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Pern

Pern

Rukbat's third planet was colonized some 200 years after the initial survey team first reported it fit for human habitation. For eight years the colonists worked hard to claim the planet as theirs. On the eighth year, they discovered the planet's deadly secret.

Thread.

A thread-like organism that falls from the sky, brought in by the odd orbit of the nearby Red Star, Thread ingests everything carbon based. It feeds on plants, animals - anything caught in its fall is considered a loss. Only fire, water, and extreme cold kill it, and only metal and rock are impervious to it. The struggling colony that had fought so hard to survive refused to give up. Some of the colonists noticed that the small, dragon-like flying lizards that were native to the planet were fighting Thread alongside the colonists with their flame-throwers, breathing fire to kill the deadly silver strands. With the help of Kitti Ping, the fire-lizards were bio-engineered and enhanced with metasynth. Thus, Pern's saviors were created. The dragons.

Pern thrived, and her settlers spread across the planet's face developing a culture all their own. The dragons grow larger with each generation, and their Impressed riders form a society apart in their weyrs. The people of Pern are Holders, Crafters, or Dragonriders. Using rooms and passageways that both occur naturally and were carved out by the original settlers, the people of Pern live deep in her caves and craters where Thread cannot reach. Over the centuries, Pern lost much of its technology to Thread and disuse. Now the Crafts teach youngsters trades using apprenticeships. Pern is mainly agricultural, with farms, vineyards, and herds abounding. She is a peaceful planet, and her citizens get along well. They prosper and spread during the two hundred year Intervals that Thread does not fall, and they survive just as well during the fifty year Passes.

The stories begin just before the Ninth Pass. It has been a long Interval - a conjunction of Rukbat's five planets has kept the Red Star from passing close enough to drop Thread on Pern for nearly four hundred years. The Pernese have become used to Pern without Thread - and few believe that it will come again. Even fewer are concerned about the five weyrs that sit empty in Pern's caves, or the lone Queen who lays dying in the one weyr that remains. Thus begins Dragonflight.



So now I know what Pern is - what books should I read first?
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