so, no one has been making any sort of preparations for the predictable crisis, and instead of six weyrs filled with thousands of dragons ready to meet the threat there are only 218 left at Benden Weyr. The first ray of hope comes when Lessa Impresses the young Ramoth causing a change in leadership at the Weyr with the proactive F’lar taking charge. He successfully diffuses a “revolt” by the Lords Holder that believe the Weyr is obsolete and forces them to resume supporting the riders who will soon be protecting them from Thread.

One of the cool dragon abilities that really fired my imagination is their ability to teleport from one location to another once in flight. This is, of course, a strategic advantage which F’lar used to resolve the above conflict. A dragon depends, however, on a clear mental image from its rider of the intended destination to successfully make it between. All riders are rigorously trained in doing so in order to prevent fatal accidents. Well, all riders except Queen riders since during the long interval Queens traditionally don’t fly at all. Lessa ignores such a silly tradition (Queens have wings, after all!) and after minimal practice decides to visit her home Hold of which she has very clear memories. Except that she hadn’t been back for three years and the very clear image she give Ramoth is of a morning mere days before she was taken to the Weyr.

That’s right! Dragons can move between times just as easily as between places. Every good science fiction writer loves a good paradox, right? Existing twice at the same time is debilitating and dangerous but it’s too powerful a tool to ignore. Once Ramoth’s first clutch (which included another Queen egg) is hatched and grown enough to fly F’lar and Lessa concoct a plan to send them all ten years back in time (to an isolated location) to give them a chance to mature and even breed more dragons before Thread starts falling which by this point is mere months away. Four years is all they manage despite the isolation; living twice in the same time is just too rough.

When the first Thread falls, there are still five empty Weyrs and nowhere near enough dragons at the remaining Weyr to protect an entire planet. Pern is a world still in need of saving. Once again the wild and headstrong Lessa risks her life and Ramoth’s to attempt something only she thinks could work. Working from vague hints, old records, and even a single teaching song she’d concluded that the five missing Weyrs had left at the end of their Thread’s Pass and come forward in time to continue the fight. The trip nearly kills them both. Time spent between is a function of spatial and temporal distance, not the few seconds most riders had ever experienced at once. But, the trip is a success and Lessa leads the five missing Weyrs out of the past and into her own time in time to meet the second Thread fall. World saved! Where are the pancakes?

That was still too much of a synopsis but I hope it’s clear that Dragonflight followed a well known plot. I intend to show how this contrasts with Dragonquest next time.

Still, I loved this book as a kid. It was just as good on this re-read. I loved how it was a story of F’lar and Lessa versus the world (Mostly. They did have some help.). I loved McCaffrey’s dragons. They’re still the archetype against which I measure any other dragon and most I find to be lacking . Her dragons are big, strong, intelligent, intimately linked with their rider emotionally and telepathically, and fulfilled an absolutely vital role in their world. I also loved how a dragon’s name always ended with the letters “th.” I wanted to be a dragon rider so much I could taste it.

For this read through I was able to more thoroughly appreciate how Lessa and F’lar (and others) had to work their way out of a truly dire situation. They were totally screwed. With basically no one believing that there was any threat from Thread anymore there was nobody gearing up to prepare for it. In fact, dragons had dwindled in number to within an inch of extinction. And it was only due to a key ability of the dragons themselves that they were able to find and recruit dragonriders of the past to meet the current threat.

Now, about this trick of time traveling . . . I don’t actually have any problem with it. If dragons can teleport through space based on clear references from their riders it seems straightforward that moving through time as well might be possible as well. No, I think my main nitpick here is that the time traveling capability remains unknown for so long. Lessa is the first to discover the ability in 2,500 years of human/dragon history. I know that in later books, specifically Moreta (published in 1983, and which is set several hundred years before Dragonflight), those earlier dragonriders discover and use the time traveling ability to solve a different crisis. I’ll look again when I get to Dragonsdawn, the novel that chronicles Pern’s initial colonization, because it may have been an issue even that early in the planet’s history. In either case, knowledge of the ability is forgotten soon after those stories conclude which seems convenient to me.

Dragonflight also introduces several other much loved characters (or hated — I’m looking at you, Lord Meron and Kylara) who will get their day in the spotlight in later books: F’nor, Masterharper Robinton, Mastersmith Fandarel, Lytol, Brekke, etc.

This isn’t a perfect book. I noticed rough spots in the world building where it seemed that McCaffrey hadn’t quite decided how this or that would work but would be ironed out in later books. There’s an abrupt shift in how communication between dragon and rider is described from Part One to Part Two. In the early section (which I think is basically an earlier short story of hers that she took off and ran with to create the full novel Dragonflight) we never see a dragon’s words. It’s always the rider reporting “my dragon said” or “my dragon feels” or “my dragon is restless” even though all such communication is acknowledged to be telepathic. In Part Two we get full conversations with dragon speech in italics. For example:

“Did F’nor remember to . . .” [F’lar] began aloud.

F’nor never forgets your orders, Mnementh reassured him testily. Canth told me that the sighting at dawn today puts the Red Star at the top if the Eye Rock. The sun is still off, too.

What this book got right was its solid Save-the-World-on-a-Deadline story; strong, intelligent characters who got out and tackled their problems head on; and a world that the ten-year-old me wanted to disappear to and that 32-year-old me can think, “yeah, I could still go for that.”

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