The Dragonmakers

The beautiful planet Pern seemed a paradise to its new colonists - until unimaginable terror turned it into hell. Suddenly deadly spores were falling like silver threads from the sky, devouring everything - and everyone - in their path. It began to look as if the colony, cut off from Earth and lacking the resources to combat the menace, was doomed.

Then some of the colonists noticed that the small, dragonlike lizards that inhabited their new world were joining the fight against Thread, breathing fire on it and teleporting to safety. If only, they thought, the dragonets were big enough for a human to ride and intelligent enough to work as a team with a rider...

And so they set their most talented geneticist to work to create the creatures Pern so desperately needed - Dragons!

Renegades!

As long as the people of Pern could remember, the Holds had protected them from Thread, the deadly silver strands that fell from the sky and ravaged the land. In exchange for sanctuary in the huge stone fortresses, the people tithed to their Lord Holders, who in turn supported the Weyrs, whose dragons were Pern's greatest weapon against Thread.

But not everyone on Pern was part of that system of mutual care and protection, particularly those who had been rendered holdless as punishment for wrongdoing. And there were some, like Jayge's trader clan, who simply preferred the freedom of the roads to the security of a hold. Others, like Aramina's family, had lost their holds through injustice and cruelty. For all the holdless, life was a constant struggle for survival.

Then, from the ranks of the crimminals and the disaffected, rose a band of renegades, led by the Lady Thella. No one was safe from Thella's depredations, and now her quarry was Aramina, reputed to have a telepathic link with dragons. But when Thella mistakenly vented her rage on Jayge's family, she made a dangerous enemy. For Jayge was bent on revenge...and he would never let her have the girl who heard dragons!

For generations, the dragonriders had dedicated their lives to fighting Thread, the dreaded spores that periodically rainded from the sky to ravage the land. On the backs of their magnificent telepathic dragons they flew to flame the deadly stuff out of the air before it could reach the planet's surface. But the greatest dream of the dragonriders was to find a way to eradicate Thread completely, so that never again would their beloved Pern be threatened with destruction.

Now, for the first time, it looked as if that dream could come true. For when the people of Pern, led by Masterharper Robinton and F'lar and Lessa, Weyrleader and Weyrwoman of Benden Weyr, excavated the ancient remains of the planet's original settlement, they uncovered the colonists' voice-activated artificial intelligence system - which still functioned! And the computer had incredible news for them: There was a chance - a good chance - that they could, at long last, annihilate Thread once and for all!

Once upon a time, a long time ago, even before the classic novel Dragonflight was written, a story was published. It was called "Weyr Search" and it introduced to the world the incredible Dragonriders of Pern. Now, Anne McCaffrey celebrates a quarter-century of dragons and dragonriders as she returns to the form that started it all: the first-ever Pern short story collection!

Let the queen of dragons take you back to the earlist days of Pernese history as she brings to life events that shaped one of the most popular worlds in all of science fiction.

Join the original survey team as they explore Pern and decide to recommend it for colonization.

Share the terror and the evacuation from the Souther Continent, as a flotilla of ships, aided by intelligent, talking dolphins, braves the dreadful currents of the Pernese ocean.

Learn how the famous Ruatha Hold was founded, and thrill with the dragonriders as they expand into a second, then a third Weyr.

And discover a secret lost in time: the rescue of some of the original colonists, before the planet was cut off forever.

Building a new life on a distant world, braving the dreaded Thread that falls like silver rain from the sky only to destroy every living thing it touches, flying heroically on the wondrous dragons: The Dragonriders of Pern.

• The Survey: P.E.R.N.
• The Dolphin's Bell
• The Ford of Red Hanrahan
• The Second Weyr
• Rescue Run

When the first humans came to settle the planet Pern, they did not come alone: intelligence-enhanced dolphins also crossed the stars, to colonize the oceans of the new planet while their human partners settled the vast continents. But then disaster struck in the form of Thread, deadly silver spores that fell like rain from the sky, devouring everything - and everyone - in their path. And as the human colonists' dreams of a new, idyllic life shattered into a desperate struggle for survival, the dolphins were forgotten, left to make their own life in the seas of Pern.

As time went by, human memory of dolphins was lost to legend, and only the occasional tall tale of "shipfish" rescuing fishermen lost at sea kept the legend alive. But the dolphins never forgot, and from generation to generation, they preserved their oral history against the day when humans at last might remember their old friends, and once again the seas would resound with the ringing of the dolphin's bells from docks and ships...

Now centuries later, the dragonriders of Pern were on the verge of ridding their planet of Thread forever. But T'lion, a young bronze rider, was not old enough to participate in that great venture. Instead, he and his dragon Gadareth, were relegated to conveying people from place to place - until he and Readis, son of the Lord Holder of Paradise River Hold, made contact with the legendary "shipfish".

And as the dragonriders grappled with the ending of an era, T'lion, Readis, and the dolphins faced the start of a new one: reviving the bond between land and ocean dwellers and, in the process, resurrecting the dreams of the first coloninsts of Pern...

It's been two hundred years since the deadly Thread fell like rain upon Pern, devouring everything in its path. No one alive remembers that first horrific onslaught and no one believes in its return - except for the dragonriders. For two centuries they have been practicing and training, passing down from generation to generation the formidable Threadfighting techniques.

Now the ominous signs are appearing: the violent winter storms and volcanic eruptions that are said the herald the approach of the Red Star and its lethal spawn. But one stubborn Lord Holder, Chalkin of Bitra, refuses to believe - and that disbelief could spell disaster. So as the dragonriders desperately train to face a terrifying enemy, they and the other Lord Holders must find a way to deal with Chalkin - before history repeats itself and unleashes its virulence on all of Pern...

Pern: a beautiful world ravaged by Thread, the deadly spores that fall like silver rain, devouring every living thing in their path. Pern: where dragons' flaming breath burns Thread out of the sky before it can drop on the helpless land below. Pern: where harper songs warn of Thread, record history, and prepare for the future. The harpers are the glue that holds the people of Pern together; and no man is more influential than the Masterharper of Pern.

In a time when no Thread has fallen for centuries - when, indeed, many are beginning to dare to hope that Thread will never fall again - a boy is born to Harper Hall. His name is Robinton, and he is destined to be one of the most famous and beloved leaders Pern has evern known.

The son of Petiron, renowned composer, and Merelan, one of Pern's most gifted singers, Robinton is a prodigy from birth. As a child, he is already composing music that the apprentice and journeyman harpers play with delight. And he also discovers another gift: he has the ability to speak with the dragons, who tend to reach out telepathically only to their riders.

But not everyone appreciates his talents. His own father, driven by jealousy, spurns the boy. And far to the north, in the High Reaches, trouble is brewing in the form of a despotic holder, Fax, who hates harpers in general - and Robinton in particular.

It is a perilous time for harpers. They sing of Thread, yet more and more people are beginning to doubt the return of that deadly scourge. They teach reading, writing, and history, yet Fax is determined to keep his growing area of influence free of the learning that might sow unrest. And they extol the dragonriders, whom many view increasingly as a drain on the resources of the Holds. Now harpers are being turned away from holds; and, worse yet, they are being derided, attacked, even beaten.

It is in this climate of unrest that Robinton will come into his own. For despite the tragedies that beset his own life, he continues to believe in music and in the dragons, and he is determined to save his beloved Pern from itself...so that the dragonriders can be ready to fly against the dreaded Thread when at least it returns! As the teaching songs sing:

Dragonmen must fly
When Threads are in the sky!

It is a time of hope and regret, of endings and beginnings. The Red Star, that celestial curse whose eccentric orbit was responsible for Thread, has been shifted to a harmless orbit, and the current Threadfall will be the last. Technological marvels are changing the face of life on Pern, and the dragonriders, led by F’lessan, son of F’lar and Lessa and rider of bronze Golanth, and Tia, rider of green Zaranth, must forge a new place for themselves in a world that may no longer need them.

But change is not easy for everyone. There are those who will stop at nothing to keep Pern and its people pure. And now a brand-new danger looms from the skies and threatens a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Once again, the world looks to the dragons and their riders to save the world. But now, as the friendship of F’lessan and Tia begins to bloom into something more, unforeseen tragedy strikes: a tragedy destined to forever change the future–not just of the two young lovers, but of every human and dragon on Pern . . .