Dragonflight
First edition
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| Author | Anne McCaffrey |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Dragonriders of Pern |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books |
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Publication date
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July 1968 |
| Media type | Print (paperback original; 1969 hardcover) |
| Pages | 309 |
| OCLC | 2485369 |
| Followed by | Dragonquest |
Dragonflight is a science fiction novel by the American-Irish author Anne McCaffrey. It is the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern series. Dragonflight was first published by Ballantine Books in July 1968. It is a fix-up of novellas, including two which made McCaffrey the first woman writer to win a Hugo and Nebula Award.
In 1987, Locus: The magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field ranked Dragonflight at number nine among the 33 "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", based on a poll of subscribers.
Two components of Dragonflight were award-winning novellas published by Analog science fiction magazine. The first segment, Weyr Search, illustrated by John Schoenherr, had been the cover story for the October 1967 issue. The second segment, Dragonrider, appeared in two parts, beginning in December 1967.
Weyr Search features a young woman named Lessa being recruited to establish a telepathic bond with a queen dragon at its hatching, thus becoming a dragonrider, and the leader of a Weyr community on the fictional planet Pern. Dragonrider features the growth of Lessa's queen dragon, Ramoth, and their training together. Analog editor John W. Campbell asked "to see dragons fighting Thread", Pern's menace from space, and he also suggested time travel. In response, McCaffrey wrote a third story titled "Crack Dust, Black Dust", which was not published separately, but provided crucial material for the novel.
Dragonflight takes place in the far future on Pern, a planet colonized by humans. The colonists had originally intended to gradually adopt a low-technology agrarian lifestyle, but were forced to move more quickly after they encountered the deadly Thread raining down from the sky. By harnessing and riding the indigenous, flying, fire-breathing dragons (with genetic alterations to make them larger and telepathic), the colonists destroyed the Thread in the skies over Pern, creating pockets of safety over its surface, before it was able to burrow into the land and breed. Humanity finally managed to find equilibrium and began to create a thriving culture, society, and economy, eventually expanding right across Pern's northern continent. However, when this narrative begins, an unusually long interval between Thread attacks has caused the general population to dismiss the threat as myth and gradually withdraw support from the Weyrs where dragons are bred and trained. By the time of this narrative, only one Weyr remains (the other five having mysteriously disappeared at the same time in the last quiet interval), maintaining a precarious existence.
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