Dragonflight
Built from the Hugo-winning 'Weyr Search' (the first fiction Hugo awarded a woman) and the Nebula-winning 'Dragonrider'; the founding novel of one of SF's best-loved series and the modern dragon-bond tradition entire.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
The White Dragon
by Anne McCaffrey · 1978 · The Dragonriders of Pern, book 3
What is The White Dragon about?
Jaxom, boy Lord Holder of Ruatha, accidentally Impresses Ruth — a white dragon, undersized, sport-coloured and reckoned a freak who won't live a year. Ruth lives, thrives and proves to have the surest time-sense of any dragon on Pern, while his rider chafes between two destinies (lords don't ride dragons; dragonriders don't hold lands) and stumbles, with the rest of the Benden leadership, onto the southern continent's buried secrets: the colony ships, the original settlement, the means perhaps to end Thread forever. The series' pivot from survival to rediscovery.
Why it matters
One of the first SF hardcovers ever to reach the New York Times bestseller list, announcing that the genre's readership had become a mass market — with a woman at the front of it.
Where does it sit in the series?
McCaffrey's lost colony where genetically engineered dragons and their telepathically bonded riders burn the deadly Thread from the skies — science fiction wearing fantasy's wings.
In the Guide from The Dragonriders of Pern:
- Dragonflight (1968)
- The White Dragon (1978)
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The Dragon Masters
Hugo winner for short fiction (1963), and a perfect single-sitting introduction to Vance's mirrored-civilisations mode.