Fantasy and Sci-Fi Classics: "Dragonflight"
The first book in Anne McCaffrey's beloved "Dragonriders of Pern" series is a tautly-woven novel that effectively and efficiently introduces readers to this fascinating world.
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Warning: Spoilers for the novel follow.
A few weeks ago I was wandering in an antiques shop when I saw several small paperbacks of Anne McCaffrey’s beloved Dragonriders of Pern series for sale. After debating for a few minutes, I finally decided to buy them because, well, I wasn’t just going to leave them sitting there, was I? They weren’t the first in the series, unfortunately, but a bit of research pointed me in the right direction as to where to start with the Dragonriders of Pern series, which is to say, at the beginning. Now, I have to admit that despite my long-standing love of fantasy and sci-fi of all varieties, I have never really immersed myself in the world of Pern. I recall reading one of McCaffrey’s books way back in junior high, but since then I haven’t really had a chance to read them, much as I would have liked to do so.
So, I decided that it was high time to fix that, and so I read Dragonflight, the first volume in this sprawling and enormously popular series. This first book focuses primarily on Lessa who, when the story begins, is the last surviving member of the ruling family of Ruatha Hold. However, when her path crosses with the wingleader F’lar her life is forever changed, and it’s not long before she bonds with a queen dragon and becomes Weyrwoman of Benden Weyr. Her assumption of the title Weyrwoman is fortuitous, as matters are growing unsettled on Pern: many of the lords and other powers of Pern have grown frustrated with their tithes, and the threat of the ravenous organism known as Thread looms ever larger. Lessa and F’lar increasingly find themselves tested as they attempt to keep all life from being consumed.
Lessa is exactly the kind of feisty, passionate, and sometimes-frustrating heroine that one might expect from 1960s sci-fi. From the moment we meet her it’s clear that she has endured quite a lot in her short life. Having watched her entire family be slaughtered, she has spent the subsequent years plotting her revenge from the shadows, waiting for the chance when she can at last reclaim her family’s Hold and gain vengeance for what happened to them. While this makes her tough and redoubtable, it also makes her headstrong and sometimes overconfident, and it’s precisely these elements which make her such a good match for F’lar.
Narratively, McCaffrey skillfully builds the tension and the build-up, deftly interweaving Lessa’s growing independence and bond with Ramoth with her efforts to do everything she can to keep Pern from certain destruction. It’s clear that Lessa really does care deeply, both about her dragon and about the planet as a whole. Having endured a great deal in her young life, she’s not about to let the folly and short-sightedness of others get in the way of what she believes is the right and proper thing to do.
All of which culminates in Lessa’s precipitous decision to travel not just a few years back in time but hundreds of years, to the last time that the various Weyrs of Pern were at full strength. McCaffrey deftly shows us that even a powerful figure like Lessa isn’t immune from the laws that govern this fictional universe. As in our own, every action has consequences, and it’s lucky for Lessa, and for the rest of Pern, that she recovers in time to give her message to those in the past so that they can come forward to save the future.
Like the best of speculative fiction, Dragonflight grapples with some big questions. In addition to the central problem of the temporal paradox invoked by Lessa’s travel back in time–and the dragonriders travel forward–there is also the question of power: who wields it, why, and how. The entire reason that Lessa has to travel back in time in the first place is because far too many people on Pern have lost sight of the dangers posed by Thread, and they chafe at the idea that they have to support the dragonriders, who they see as a relic of a bygone era. As in our own world, human memories are short, and when the immediate threat is gone people begin to wonder once again why the old ways exist. It’s one of those elements of the story that I found oddly resonant for the present, in which a remarkable (and discouraging) number of Americans seem to have completely forgotten the threat posed by a particular presidential candidate and his legions of unhinged followers.
I have to say that my first foray into the world of Pern met and exceeded my expectations. There’s a sparseness to the prose that I found particularly compelling, and the characters, though sometimes verging more on the archetypal than the fully-fleshed-out beings that we have grown used to, are still fascinating in their own way. They are people who have the misfortune to be born into an age in which, once again, there is an existential threat looms, and they have to scramble to find some way to prevent all-out catastrophe. While we may not always like these people–F’lar, for example, can be grating in his bullying of Lessa–we can nevertheless sympathize with their plight.
Moreover, there’s something particularly ingenious about the extent to which Pern straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy. While dragons are almost always seen as the purview of the fantasy side of that equation, in McCaffrey’s world these giant creatures are the result of generations of breeding to cultivate the psychic link between rider and beast and to ensure they are large enough to carry human riders. Furthermore, though the novel is relatively short, it’s really quite dense (much like other sci-fi novels of the period), and she gives us a remarkable amount of insight into the way that Pern as a society works. This is a world that has been built from the ground up, and I can’t wait to read more of the series and see it revealed in all of its marvelous complexity.