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Pern, an isolated world with no useful resources, seemed like the ideal place for people tired of technology to establish a pastoral utopia, until Thread, an alien fungus that could devour a cow in seconds, began to fall from the skies. Rather than permanently resort to technological measures, the colonists used genetic engineering to create dragons, a solution compatible with their principles since, like the spaceships that had brought them to Pern, it was technology they could use once, then discard. Using planes to fight Thread would mean living in an industrial society capable of supporting them; dragons could be supported by the idealised medieval society the settlers had wanted. There's also the matter that they'd been warned the planet's resources were "negligible". There's insufficient metal and fuel for such an industrial society, whether or not they want one.
Written by Anne McCaffrey, the first Pern novella, "Weyr Search", was published in Analog, an adult science fiction magazine edited by John W. Campbell, in October 1967. She kept writing them for another forty years, though later in collaboration with her son, Todd, who eventually took over the series. She was the first woman writer in history to win the Hugo and Nebula Awards, for "Weyr Search" and the original "Dragonflight" (Analog, December 1967/January 1968).
Most of the books take place over two thousand years after Pern was first settled, beginning when Thread has been absent for 400 years, ever since most of the dragonriders mysteriously disappeared. Only a handful of people still believe Thread was ever real, and there aren't enough dragons left to fight it if it should return, which it does. Fortunately, it turns out that dragons aren't just fire-breathing telepathic teleporters; they can also Time Travel. The heroine travels 400 years into the past, and brings forward the missing dragonriders, creating a Stable Time Loop.
Subsequent books dealt with the culture clash between the old-fashioned time-displaced dragon riders and the people they had come to save, and with the gradual rediscovery of technology, which led to the unearthing of the original colony, and a final end to Thread. There are also several prequels, describing how various aspects of Pern society came to be. Some of the books overlap with each other, covering the same events but following different characters.
The series initially had a fantasy feel, with a few Science Fiction trappings,note then evolved into Science Fantasy. McCaffrey, for her part, always insisted that the stories were straight Sci-Fi, though it could be hard to tell in many of the books.
There was also a board game from Nova Game Designs, and a computer game was released for the Commodore 64.
Novels and short stories (in order of publication):
- Dragonflight (Anne McCaffrey, 1968)
- Dragonquest (Anne McCaffrey, 1970)
- Dragonsong (Anne McCaffrey, 1976)
- Dragonsinger (Anne McCaffrey, 1977)
- The White Dragon (Anne McCaffrey, 1978)
- Dragondrums (Anne McCaffrey, 1979)
- Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern (Anne McCaffrey, 1983)
- Nerilka's Story (Anne McCaffrey, 1986)
- Dragonsdawn (Anne McCaffrey, 1988)
- "The Impression" (Anne McCaffrey, 1989)
- Renegades of Pern (Anne McCaffrey, 1989)
- All the Weyrs of Pern (Anne McCaffrey, 1991)
- The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (Anne McCaffrey, 1993)
- "The Survey: P.E.R.N." (Anne McCaffrey, 1993)
- "The Dolphins' Bell" (Anne McCaffrey, 1993)
- "The Ford of Red Hanranhan" (Anne McCaffrey, 1993)
- "The Second Weyr" (Anne McCaffrey, 1993)
- "Rescue Run" (Anne McCaffrey, 1991)
- The Dolphins of Pern (Anne McCaffrey, 1994)
- Red Star Rising / Dragonseye (Anne McCaffrey, 1996)
- The Masterharper of Pern (Anne McCaffrey, 1998)
- The Skies of Pern (Anne McCaffrey, 2001)
- A Gift of Dragons (Anne McCaffrey, 2002)
- "The Smallest Dragonboy" (Anne McCaffrey, 1973)
- "The Girl Who Heard Dragons" (Anne McCaffrey, 1986)
- "Runner of Pern" (Anne McCaffrey, 1998)
- "Ever the Twain" (Anne McCaffrey, 2002)
- "Beyond Between" (Anne McCaffrey, 2003)
- Dragon's Kin (Anne and Todd McCaffrey, 2003)
- Dragonsblood (Todd McCaffrey, 2005)
- Dragon's Fire (Anne and Todd McCaffrey, 2006)
- Dragon Harper (Anne and Todd McCaffrey, 2007)
- Dragonheart (Todd McCaffrey, 2008)
- Dragongirl (Todd McCaffrey, 2010)
- Dragon's Time (Anne and Todd McCaffrey, 2011)
- Sky Dragons (Anne and Todd McCaffrey, 2012)
- Dragon's Code (Gigi McCaffrey, 2018)
These books provide examples of:
- Absence of Evidence: When bullies hurt Piemur by greasing up a flight of stairs, they clean up afterwards to hide the evidence. Their superiors start to suspect foul play when they realize that only the trapped stair was too clean, while the rest of the stairs were still dirty.
- Abusive Parents:
- Petiron was not a good father, to put it lightly. Not actively vicious, but cold and harshly critical of Robinton to the point where it's hard to tell the difference.
- In Dragonsong, Menolly's father beats her for composing music, and her mother may have deliberately attempted to cripple her hand so she can't play an instrument. She rises above every other hardship in her life, but she never forgives her parents. However, the canon text is explicitly contradictory on whether Menolly's mother did her best and was sad that she couldn't help more, or deliberately let her be crippled.
- Aramina has a very 'my way or the highway' viewpoint, and refuses to try to compromise or understand things from her son's point of view. Eventually he leaves the Hold after they fight and she demands that he make a promise he doesn't want to make.
- Ace Pilot: McCaffrey based her dragon riders' personalities and physical characteristics on real-life fighter pilots.
- Action Girl:
- Prior to the Ninth Pass, female dragonriders are entirely normal and accepted. During the last Long Interval, however, Benden Weyr devolves to a male-dominated society until Lessa proves beyond any doubt her ability to both command the Weyr and ride her dragon into combat. Later, Mirrim undergoes a similar ordeal as a green dragonrider.
- According to background material, Pern society became more patriarchal after the Plague in Moreta's time, as the population reduction forced women to focus more on making and raising babies.
- Adam and Eve Plot: In the short story "Rescue Run", Steve Kimmer and his family are discovered by Pern's would-be rescuers on the Southern Continent. Rather than "repopulate the planet", they've become an insular clan with strong implications of Parental Incest.
- Agony of the Feet: Menolly gets caught out during Threadfall and runs the skin off the bottoms of her feet (after wearing through the soles of her shoes) trying to reach shelter. She's spotted and rescued by a dragon and rider. Years later, she comments that her feet are still unusually sensitive.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted with AIVAS, who is the anti-HAL 9000. Not only does he help free Pern from thread forever, he commits suicide rather than let the people of Pern become dependent on him.
- Alien Blood: Pernese native animals have green, copper-based blood.
- Alien Sky: The Red Star, of course, but Pern also has two moons. Plus, Pern is far enough away from Earth that the night sky would look very different, with none of the familiar constellations. A few references in The Skies of Pern do make it clear that at least some of the same stars are visible, though naturally from a completely different perspective.
- Alphabetical Theme Naming: Dragons name themselves at Impression, always with a name that ends in -th: Faranth, Ruth, Mnementh, etc. Why they all seem to hatch instinctively knowing to do this is not explained or even brought up.
- A Master Makes Their Own Tools:
- AIVAS has each member of the team dissecting Thread make their own tools, despite the presence of a craft guild that could have easily provided enough tools for the team.
- The Harpers also make their own instruments. Menolly learned how to make a simple drum in her apprenticeship and is asked to demonstrate this skill when she gets to the Harper Hall.
- And Then What?: Used by F'lar on Lessa in Weyr Search (the opening segment of Dragonflight) after Fax dies and his newborn son inherits leadership of Ruatha Hold. Lessa admits she'd never thought beyond Fax's death, having assumed she would take over Ruatha, but with infant Jaxom in the way, she can't. F'lar thus persuades her to come back to Benden Weyr and Impress their last Queen egg, becoming Weyrwoman.
- And This Is for...: Late in The Renegades of Pern, when Jayge is fighting Thella to save his family.Jayge (slashes her arm with a sword) "That's for Armald!" (gashes her arm with a dagger) "That's for Borgald's best team!" (slashes across her midriff) "And that was for Readis!"
Thella (surprised, since Readis worked for her): "Readis?" ... "What was Readis to you?"
Jayge: "My uncle, Thella. My uncle!" - The Apprentice: Apprenticeships are the main form of education for most of the series. In particular the protagonist of the Harper Hall trilogy is an apprentice Harper.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: The lion's share of the Lord Holders at the beginning of the series are spiteful, narrow-minded old men that create headaches for F'lar and the other protagonists on a regular basis. They gradually get replaced by younger and more reasonable (or, at least, pragmatic) successors. And some that don't get replaced for a long time, like Lord Raid of Benden Hold, do loosen up a bit.
- Artificial Limbs: In Dragonsdawn Paul Benden has a couple of prosthetic fingers.
- Author Catchphrase: McCaffrey has a name, "Johnny Greene", or "J.G.", that she likes to insert into most of her works. Jayge is an example. One of the companion pieces revealed that the real "Johnny Greene" was a family friend who was murdered in France prior to the publication of Renegades of Pern.
- Bad Moon Rising: Well, technically it's a planet, but the Red Star definitely counts. If it appears during the daytime, it means vast torrents of flesh-eating fungus from outer space are imminent. Justified Trope, because the Red Star's gravity is what drags the flesh-eating fungus from the system's Oort Cloud equivalent into Pern's atmosphere.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Aramina tells Readis that he must either promise to never again have anything to do with dolphins, or he cannot live in Paradise River Hold. Rather than being cowed and obeying, he simply tells her that he can't make that promise and leaves the Hold with no intention of returning.
- Best Served Cold: Lessa was ready to wait ten years disguised as a menial servant to take revenge on the man who slew her entire family. During this time she turned Ruatha, one of the wealthiest Holds, into a complete ruin through simple sabotage and slight adjustments of co-workers' emotions and decisions via telepathy, and manipulated F'lar into a duel with Fax to make him pay. She was only ten years old when this started.
- Bitch Alert:
- A weyrwoman or greenrider usually gets alerted to mating time when she/he notices her/his queen/green is in a foul, violent mood. Later this applies to Mirrim, if only making her slightly worse off than her normal attitude. Humans around the rider in question tend to notice that the rider's getting more than a little cranky, too.
- This applies even to queen fire lizards. In Dragondrums Sebell's Kimi refuses to share any fish she caught.
- Blade Enthusiast: Dragonriders don't carry swords, but many are deadly efficient duelists with the belt knives (akin to a hunting knife) that all Pernese men and some women carry. Most bladed weapons, even machetes and the like, are called "knives"; swords do exist, but are used only in situations of organized combat. This is most likely due to the scarcity of metals on Pern.
- Blind Jump: Going between without a destination firmly in mind will cause the dragon and its passenger(s) to never emerge, which is fatal. Poorly imagining one's destination can result in a Tele-Frag. Conversely, imagining aspects of one's destination too well can result in accidental Time Travel. This is all covered in the extensive training given to young dragonriders, with the grisly examples of those who didn't pay attention in the past serving to drive the lessons home.
- Bond Creatures: Both dragons and fire lizards, since the former are descended from the latter. They're Impressed at birth, the dragons instinctively seeking a human to bond with and the fire lizards doing so if a human feeds a newly-hatched one upon hatching.
- A Boy and His X:
- Any human who Impresses a dragon becomes an example. The human-dragon bond is deep and permanent, marking the person forever as part of an elite group. Most dragonrider candidates are in their teens, so in many ways the act of Impression marks their transition from child to adult, or at least to adult-in-training. Normally dragonriders live in the Weyr where they impressed for the rest of their lives; Jaxom with his white dragon Ruth is the first dragonrider in centuries to live anywhere but a Weyr.
- Some cases of human-to-fire-lizard bonds can also qualify, especially those like Menolly who bond with several fire-lizards at once. When Masterharper Robinton Impresses a bronze fire-lizard, it gives him a window of understanding into the bond between dragonrider and dragon, something he had previously been forced to take on faith.
- Brainy Brunette: Lessa qualifies as she is not only the one to figure out Threadfall patterns and trick a Dragonrider into challenging a Lord Holder to a death match, but she also figures out how to save the planet and then does it against the wishes of everyone else involved.
- Breath Weapon:
- Most of the dragons ingest an ore called "firestone" to enable them to breathe fire. The phosphorus in the firestone reacts with the dragon's stomach acid to produce phosphine (chemical formula PH3), a poison gas that ignites spontaneously upon contact with air. The egg-laying gold dragons aren't allowed to chew firestone because it has the side effect of sterilizing females. In Dragonsdawn, it's revealed that this is a misinterpretation of the actual reason: Greens were genetically tweaked to be sterile regardless of firestone, and queens who try to eat firestone vomit it back up, making it necessary for their riders to use flamethrowers. This tweaking was to match the conservative gender views of the geneticist who did the work: on finding out after her death, the queen riders were not pleased.
- Though it also protects the only viable females. The greens were meant to be sterile because green firelizards were neglectful mothers at best, with clutches forgotten or destroyed by predators. Golds were much more successful, but this meant they were the ONLY thing keeping the dragon species going (all males could sire clutches of all colors, upping the odds of having a fertile male around.) Risking them in any way meant risking everyone's survival, as Benden Weyr found out by the start of the Ninth Pass when the survival of the entire species hinged on one egg (Ramoth's, luckily.)
- Bring My Brown Pants: Discussed by riders in Dragonseye who are about to face the first Threadfall in two hundred years.
- Invoked by the riders in Dragonsdawn, after their first (unplanned) flight between.
- Broken Bird:
- Lessa when introduced. She was the only survivor of a slaughter that killed the rest of her family and then spent years hiding who she was as a lowly servant. She gets better.
- Menolly's teacher and only friend who encouraged her abilities died, and then her father put her through a great amount of abuse to ensure she never sang or played again. Her mother helped him do it.
- The Bully: Piemur faced a quartet of them in the Drum Heights, and the abusive Journeyman Dirzan who ignored his complaints about the four bullies. The bullies' last act against him was to grease the steps of the stairs, so he would slip on his run back up the steps. When the fall knocks him unconscious, they clean the grease off the steps so it will look like an accident...and then leave him lying there.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Runnerbeasts and herdbeasts, sort of. While they are related to horses and oxen (and are described as looking similar), they were significantly genetically engineered by the original colonists to be able to eat Pernese flora, which is high in Boron. So they're probably a different species, technically.
- Exaggerated in that this trope applies to horse-related terms as well, as runners' saddles are called "backpads" and bridles, "headgear".
- Cannot Spit It Out:
- F'lar and Lessa in Dragonflight. It takes mating dragons/fire lizards to get them to admit their feelings.
- Sebell and Menolly in Dragonsinger. It takes mating dragons/fire lizards to get them to admit their feelings.
- In Dragonsdawn, Tarvi didn't tell Telgar he loved her until she was about to die... and they had been married for years and had several children.
- Can't Live Without You: Once a rider dies, the dragon normally commits suicide post-haste. Moreta's queen is temporarily tethered by her mothering instinct for the eggs she just laid, but suicides as soon as the eggs are hard enough to survive without her. Riders whose dragons die also frequently suicide; those who don't, such as Lytol, remain somewhat shattered for the rest of their lives, if not outright mindblasted (Kylara). Brekke is helped a great deal by her rare ability to hear other dragons.
- Charm Person: Part of Lessa's Psychic Powers manifest as a subtle form of this. Actually she does the opposite in Weyr Search, causing everyone to think she is an ugly, elderly drudge worker since the age of ten. When F'lar notices that her hands are quite young and graceful, she reaches into his mind and blurs the image.
- Chilly Reception:
- Menolly is accepted by almost everybody in Harper Hall... but the ones who object to her presence make her life hell. A rare example of the protagonist not winning everyone over; instead, she settles for getting her own back.
- Piemur's example is worse: after his voice breaks, he's sent to become a drum apprentice until his voice stabilizes. However, he's also (secretly) made Master Robinton's apprentice, which often involves being sent on very confidential missions. Determined to prove that he's not just a joker and a slacker who coasts by on natural talent, Piemur makes a decision to stop playing around and start working — and the other drum apprentices, who were expecting the joker, don't take it well, especially when Piemur learns drum measures at a speed most of them probably couldn't match. His going on said missions, including one to a Gather at Igen Hold and, as far as they knew got a free day because of a Hatching at Benden Weyrnote , just makes it a lot worsenote . Further problematic was the Journeyman who was generally on watch never believed him on any matters. And he doesn't go to Robinton, because he doesn't want the Masterharper to think he can't handle his assignment. Then Menolly, by then a Journeyman herself, and Master Robinton, found out what was going on and the shit hit the fan very hard indeed.
- Color-Coded Castes: The various Holds and Crafts have traditional colors and shoulder knot patterns that denote rank and affiliation. This is more an example for the characters than the readers, as the Hold/Craft colors almost never get described in the text. Harpers are associated with a light shade of blue known as "Harper Blue"; healers usually wear green.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Dragons' colors denote gender, size, and rank, exactly as their fire lizard ancestors. Gold = Queens, the dominant females and the primary egglayers; Bronze = the largest and dominant males, ridden by wingleaders; Brown = smaller and weaker males, tend to be ridden by wingseconds; Blue = the smallest, fastest, and least intelligent males; Green = the smallest, subordinate females, who are infertile due to firestone consumptionnote .
- The Bronze, Brown, and Blue dragons are Boy dragons. The Gold and Green dragons are Girl dragons.
- Comet of Doom:
- The Red Star is a captured planet in an elongated (comet-like) orbit. When you can see it in the sky, it means that it's nearby... and has dragged a bunch of frozen organisms from the Oort Cloud to the inner solar system with it. These organisms, upon entering Pern's atmosphere, become the Threads. They eat any organic material they can. Crops, wood, grass, fungi... people...
- There's a more direct example in The Skies of Pern, where a comet impacts in the sea and causes a massive tsunami.
- Commonality Connection: In Dragonsinger, when Menolly is caught in a fight during a fair, another girl, jumping to join her side, calls for a boy to join in because Menolly, like them, comes from a sea hold. It works. Robinton rebukes him because his father had sent him to be fostered where he was to broaden his mind.
- Conflict Ball: Some characters seem to switch between supportive and antagonistic between books as plot demands.
- Jayge and Aramina, who were seeking confirmation of dolphin intelligence from AIVAS in All the Weyrs so their son and Alemi wouldn't be seen as crazy, to Dolphins where they thought he was crazy and irresponsible.
- Toric is a force unto himself; see Wild Card below. He seems to have a Conflict Ball sewn into his clothes, as pretty much any time he shows up in a story, he's causing trouble.
- Corrupt Bureaucrat: Chalkin, Lord Holder of Bitra in Dragonseye, who refuses to believe that Thread will return and won't take the necessary precautions to protect his people. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the things he does.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Had Lessa just asked F'lar for help, as was her right, instead of trying to trick him into it she really would have become ruler of Ruatha hold as she wanted. None of the rest of the plot would have proceeded as written due to that one mistake on her part.
- Creature-Hunter Organization: The Titular Dragonriders, being specifically formed to fight Thread, a dangerous, if mindless, lifeform from space.
- Culture Clash: Between Weyr, Hold, and Craft. Their traditions have diverged sharply over the centuries and frequently come into conflict in the main storyline. Similarly, a major conflict arises between the Oldtimer Weyrfolk who are brought forward in time by Lessa and the more "modern" Weyrfolk under F'lar's command.
- Death by Childbirth: Happens to Jaxom's mother (and it's implied Fax was trying to invoke this for her), and is generally a significant risk in a low-tech, frontier, feudal society.
- Death World:
- F'nor and Canth pay a visit to the Red Star at the end of Dragonquest and come back near-dead and skinless from the corrosive, unbreathable atmosphere.
- Pern itself was one before the Colonists engineered the Dragons. The original surveyors of the planet had wondered why there were circular patterns of new growth, and so few biological niches filled. The Colonists found out the answers the hard way.
- A Degree in Useless: By the time of the Second Pass, Pern's sole college (that later becomes the Harper Hall) is wondering why they still consider Computer Science to be a prestigious degree when they only have one computer left on the planet — that gets destroyed by a lightning strike a few chapters later.
- Despair Event Horizon: The death of a dragon or its rider will send the living member of the pair into despair or insanity. If the rider dies, his dragon will invariably commit suicide by going between. If the dragon dies, the rider may become Ax-Crazy, suicidal, an Empty Shell, or all of the above.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Dragons were explicitly created to fight Thread. The Weyrs are supported by the Holds for their services in fighting Thread. So once the dragonriders stop Thread from falling again, the big problem immediately becomes the question of how the Weyrs will support themselves once there is no Thread to fight, and the Holds therefore won't be supporting them — and exactly what they'll do with their time. By the end of The Skies of Pern, they've found their new purpose — watching for and protecting Pern from other falling objects, like meteors.
- Didn't Think This Through: Tenim's plan towards the second half of Dragon Fire is to amass a vast amount of firestone before Thread returns and then destroy the source so that he can profit from controlling its supply to the dragonriders. Tenim seems to miss the obvious flaw with this plan; since dragonriders go through a lot of firestone over a short period of time, his supply wouldn't last very long, and if it ran out when Thread started falling practically everyone on the planet would die.
- Disappointed in You: Piemur had a reputation for getting by on his looks and talent, but wanted to prove himself to Robinton and Menolly as someone who could work hard and be serious. He didn't want to disappoint them. So he kept silent about the full extent of the abuse his fellow drum trainees were putting him through. Even after he nearly died because they greased the stairs, this was the reason he gave. His friends were horrified at the thought that they inadvertently caused the situation by putting the pressure on him.
- Disease by Any Other Name: In Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern and its side novel Nerilka's Story, a fast-spreading illness almost wipes out the human population until a Healer and a weyr-woman manage to re-invent vaccination. The Pernese don't know what the illness is, but any reader who's ever had the flu will recognize it immediately. (Most of the deaths are from secondary illnesses, which matches Real Life influenza epidemics.)
- Distress Call: In Dragonsdawn, the colonists could have sent a distress beacon into space after the Threadfall, but this would most likely have brought scavengers down on them, who would pick over the bones of the colony regardless of whether there was anyone still alive or not. Not to mention that it would take at minimum ten years for help to arrive. They decided not to call for help. A rogue group of colonists fire it off anyway, which caused interesting things several generations down the road.
- Doing In the Wizard: The series begins with fire-breathing dragons, telepathy, and teleportation, all regarded as a kind of magic (although it's never explicitly called that). By the third book in the series, the dragons are genetically modified lizards with technobabble explanations for the telepathy and teleportation and telekinesis that let the massive dragons fly with wings too small for their bodies. As mentioned in the description at the top of the page, MacCaffery always considered the series to be pure Science Fiction, even if it looks like Low Fantasy at first glance.
- Domestic Abuse:
- F'lar is very rough with Lessa at first; he gets less so as their relationship matures.
- In fact, there is a lot of Domestic Abuse all the way through the series. F'nor thinks the selfish Kylara needs "a sound thrashing", as if this is the normal way unruly people are treated. Her maid observes that T'bor gets drunk and beats Kylara. Kylara is also having an affair with Lord Meron, who leaves her covered in bruises, though that is implied to be as a result of the less-than-safe rough sex she enjoys.
- Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!:
- Menolly's father beats her in this manner for the grave sin of improvising her own music.
- While F'lar doesn't go quite this far, he has a tendency in the earlier books to shake Lessa when she upsets him. He does it so often that she expects it when she returns from her heroic mission through time. He does, though it's implied to be because he's relieved to see her, not out of anger.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Tarvi Andiyar married Sallah Telgar because he got her pregnant — because she drugged his klah with an aphrodisiac. And most of their later children were conceived when she went down on him while he was half-asleep and unable to refuse her advances. After her horrible death at the hands of Avril Bitra, Tarvi changes his name to his wife's and regrets that he never told her how much he loved her until she was dying.
- Dragon Rider: One of the Trope Makers, as the dragons are primarily ridden by their partners.
- Dragon Tamer: The series revolves around an alien planet where the humans who crashed there centuries ago use psychic powers to establish empathic bonds with the native dragons in order to fight the alien Thread that falls from the sky and devours all organic matter it touches every time the planet's sister world comes close.
- Dragon Variety Pack: Dragons are differentiated by their colors (one of five: Gold, Bronze, Brown, Blue, and Green), which indicate their rarity, their genders (Golds and Greens are female, the others male), and their rider's place in the weyr hierarchy. There are also watch-whers, which are smaller, less graceful and can't breathe fire, and fire lizards, the tiny fire-breathing, winged reptiloid that the colonists created dragons and watch-whers from.
- Dramatis Personae: Used in most of the early Pern novels, then quietly dropped later.
- Driven to Suicide: Happens to riders whose dragons die, and vice versa.
- Drowning My Sorrows:
- Even decades later, Lytol drinks to unconsciousness after a dragon dies to numb the pain of losing his.
- Robinton is also overly fond of drink, and has been ever since his bride Kasia died of a plague. Though he's managed to cultivate a reputation as a wine connoisseur and implies it enhances his music, and so his frequent drinking is rarely looked down upon. He also manages to never become falling-down drunk, or even particularly sloppy, even when he's drinking people like Lytol under the table (he's even implied to have pretended to be more drunk than he was for Lytol's benefit).
- Duel to the Death: Dueling for honor is frowned on but permitted, and such duels can go to the death. Since there are no firearms, all duels are with blades, usually the "belt knives" that most Pernese men (and even some women) carry.
- In Dragonflight, Lessa manipulates the dragonrider F'lar into a death-duel with the corrupt Lord Fax, since Fax murdered Lessa's entire family.
- In Dragonquest, Oldtimer T'ron challenges F'lar at a particularly bad time. T'ron clearly intends to kill F'lar, but F'lar can only fight to wound his opponent. T'ron is a fellow dragonrider, and killing him means killing his dragon too — something F'lar absolutely will not do.
- In The White Dragon, Oldtimer T'kul arranges a situation where he challenges F'lar to a duel — right after T'kul's dragon Salth has died, so T'kul is not only taller and stronger, but also Ax-Crazy after the death of his dragon.
- Averted later in The White Dragon: Holder Toric of Southern casually insults both Lord Jaxom and his Hold of Ruatha. Jaxom is about to challenge because of the insult when Lessa and F'lar (the two most powerful people on Pern) enter the argument and force Toric to back down.
- At the end of The Renegades of Pern, Jayge fights Big Bad Thella to the death. He foiled her plans more than once, while she killed his uncle and tried to kill his wife and kids, so neither one is holding back.
- Due to the Dead:
- Centuries after she sacrificed her life to save Pern, Sallah Telgar's body is brought down from space and given a very elaborate ceremonial funeral, including the coffin being borne by queen dragons.
- Menolly is first introduced in Dragonsong as singing the funeral elegy for Petiron, the Harper of her family's hold, her friend and teacher.
- Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: Thread is a ravenous mycorrhizoid spore that can eat virtually anything carbon-based and burrow into the earth. But water (even a good soaking thunderstorm) kills it, as does fire and cold. In Dragonflight, the Pernese don't realize that Threadfall has started because the first few falls are over the northern area of the continent during winter. The trouble is, although Thread is doomed from the moment it arrives, it can still do a hell of a lot of damage before it dies.
- Empty Shell: If a rider who loses his dragon does not commit suicide, he or she is frequently left as this. The quintessential example is Kylara, who is left almost catatonic when her queen dies. Lytol manages to avert this. While he never gets over the pain of losing his dragon, he presses on through life by engaging in other pursuits. First by being a Weaver, then by dedicating himself to making Ruatha Hold prosperous again for his ward Jaxom, whom he treats as a son (albeit in a distant fashion).
- Enemy to All Living Things: Thread eats its way through anything organic — being tied out during threadfall is the single most dire punishment that a criminal can be sentenced to. Drowned Thread OTOH (Thread can't survive in water) is a rich food source for marine life. While the rest of Pern suffers due to Thread, fish and other sea animals thrive. Played with later on, when it is discovered that Thread is actually only a small part of an extremely complex ecology of space-born lifeforms in Pern's Oort cloud. Presumably, its effects on Pern are an accidental side effect rather than its normal life cycle, since thread on Pern is stranded with no way to get back or reproduce. There's even a brief discussion of the ethics of causing the extinction of Thread, since this will disrupt the oort cloud ecology, but they quickly decide to go through with it anyway.
- Epigraph: The early Pern books have snippets of Harper songs at the start of each chapter.
- Eternal English: Over 2500 years on Pern have introduced a lingual shift despite the best efforts of the Harpers. However, the shift is not so severe that, allowing for the loss of context, they cannot understand the language of their ancestors. Documents and recordings from the colonists are still understandable to modern characters (though some of the context has been lost). After being unburied, AIVAS is able to rapidly adjust its language to make itself understood. The dolphins underwent a similar linguistic shift, mostly becoming simpler and filled with abbreviations (for instance, the "blood fish" that attach themselves to the dolphins' undersides like leeches became "bluufis").
- Evil Luddite: The Abominators, a group of people who distrusted the rediscovered technology that was introduced into Pern society by AIVAS during the Ninth Pass and considered AIVAS itself an abomination that was threatening their way of life. The first group successfully kidnapped MasterHarper Robinton, intending to use him as a hostage and only releasing him if AIVAS was destroyed, but they were ultimately captured and exiled (and their actions hastened Robinton's own death). A second group appeared several years later during The Skies of Pern, trying to destroy the new Crafthalls that had come into being as a result of the reintroduced technologies, but they were rendered mostly defunct when their leader tried to invade AIVAS' main chamber (again, as he'd been part of the first group) and was killed by the still active defenses.
- Evil Reactionary: The Abominators in The Skies of Pern, while primarily Evil Luddites, also qualify for this trope as their efforts to destroy Aivas and anything he restored to Pern are motivated by their desire to keep things as they were before, feeling that any changes will destroy their traditional values and way of life, and that permanently destroying Thread was a bad idea because the threat it posed kept Pern's people working together. As such, they resort to the Evil Luddite method, trying to destroy or prevent the use of anything Aivas shared, in order to turn society back to the way it was before Aivas was discovered. This includes attacking the new Crafthalls founded more recently, since they're based on Aivas' teachings.
- Fantastic Flora: Several Pernese plants qualify, along with at least one fungus:
- Bark from a native tree is used to brew klah, a drink somewhere between tea and coffee, with the same mild-stimulant effect and just as tasty. Pernese drink a lot of klah. The tree, of course, is simply the "klahbark tree".
- Another kind of tree produces fruit whose juice can be used to brew a drink called fellis, which is a mild-to-moderate painkiller and sedative that is completely safe to use, with no physical addictive qualities. However, it's still dangerous in high dosages, as it can kill.
- Juice from a native bush can be collected, boiled down, and turned into a powerful, universally effective, entirely non-addictive painkiller. It's known as the numbweed bush.
- A type of native fungus is luminescent and grows readily on rocks. Rocks covered with the fungus are called "glows", and serve as the Pernese's standard source of light in areas not lit by sunlight.
- Fantastic Naming Convention:
- A common naming convention among Weyrborn is to have the first half of one parent's name combined with the second half of the other's (modifying the end to the appropriate gender, adding '-n' or '-a'). In this way, you have Falloner and Lorana giving Falarnon, and Falloner and Manora giving Famanoran.
- When a male rider Impresses, they shorten their name and contract the first syllable. The first dragonriders noticed their dragons clipped their riders' names, so adopted the practice, first as the equivalent to a pilot call sign, then more formally to aid communication during combat; later it became an honorific. One conversation notes that mothers in the weyr plan for this, choosing names for boys that are easily contracted.
- Falloner becomes F'lon, Falarnon becomes F'lar, and Famanoran becomes F'nor.
- One of the things that distinguishes Jaxom of Rutha Hold as not a Dragonrider is that he does not receive the honorific. Although before that decision was made, Lessa amuses herself by wondering his name might be shortened to since — not being weyr-born — his name was never designed with contraction in mind.
- For the dragons themselves, each one has a single personal name, which always ends in "th".
- In Todd McCaffrey's books from the 3rd Pass, it is revealed that watchwher have their own naming convention. Their names end in '-sk', with the first part taken from the name of the person or bloodline they are linked to. The closer the bond, the more of their name taken.
- The watchwher for Fort Hold is Forsk.
- Nuella's first, green, watchwher renames herself to Nuelsk when she transfers her bond from Kindan. After she dies, Nuella then bonds a gold, Nuellask.
- Fantastic Recruitment Drive: When the dragonriders go on Search, they seek young men and women with latent telepathic abilities, able to bond with dragons. Though as their scientific knowledge regresses, they lose an understanding of what exactly they're looking for, relying on their dragons to tell them if someone is suitable.
- Fantastic Time Management: The books have several examples of people using their dragons' time-jumping ability for reasons, which they call "Timing it".
- Jaxom does it a few times throughout The White Dragon, mostly for relatively trivial reasons.
- In Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern, Moreta does it repeatedly, to the point of exhaustion and eventual death, to deliver a plague cure to everyone who needs it.
- In The Skies Of Pern, pretty much every dragon-rider does it after a meteorite causes a massive tidal wave threatens all of the coastal regions: they time-jump to hours before the event to begin the evacuations. It works: they lose a lot of infrastructure but practically no people.
- Fate Worse than Death:
- Most Pernese consider being banished from a hold a harsher punishment than execution, since they automatically assume the condemned is going to be eaten by thread. Several characters learn to survive holdless simply by hiding in caves. Menolly notes that most of the time very little Thread actually gets to the surface thanks to the dragonriders.
- Losing their bondmates is this for dragons/dragonriders. Riders whose dragons die usually commit suicide. Dragons whose riders die always commit suicide.
- Feminist Fantasy: Well, the installments written in the 1960s and 1970s were,
by the standards of the time. The goalposts have been moved considerably since then.
- Feudal Future: When first seen, Pern has a medieval society to go with the dragons, although this starts to change once it gets back in touch with its past.
- First Girl Wins: Robinton's short-lived wife Kasia still haunts his dreams. When he becomes involved with Silvina, he offers to marry her when she informs him that she's pregnant. She refuses (gently) because it's Kasia's name he still says in his sleep; he never recovers from losing her.
- Florence Nightingale Effect:
- Jaxom and Sharra's relationship begins this way, after she treats him for Firehead Fever.
- When Lessa is treating F'lar's knife wound, she can't help but notice his manliness.
- Free-Love Future: The Weyr culture is highly liberated due to the nature of dragon/rider relationships; dragons mate with whom they choose and their partners are compelled to do the same. Children are fostered and raised by the Weyr as a whole to avoid attachments to any particular parent, given their high mortality rates.
- Fun with Acronyms: Pern (Parallel Earth; Resources Negligible), and AIVAS (Artificial Intelligence Voice-Address System).
Word of God says that Pern is a backronym; McCaffrey came up with the name for the planet a long time before deciding it meant anything.
- Gender Rarity Value: Applies in this case to the dragons; golds are the least common dragon color and yet the ones primarily responsible for populating the Weyrs. Over the last Long Interval, the Weyr population diminished to the point where there was only one gold alive at any time (because Lessa had gone back in time to the end of the Eighth Pass to bring the population of every Weyr except Benden to the future), making the extinction of the species a real possibility and justifying the taboo against flying golds in combat, something which had not existed in previous Passes.
- Genetic Memory: There is a very strong implication that fire lizard memory is this; it's hard to imagine any other way that they could remember the events of Landing so vividly two thousand years later. In fact, it's fire lizard memory that leads Jaxom's team to discover the original Landing site, as well as AIVAS.
- Another possibility that has been implied is that the telepathic firelizards form a weak hivemind, complete with a collective memory. However, the effect is functionally the same.
- Geographic Flexibility: Travel times around Pern seemingly vary according to the needs of the plot.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: When F'lar gets ill in Dragonquest, he starts
Wangsting and must be told this by Lessa.
- Giant Flyer: The dragons. Even Ruth, a midget among dragons, is the size of a small elephant and capable of carrying up to four people. A full-grown bronze or gold dragon is similar in size to a 1960s passenger jetliner such as a Boeing 707.
- Good Is Not Soft: This is a lesson that Pernese Lords Holder and Weyrleaders learn early and never forget.
- In Dragonflight, new Weyrleader F'lar doesn't hesitate to take hostages from the Holds in order to force a group of rebel Lords Holder to give up their armed attack on Benden Weyr.
- In Dragondrums, Lord Meron of Nabol is dying of an extremely painful disease, and he won't name an heir to follow him as Lord of Nabol Hold. That can't be allowed, so Masterharper Robinton, the local Weyrleader, and the Lords of the three neighboring Holds conspire to force the dying Meron to name a successor. How do they convince a dying man to do what they want? By preventing the hold's Healer from giving him any painkiller medication. The scene lasts for a couple of hours, during which Meron is in constant agony, but the others won't allow him any relief until he names an heir.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!:
- When not using Pern-specific curses, characters have a tendency to say things like "dratted" or "blasted." There's even "Jays" in Dragonsdawn, mean to be a Bowdlerization of "Jesus." Strangely, in the same book, one character calls another a "gobshite."
- By contrast, there are quite a few "S-" and "F-bombs" in Dragonsdawn, what with the initial colonists still speaking (future) English.
- It's mentioned in the indices that there are no religious or sexual curses on Pern, since the first doesn't exist and the second isn't taboo.
- Growing Up Sucks: For Piemur, puberty ends his sheltered life as a boy soprano. On the other hand, it also began his life as Robinton's secret apprentice, going to hatchings, smuggling queen fire lizard eggs, and... well, it stopped sucking pretty quickly.
- Guile Hero: F'lar and Robinton, later Lessa. Also Sebell. It seems that this is one of the traits required to become MasterHarper. Menolly, Piemur and Jaxom to lesser degrees.
- Happily Married: A lot of Pernese couples don't actually marry, but among those who do, there are a number of happy couples. Petiron and Merelan fit this trope, as did Robinton and Kasia (for the few days of their marriage). Even those who aren't officially married act like this anyway.
- Head Pet: Firelizards that have impressed on a human will ride around on them. Most prefer to ride on the human's shoulders, but Menolly, who impressed a whole brood of nine of them (and later accidentally added a tenth) usually has one on her head.
- Hereditary Twinhood: In Dragonsdawn, Barr meets up with Sallah after years apart. Barr tells Sallah that she now has five children, including a set of twins; after she gave birth to the twins, her husband informed her that he was a twin.
- Hide Your Gays:
- Half averted. Homosexual men are not uncommon on Pern, and in fact most (if not all) green riders fit the bill. That fact doesn't get brought up very often, though when it does come up, it's not treated as anything noteworthy. There is never a mention of homosexual women, however.
- We also only see homosexuality mentioned among Weyrfolk, who are very relaxed when it comes to sexual mores. It's not mentioned how Holders or Crafters view it.
- In Dragongirl it is revealed that Xhinna is homosexual. In a later book, she meets Taria, who is also homosexual. They enter into a relationship together.
- Honest Advisor: Harpers, and Masterharper Robinton in particular, see this as part of their role as educators. Robinton never hesitates to let a Lord Holder know if he's about to do something unwise, whether he likes it or not. His Establishing Character Moment was to give the convened Lord Holders a massive "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Since Mastercrafters and Lord Holders are equal in rank, they can't make him shut up, either.
- Horde of Alien Locusts: Thread, essentially a non-sapient alien fungus that devours anything in its path.
- Horse of a Different Color: Dragons, of course, although real horses and oxen (known as runnerbeasts and herdbeasts, respectively) do exist.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: F'lar and Lessa. Lessa is explicitly described as being little bigger than a child while F'lar is a six-footer.
- Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Between, the dimension used by dragons and fire lizards when they teleport, is devoid of sensation, airless, and brutally cold.
- And also apparently prone to causing miscarriages if a female rider is still in the early stages of pregnancy when she goes between.
- Since the time spent between increases the further you go in time, hypothermia and sensory/oxygen deprivation almost killed Lessa when she went back 450 Turns — she was babbling and needed bed rest for a while after getting out. It's explicitly stated that the only thing keeping her and Ramoth from going completely insane was their mental contact. (On the return trip they figured out how to take a series of much smaller time jumps, resting after each one.)
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Sort of an example-by-proxy with Jaxom. He's very sensitive about Ruth's unusual color and small size (he's about the size of the original Dragons, but they were engineered to get way bigger), and wants Ruth to be treated like any other dragon. He becomes very embarrassed when he finds out that Ruth is asexual, though Ruth shows a lack of concern typical of dragons in this setting.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence:
- When a queen dragon is ready to mate, she turns into very touchy Tsundere, growling and taking swipes at any of the males that get too close. It's implied that the mating flight results in some pretty rough sex.
- This applies to queen fire lizards. In "Dragondrums" Sebell's Kimi refuses to share any fish she caught.
- Intimate Hair Brushing: In the novel Dragon's Fire, Trader Tarri washes and brushes Halla's hair. Halla, a twelve-year-old homeless orphan, can't remember anyone ever doing this for her before.
- I Thought Everyone Could Do That: Lessa talking to dragons, which gets F'lar extremely angry with her when he had been trying for years to figure out a way to coordinate all the dragons of a Weyr in combat.
- I Have Your Wife: F'lar manages to convince the Holders to cooperate with Benden Weyr after the Long Interval by doing this — he sends dragons to abduct their wives and daughters.
- Unusual mainly in that the hero (well, the heroine's Love Interest) is pulling this maneuver — and has justification. If the dragonriders starve, the entire colonized continent of Pern will either be eaten by Thread or starve in the midst of their dead land.
- Jackie Robinson Story: Menolly becomes the first female Harper in the Harper Hall Trilogy. Or at least, the first one in a long time — it's been stated that before the pandemic in Moreta's time, which nearly wiped out humans on Pern, that there was far more sexual equality. After that, women reverted to more "traditional" roles because of the need to repopulate. Dragonseye, which takes place before Moreta's time, shows a pretty even distribution of labor among the sexes.
- Kill It with Fire: Dragons and fire lizards do indeed breathe fire, although it's the result of a hypergolic gas released when they chew a naturally occurring mineral named "firestone". On foot and in the queens' wing, Thread is fought with flamethrowers, or nitric acid sprayers (colloquially termed "agenothree" in the books — HNO3, get it?)
- Knife Fight: Most Pernese men carry "belt knives," which seem to be akin to hunting knives. These are primarily tools, but they are also the standard weapon for fighting duels of honor.
- In Dragonflight, F'lar and Lord Fax engage in a Duel to the Death using their belt knives. Although F'lar has a lot of practice dueling experience, he does not have nearly as much practical killing experience as his opponent.
- In Dragonquest, F'lar is forced to take on the Oldtimer Weyrleader T'ron when T'ron tries to prevent the dragonriders from responding to an out-of-sequence Threadfall.
- In The White Dragon, The Oldtimer T'kul arranges things so that he can attack F'lar with a double advantage: he's Ax-Crazy after his dragon's death, and he's using a skinning knife as his weapon, which is longer and heavier than a belt knife.
- Also in The White Dragon, Jaxom is about to challenge Toric of Southern Hold for insulting both him and his hold when F'lar and Lessa appear and force Toric to take it back. It's a fortunate turn of events for Jaxom, since the other man is taller, older, heavier, and more experienced in fighting.
- In the middle Harperhall novel, Dragonsinger, there's a suggestion that even some girls wear belt knives and will challenge over a serious insult: Pona accuses Menolly of being a thief, and Menolly puts one hand on her knife as she demands Pona retract the accusation.
- Large Ham: Master Shonagar from the Harper Hall trilogy. He fills his room with his melodramatic declarations, banging and shouting, all done with an eloquent vocabulary.
- Law of Chromatic Superiority: A dragon's or fire lizard's size and physical ability is directly linked to its color. Though there have been exceptions, such as Canth — a bronze-sized brown. Intelligence was gauged this way as well, up until Ruth, a runt white dragon as smart as any dragon portrayed.
- Legend Fades to Myth:
- In Dragonflight the riders first realize Thread is falling when F'nor comes in covered in a mysterious black dust. Lessa quotes a verse about frozen Thread turning to black dust saying it's from "The Ballad of Moreta's Ride". Dragonsinger has people actually singing the ballad, about the Dragonlady who saved Pern from a deadly epidemic at the cost of her own life. Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern (published at a later date) recounts the actual events that gave rise to the legend.
- Over time, knowledge that the Pernese came from another planet was lost. In Moreta's time, the "two crossings" (coming to Pern, and then leaving the Southern Continent) was considered a fringe theory. By the Ninth Pass, even that much is forgotten, and the Pernese assume they have always been there.
- Living Mood Ring: Dragons' and fire lizards' eyes change color according to their mood: blue/green when calm, yellow when anxious, red when agitated or angry.
- Living Relic: AIVAS, an artificial intelligence set up by the settlers when they first landed on Pern. When it is discovered during the Ninth Pass, it uses its knowledge of Lost Technology to bring the Pernese back to the level the colonists originally intended. It even helps the Dragonriders end the threat of Thread forever.
- Lost Colony: The colonists wanted Pern to become this to live peacefully; the later discovery of Thread by a rescue ship means it's now permanently lost as the entire Rukbat system is under quarantine.
- Magic by Any Other Name: Officially, there's no magic in the books, since they're supposed to be a science fiction series. The dragons' supernatural powers are referred to as psychic abilities instead.
- Magical Abortion: The cold of between is sufficient to induce miscarriage and is deliberately used for this by female dragonriders, who are seldom able to take enough time off for pregnancy. It's either that, suffering accidental miscarriage from riding a dragon all the time, or fostering the kid out as soon as possible.
- Manipulative Bitch:
- Lessa, who manipulated pretty much everyone at Ruatha in order to cause it to become unsuccessful and thus less valuable to Fax (with the intent that he'll give up on it). She gets better after impressing Ramoth.
- Kylara fancied herself one, but she wasn't as good at it as she thought she was. She loses her mind as a more or less direct result of her machinations.
- Market-Based Title: Anne McCaffrey originally gave the title "Red Star Rising" to the novel about Second Pass. When it crossed the Atlantic to the USA, her American publisher demanded she change the title to "Dragon_____", because every previous Pern novel had had "Dragon" in the title somewhere. So that novel was published in the States as Dragonseye.
- Meaningful Echo: When Menolly is elevated to the rank of journeyman, Master Robinton recites the same speech his own Master Gennell said when Robinton became a journeyman."To be a harper requires many talents... However, when the fundamentals of our craft have been well and truly learned, I insist that we hold no one back from the rank they are entitled to by knowledge and ability, and in this case, rare talent."
- Meaningful Rename: In Dragonsdawn, Tarvi Andiyar changes his name to Telgar, which was originally his wife's surname. He never admitted how much he loved her until she was dying and made the change to honor her sacrifice to help the Pern colony.
- Medieval Stasis:
- For about two thousand years, Pern was medieval with very little structural/social change. Justified by the fact that most of the colonists' technology was lost or worn out after two hundred years, and the whole "Thread trying to eat everything organic" situation made them more concerned about surviving rather than technological advancement. When this incentive is removed after All the Weyrs of Pern, they begin to reclaim their lost technology with the help of the records and instruction provided by AIVAS.
- Also justified because Pern was settled by Space Amish who wanted to get away from technology and develop a more agrarian society (see also Metal-Poor Planet below), though they didn't want to decay quite as far, hard, or fast as they did.
- Men Can't Keep House: Late in Dragonflight, T'ton of Fort Weyr mentions that Mardra, his Weyrwoman, believes this.T'ton: "It is a trifle unsettling, to find that the Weyr you left in good order the day before has become a dusty hulk. The women of the Lower Caverns were a bit upset."
F'nor: "We cleaned up those kitchens."
T'ton: "According to Mardra, no man can clean anything." - Mercy Kill: Sometimes administered to badly injured Thread victims, by means of a lethal dose of "fellis", an herbal sedative.
- Metal-Poor Planet: The planet Pern has limited amounts of available metal, meaning it is of little interest to the large corporations that normally colonize worlds, but perfect for a group of people who want to create a low-tech agrarian society.
- Mile-High Club: Dragons (and fire lizards) mate in the air, with the female taking off and males chasing her into the sky. The winner in queen flights is typically the male with enough stamina to keep up with her, which is why the smaller dragons don't bother competing.
- A significant amount of altitude is also necessary for a safe and productive mating, as the dragons, particularly the queen, are unable to safely use their wings during the actual copulation. Insufficient height can lead to the pair being forced to disengage too early in order to break their falls, resulting in fewer viable eggs — or even worse, one or both of the pair being injured or killed on impact due to being too wrapped up in the act of mating to realize they're about to hit the ground.
- Mr. Fanservice: Robinton, in-universe. In one scene Piemur is torn between amusement and frustration that his elderly mentor distracts all the ladies from him.
- Must Have Caffeine: The first two things colonists look for on a new planet are plants that can be distilled into booze, and plants that can be made into a coffee substitute (coffee being impossible to cultivate anywhere except on Earth). On Pern, the latter is fulfilled by a boiled tree bark beverage called klah.
- Multiple-Tailed Beast: Pernese dragons have forked tails.
- Naming Your Colony World: A retcon has Pern named from a four-letter code summarizing its geology and ecology — Parallel Earth; Resources Negligible.
- The Napoleon: Lessa, who has been described to be rather short compared to F'lar, but can still be a bit aggresive.
- Never Accepted in His Hometown: In Dragonsong, the first Dragonriders' young-adult novel, Menolly is a girl who dares to perform and even compose music in a fishing village of a practical and pragmatic (and repressive) sort. In the course of the novel, Menolly injures herself cleaning fish, and her own mother deliberately stitches her palm up wrong, crippling her hand so she can barely perform routine household tasks (making her even more despised), let alone play any instrument. Meanwhile, the MasterHarper Robinton and his faithful have been searching for the "anonymous" author of the fine music mailed to him by a rural harper, and take her away from all that to make her as much a star as a Medieval setting permits.
- Never the Selves Shall Meet: This seems to change at different points in the series. At the start, Jaxom coming close to himself causes incredible exhaustion, and Lessa overrunning herself three times at the same temporal point results in swaying and mumbling gibberish. This might be a problem exclusive to dragonriders — being the result of their telepathic bond with their dragon effectively becoming duplicated — as a number of non-dragonriders in Todd McCaffrey's books avoid this trauma when traveling through time, and Masterharper Zist even talks to his past self outright with no issue.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: In The Skies of Pern, the dragons "discover" their powers of telekinesis. This is not entirely pulled out of thin air; in All The Weyrs of Pern, AIVAS said that dragons should be able to do it, and it was covertly confirmed when the dragons were able to carry huge starship engine assemblies that, despite the lower gravity of the Red Star, they should not have been able to support, even en masse. In a variation of the Magic Feather trick, AIVAS told no one that truth except Jaxom (and by proxy, Ruth).
- Nobody Poops: Mostly maintained, although a convalescing Menolly is helped to use "the necessary" at one point. And Piemur has some "uncomfortable moments" after a few days surviving on raw fruit in the jungle.
- No Biochemical Barriers:
- Averted, as the Pernese settlers were armed with advance surveys and the science to clearly identify which local lifeforms were good to eat and which weren't, and they wouldn't have tried to settle Pern in the first place if the atmosphere wasn't breathable, etc. They also brought a lot of Earth lifeforms and conducted extensive experiments to determine compatibility, modifying genes where necessary — incidentally, this is why there are no bees or turkeys on Pern.
- Or coffee. In Dragonsdawn it's mentioned that for some unknown reason coffee had proven unable to be adapted to growth on any planet other than Earth. On Pern, this leads to the development of a substitute made from the ground bark of a native tree, a drink that becomes known as klah.
- No Blood Ties: Although bloodlines are acknowledged, it is common practice among Weyrfolk to foster their children to avoid maternal or paternal attachments; this lessens the trauma when riders are lost fighting Thread.
- No Mere Windmill: Type B. When F'lar (and his father before him) warns the political leaders of the soon-to-begin Ninth Pass about the return of Thread, they refuse to believe him... until it starts dropping on their heads, of course.
- Obsolete Occupation: The foundation of Pernese society, the dragons and the weyr system, was developed to fight the fall of Thread. In All the Weyrs of Pern, the dragonriders alter the course of a satellite to permanently end the fall of Thread, and spend the next book (The Skies of Pern) trying to figure out how to cope with their self-inflicted obsolescence. They end up declaring that the dragons will continue to protect Pern from other non-Thread threats from the sky — namely, meteors.
- Old Retainer: Rannelly, for Kylara.
- Only the Chosen May Ride: The titular Dragonriders of Pern are chosen this way. The dragons form an empathic bond with a particular human, who then becomes a dragonrider. Candidates are "searched" — basically anyone even slightly telepathic is shanghaied into the Weyr from their family and former life. The bond is so strong that riders of dragons who mate often wind up having sex as well whether they meant to or not.
- Our Dragons Are Different:
- Anne McCaffrey is very firm in stating that her dragons are different. Anyone reading the series will be constantly reminded that the empathic, symbiotic dragons are genetically engineered creatures, despite being "classic" Western dragons physically. Even the fire-breathing and telepathy have a scientific basis rather than a magical one. This attribute keeps the series firmly in the "Science Fiction" section of book shops, rather than the "fantasy" shelves.
- Her dragons do have at least one characteristic that is quite unique — Psychic Teleportation (called "going between ") not just through space, but through time as well. Going between is dangerous enough, if the rider doesn't have their destination firmly fixed in their mind dragon and rider may end up entombed in a mountain or even disappear forever. Timing has the added bonus of causing massive amounts of mental stress if there is more than one of you at that time. Additionally going between has other effects, such as inducing miscarriages and occasionally kidney damage. So why use it? It kills any Thread that might have landed on you, plus it's a fast way to travel in an otherwise Medieval society.
- There are two other closely related species:
- Firelizards, the species from which dragon were genetically engineered. They are much smaller, able to sit on your shoulder, and appear to be about as smart as a really smart dog. Due to their weak, constant telepathy with other Firelizards, they also have something of a Hive Mind when it comes to memories, being able to remember the landing of the original colonists on Pern. Considering the time between the Thread attacks, the Hive Mind is a powerful survival tool.
- Watch-whers were the result of a mistake during the development of the dragon species. They are about the size of a very large dog or small pony. They are flightless and photophobic, and while they may develop a liking to certain individuals, they do not Impress. They are often chained to a wall and used as guard dogs. Several books do say that they weren't mistakes, but rather they were meant to fly (yes, in the air) and fight Thread at night, when the Weyrs are asleep, and consequently weren't supposed to be chained at all. The Retconned versions do Impress, but the bond is weaker than with dragons, so a watch-wher sometimes survives the death of its human partner or chooses to switch partners. Other books, usually the older ones, share the conventional opinion.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: The Pernese colonists were specifically selected for their lack of susceptibility to religion, with reverence to the dragons filling a similar cultural space. Throughout the entire series, God is not mentioned once. On the other hand, it's mentioned in Dragonsdawn that much of the Judeo-Christian Bible consists of plain common sense that the Pernese hold to "without any trace of fanatical devotion," and AIVAS considers the Bible to be "the greatest book ever written by mankind."note
- Parental Abandonment:
- Lessa (parents murdered by Fax), Jaxom (mother died in childbirth, father was the aforementioned and unlamented Fax who died in a duel the night Jaxom was born), and others.
- A common occurance with Weyrfolk, due to the dangers inherent in being a Dragonrider. Children in Weyrs are raised in a communal manner to make this easier on the children.
- Parental Incest: Stev Kimmer, in Rescue Run, has sex with his stepdaughters, and possibly his biological daughters.
- Parental Marriage Veto: Toric, though a brother and not a father, tries to enact one of these on his sister Sharra and Jaxom. He doesn't have any problem with Jaxom as a person, but he planned on a more politically advantageous Arranged Marriage for his sister. It fails miserably when Jaxom makes it clear that they aren't taking no for an answer and that, as a dragonrider, he can and will come for her anywhere on Pern.
- Pattern-Coded Eggs: Gold dragon eggs are golden-colored. (Other dragons all have mottled eggs that don't indicate the dragon's color.)
- The Plague: Robinton once notes that plague has struck three times in Pern's history, with two of them happening during the First Pass and near the end of the Sixth Pass, respectively.
- Dragonsblood (First Pass) features a "fever year", in which many people fall to a sudden fever.
- Moreta and Nerilka's Story (late Sixth Pass) are based around an epidemic caused by a variety of influenza.
- Planetary Romance: In the earlier books by Anne, Pern is described in details that blends medieval fantasy and science-fiction.
- Plot Hole: In the second part of Dragon's Fire, Moran decides to secretly follow Tenim after he abandons their group. Several chapters later, Moran is shown caring for the sick in a completely different location without any information as to how he got there.
- Poor Communication Kills: Early on, Lessa and F'lar spend a lot of time not telling each other things. They get better.
- P.O.V. Sequel: Moreta and Nerilka's Story. There's also a multitude of books that take place around the beginning of the Third Pass and near the middle of the Ninth that play with this; while they show many of the same events from different perspectives, they also have a tendency to cover time further back or forward than each other instead of taking place entirely simultaneously like a true P.O.V. Sequel.
- Power Incontinence: Aramina leaves Benden Weyr because she can hear any and all dragons and can't shut them out.
- Pride: Lessa is completely willing to let dragons battle with each other because she feels insulted. This is also the source of most of her friction with F'lar in the first book, combined with her being unused to being able to rely on anyone besides herself.
- Properly Paranoid: At the start of the series, F'lar is convinced that Thread is due to return soon. Everyone else pooh-poohs this, since it's been four hundred years since they had a Pass (this being the second time in Pern's history that such a thing happened), and they don't believe it'll come again. Naturally, Threadfall soon starts happening.
- Psychic Powers: It is said that all dragonriders are at least slightly telepathic to the extent required to communicate with their dragons. The dragons themselves, as well as their smaller cousins the fire lizards, are telepathic with each other and their riders. A handful of humans are particularly telepathic with dragons, such as Lessa, Brekke, and Aramina, who can hear and speak to all dragons. Lessa is a rare example of a true telepath — someone with the ability to affect other humans, actually getting into their minds and changing their decisions, their emotions, doing selective mental erasure and so on. But her influencing people is usually implied rather than stated in later books. It's a subtle enough effect that it's mostly seen in people around her getting slight headaches and having an attitude more useful to the situation, like her manipulating F'nor into his trip to the Red Star.
- Pulling the Thread: The bullies' grease-the-steps plot against Piemur unravels because while they removed the evidence from the stairs, they A) failed to clean the soles of Piemur's boots, and B) forgot that cleaning the steps they greased, but not any of the others, would make it stand out that something sneaky had been done there.
- Punctuation Shaker:
- All male Weyr riders have their names ritually contracted after Impression, to make shouted communication easier during Threadfall. For example, F'lar was born Fallarnon. Losing your dragon (and surviving) sometimes revokes this, as Lytol was L'tol when he was a rider, but went back to Lytol after his dragon died.
- Some humor comes from the difficulty in figuring out what Jaxom's rider name ought to be after he accidentally impresses Ruth; the situation is resolved by allowing him the unique privilege of being a dragonrider and Lord Holder.
- Questionable Consent: Weyrwoman Brekke, who was raised in a craft guild with strict morals, loves brown rider F'nor. When he finds she is a virgin — unheard of for Weyr people — and isn't open to having sex with the rider of whichever bronze mounts her Queen dragon, he takes her away ("for her good and for the good of her dragon") and initiates her. Even though she started to enjoy it at the end, and it leads to a Relationship Upgrade, she tried to get away from him when she realized what was about to happen and F'nor forced the issue anyway.
- Rape and Switch: Anne McCaffrey had
an infamous opinion
that anal rape releases hormones that turn men permanently gay; according to Word of God this would canonically apply to male greenriders if one who wasn't already gay was chosen. This is never stated in the text, and as it makes very little sense to most people who are not Anne McCaffrey, it's usually ignored. As of Sky Dragons, it's been officially retconned.
- Really Gets Around: Green dragons are the only other females, besides gold dragons. They're also far more promiscuous than golds. Fortunately, chewing firestone renders them infertile (supposedly; it's eventually revealed they were genetically engineered to be sterile from the beginning). Otherwise, the dragon population would explode into unsustainable numbers.
- Real Men Hate Affection: Petiron's attitude toward his son Robinton is a good example. Because Petiron loved his wife so much and didn't want to share her, even with his son, Robinton as a young boy is constantly looking for affection his father never offers. The situation improves as Robinton becomes an adult and is named MasterHarper, upon which Petiron steps down as MasterComposer and exiles himself to a minor holding to allow Robinton to become a leader in his own right. Later on, Petiron redeems himself when he discovers Menolly's talents (and sees her father's attempts to squelch her) and begins to send her compositions to Robinton hoping she'll eventually be accepted for mentoring.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- F'lar proves himself to one one of the wisest and influential men on Pern by his handling of crises in the first three books.
- Robinton shows himself willing to listen to any issue within his Hall, punish those who break the rules regardless of rank or station, and admit to his own follies.
- Harper Journeyman Rokayas of the Drum Heights was the only one who saw the shades of abuse Piemur was suffering but with no admittance from Piemur, his hands were tied. When Piemur fell down on greased steps, he got Piemur to medical help, and told Robinton and Menolly everything he suspected happened.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Robinton delivers three of these: to the Lord Holders in Dragonflight and Dragonquest, and to the Abominators in All The Weyrs of Pern. Indeed, Robinton sees it as part of a Harper's job to let people know when they're being asses.
- Reassignment Backfire: A subversion occurs with Petiron, who was assigned to a backwater fishing Hold that just happened to beget one of the greatest musical prodigies in Pernese history, Menolly. Then it turns out that he was assigned at his own request, and that his son is the current Masterharper, Robinton.
- Rebellious Princess:
- Nerilka, a Lord Holder's daughter (which is about as close to a princess as you can get in Pernese society), refuses to obey her Jerkass father's commands and becomes a nurse during the plague.
- Thella even moreso, an extremely negative example.
- Refusal of the Call:
- Lessa nearly refused F'lar's offer to become weyrwoman.
- Aramina is selected as a candidate for a queen dragon and considered guaranteed to Impress one. After Jayge rescues her from Thella, she refuses to go back. Jayge finds this unfathomable until she explains that she's incapable of tuning out the dragons' constant chatter.
- Retcon: A lot of plot elements got modified without comment between novels.
- Some characters undergo spontaneous name changes between Dragonflight and Dragonquest: T'ton to T'ron, for example. He was M'ron in the initial appearance of the story, in two parts in Analog December 1967 & January 1968.
- Lessa's Psychic Powers are explicit and quite strong in Dragonflight, with F'lar considering them unusual in their strength — she's actually a true telepath, capable of reaching into your mind and changing your thoughts — or erasing them — but hardly surprising. She's from the ruling Ruathan family, and they're supposed to have such gifts. Several great Weyrleaders down through history, male and female, have been Ruathan. Later books downplay this to the point where it's almost ignored, leaving only the ability to talk to more than one's own dragon as a defined power. At least, up until Dragonheart, when the Psychic Powers are said to be a skill possessed by strong-willed Weyrwomen as a side-effect of their bond with their dragon.
- In Dragonquest, there's a specific reference to fire lizards "eating Thread". Granted that the person making the claim, Kylara, is mentally unstable and an unabashed liar, in later books the idea seems to be dropped in favor of fire lizards flaming thread like their larger cousins. (Kylara also specifically says she didn't feed them firestone, so it could be explained that way.) There's also a mention in Dragonsinger, which parallels Dragonquest in the Harper Hall trilogy: Menolly's fire lizards, while shut inside the Harper Hall refectory during Threadfall, get very excited and are described as making the motions of "licking Thread from the air."
- In Sky Dragons, Green Dragons produce eggs, as they never consumed firestone, and one of them lays a gold. Prior to this, green fire-lizard clutches only ever produced lower-ranked colors.
- Partially averted. In the Harper Hall Trilogy, Masterharper Robinton is going against long tradition by recruiting a woman as a Harper, and some of the other Masters make sure Menolly knows it. In Masterharper of Pern, Robinton's mother Merelan was a kind of Harper, but specifically a Singer, possibly an exception to the general tendency since Moreta's time to restrict female roles, as women's voices are not readily replaceable by men's. She performed and trained other female Singers, but was always referred to specifically as "Singer" rather than "Harper," even when assigned to a Hold and performing teaching duties. The lack of female Singers after her death is presented as less an official rule, and more something that happened accidentally while Robinton was grieving.
- The earlier novels note in passing that it was a couple of generations after the colonists arrived on Pern that the Thread first appeared. In Dragonsdawn the new arrivals get hit with the crisis almost immediately.
- Ridiculously Small Wings: Downplayed with dragons, whose wings, whilst large, are not large enough to lift dragons and their riders; in addition, dragons often carry other passengers and cargo as well. For much of Pern's history, dragonriders explain this by saying that if the dragons think they can fly, then they will be able to. It's only late in Pern history that dragons and their riders learn that dragons are telekinetic, which explains how they are able to lift such heavy loads.
- Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Todd McCaffrey's books tend to end with the antagonist (and/or most of his cohorts) getting slaughtered.
- Samus Is a Girl: When Petiron submitted Menolly's songs to the Harperhall, he neglected to mention that they were written by a girl. When Petiron died, the Hall scrambled, attempting to find the boy who wrote those lovely songs. When they find Menolly, the general reaction is exasperation that Petiron thought Robinton would be reluctant to let a girl become a Harper.
- Sapient Cetaceans: The original settlers brought intellectually enhanced dolphins with them, but lost contact after the exodus to the Northern Continent. In the aptly titled Dolphins of Pern, Jayge and Aramina's son Readis becomes the first to reestablish contact with the "shipfish".
- Scare Dare: Robinton has to spend the night in an abandoned Weyr as an unofficial rite of passage among Harpers. Due to his previous experiences with Benden Weyr, he's unimpressed: they actually have to run around shouting to find him, since he's comfortably asleep in one of the heated caves.
- Science Fantasy:
- One of the classic unclassifiables.
McCaffrey has always contended that her books are Science Fiction, not Fantasy. Her reasoning is that everything in the books is (in her estimation, at least), scientifically backed.
- Weyr Search, the first story, and the two-part Dragonflight, were initially published in 1967 and 1968 in Analog, a prestigious science fiction magazine. Editor John W. Campbell had extremely strict standards, so Anne's belief that the stories are Sci Fi has confirmation from what was then the highest authority.
- One of the classic unclassifiables.
- Science Is Bad: The Pern colony was founded on the principle of rejecting reliance on high technology to solve problems. Millennia later, this sentiment bestirs itself in the form of a violently Luddite group that attempts to sabotage anything related to AIVAS. AIVAS' discovery, however, is what eventually leads to the final end of Thread on Pern.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Distances seem to change at the plot's convenience, and either dragons in the Ninth Pass are ludicrously huge (bronzes and golds being much bigger than blue whales) or someone said "meters" when they meant "feet."
- Selective Obliviousness: Petiron completely ignored his son when Robinton was growing up, and expected him to be skilled with music despite never paying any attention or trying to help Robinton develop his skills. When he finally realised that Robinton was a musical genius whose compositions were being widely played, he was furious that everyone had 'kept' this knowledge from him, only for several people — including his wife — to point out that literally everyone else had seen it from the start, he was the only one who never bothered paying his son enough attention to realise it.
- Series Continuity Error: Quite a few.
- The year number got muddled when The White Dragon was published (15PP when it should really have been 13PP), and subsequent prequel books made this problem impossible to fix without messing up the chronology of the stories. The two main side-effects of this is that it means F'lessan somehow became a Candidate while two years underage, and Mirrim's Path took four years instead of two to become fully mature.
- Character names — both major and minor — frequently end up changing between books. The worst example of this happening is probably that Lord Larad's wife's name strangely changes from Dulsay to Janissary in All the Weyrs of Pern and back to Dulsay again in The Skies of Pern.
- In a few instances, a dead character has ended up appearing in a book that takes place after their death. Lord Oterel offers his support to young Readis in The Dolphins of Pern, despite a major part of the previous book dealing with people choosing his successor after his death.
- In Dragonquest, Fandarel claims to have no sons. In Renegades of Pern, which takes place only a few years later, he apparently not only has four off-screen sons, but Piemur ends up in a relationship with his adult granddaughter.
- Sex by Proxy: Thanks to the mental link between dragons and riders.
- Shoulder-Sized Dragon: The fire-lizards, making them popular companions after their discovery.
- Smashed Eggs Hatching: In Dragonquest, Jaxom notices an egg from Ramoth's latest clutching that's smaller than usual. During the Hatching, when it's the last egg left and is assumed to be dead, he runs over and, determined to save the little dragon, breaks the egg and cuts the membrane inside, Impressing young Ruth — the only white dragon on Pern, believed to be a sport who'll die young. Against all odds, Ruth turns out to be healthy and, with his instinctive sense of where and when he is at all times, later proves to be key to ending the threat of Thread once and for all.
- Space Amish: The original colonists wanted to get away from a spacefaring society that had just been through an interstellar war, but they didn't plan on losing as much technology as they did.
- Space Sector: Pern is "third planet of the sun Rukbat in the Sagittarian Sector".
- The Spymaster: MasterHarpers seem to be relatively benign examples. In addition to their teaching duties, almost all harpers sent abroad to teach also report on the general mood of the holds they're assigned to. In addition the Hall seems to produce one or two overly curious and quick-witted apprentices each generation. They eventually become one step below active spies, sent wherever their particular talents can be used and reporting directly to the MasterHarper. As of the Ninth Pass their chief agents seem to be Nip, Tuck/Traller, Sebell, and Piemur.
- Stable Time Loop: All time travel in the series either results in one of these, or is the result of one of these. There's even a case or two where someone travels in time because they see something that makes them realize they already had.
- Starving Artist: Iantine, in Dragonseye, is reduced to this on account of the bad weather and political corruption he encounters in Bitra.
- Succession Crisis: A few of them, which are all resolved in different ways.
- In Dragonflight, Lessa, Fax, and F'lar are all intriguing over who has the right to rule Ruatha Hold. Lessa is the (unknown) dispossessed rightful heir to Ruatha, who's been hiding herself as a drudge, while Fax is the usurper and eventually decrees that if Ruatha cannot support itself or him during a visit (unaware that Lessa is behind its failing), he'll renounce it in favor of his Ruathan bride's as-yet unborn child (assuming they're male and survive the birth). When Jaxom is born, Fax tries to renege on his promise, but F'lar, having witnessed it, faces him in a duel over his having done so and ultimately kills him, freeing all the Holds under his control. He then persuades Lessa, when she reveals herself as the last survivor of the previous Lord and Lady Holder, to relinquish her Blood claim on Ruatha in favor of Jaxom and come to Benden Weyr with him.
- In the Harper Hall trilogy, Meron deliberately avoids naming a successor as he's dying (he wants a bloody succession fight to spite everyone), until Robinton uses reverse psychology to get him to select the relative he thinks nobody wants — his grand-nephew Deckter, who proves to be a much more reasonable leader.
- In All The Weyrs Of Pern, Oterel's death requires the other Lords and Craftmasters to vote on his successor, since he was unable to officially name one before he died. Thanks to petty political bickering, they have a lot of trouble getting consensus on the one son who isn't blatantly an idiot or wastrel (and who was also initially banished by his father after a disagreement, but it was retracted two weeks before Oterel died because he'd learned of and was proud of what Ranrel accomplished while he was away).
- In The Skies of Pern, Sangel of Southern Boll dies, and the Council has to again vote on his successor — his granddaughter Janissian, who (after being elected) is invited to sit on the Council as a full participant for the remainder of the session.
- Synchronization: This is one of the major plot points of the series — newly-hatched dragons bond with the candidate they feel the strongest empathic connection to ("Impression"). From then on, the pair can communicate telepathically and influence each other's emotions. If a dragon's rider dies, that dragon will immediately suicide by jumping between permanently. If a dragon dies, the shock will often kill his rider outright (or in one particular case, leave them catatonic).
- Synthetic Plague: How Thread is ultimately made extinct, as a failsafe in addition to altering the course of the Red Star. Using rediscovered technology, they learn that Thread is just one part of a complex space-borne ecology in the Pernese Oort Cloud and that it has natural parasites. They then genetically engineer one of these parasites into a lethal and virulent form, and seed the parasites such that the Oort cloud will be infected by it.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Robinton and Menolly, but an unusual example. They know they're fond of each other, and after his heart attack they both admit that said feelings are not 100% platonic. However, she's involved with someone else, and he is very much in favor of that relationship. So other than that brief recognition and pang, his relationship to her remains teacher/surrogate family.
- Tears of Joy: In Dragonsong Menolly breaks down sobbing at Benden Weyr when for literally the first time in her life she's given new clothes and a flattering haircut (and she realizes she truly won't be sent back to the dour misery of Half Circle.) She tears up again at the very end of the novel when she agrees to go with Robinton to Harper Hall.
- Technician Versus Performer: Petiron as the technician vs. Robinton/Menolly as the performers when it comes to music.
- Tele-Frag: One of the risks of going between with a poorly visualized destination. One of the dragonrider teachers shows the entombed skeleton of a young dragonrider and his dragon who made the mistake of jumping blindly.
- Teleportation: Dragons and fire lizards are innate teleporters, and can bring passengers with them. This is accomplished by making use of Another Dimension, colloquially termed between, which lacks all sensation and is killingly cold. It is later discovered that they can teleport across interplanetary distances as well as through time, but the amount of time spent between increases with distance travelled (temporally and spacially). There's no oxygen between, which puts a very definite limit on hops through space and/or time (until the Pernese rediscover their ancestors' technology and gain access to space suits allowing them to carry an air supply between).
- Teleporter's Visualization Clause: Dragons are capable of teleporting to any location that they know or that can be accurately described to them. It works through time as well: in Dragonquest, F'lar is able to travel back in time a few hours to observe a Threadfall at his current location by describing the position of the sun to his dragon. F'nor and Canth even try teleporting to the planet the Thread come from, but the initial expedition fails because there's no air to breathe at the destination.
- Teleportation Misfire: One of the obvious risks of a poorly visualized trip between.
- Time Travel: An innate, if rarely used, ability of dragons and fire lizards. When travelling between, one must visualize one's destination accurately; apparently, this also includes time references. For example, if you visualize your destination in the morning, that's when you'll get there. It's even got a colloquial term in the story: "timing it".
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Most notably with T'ton/T'ron and Mardra between Dragonflight and Dragonquest. Toric arguably qualifies as well.
- Twins Are Special: In the short story "Ever the Twain", the bond (emotional/mental/possibly both since psychic power is a real thing in the setting) between the fraternal twins Nian and Neru is so strong that it actually prevents the dragons from sensing Neru's potential as a candidate for Impression. The strength of their bond is such that Nian's concern for Neru when it seems like he failed to Impress is so strong that she doesn't even notice when she Impresses the newborn queen Quinth, who has to knock her down to get her attention.
- Uncoffee: Klah, which is made from tree bark, started out as the colonists' ersatz coffee, and ended up filling the same cultural niche. It's explicitly stated to contain stimulants and taste exactly like hazelnut coffee. Dragonsdawn explains that coffee can't flourish on Pernese soil, and the tea plants were lost in the first threadfall, so the colonists looked elsewhere for their caffeine needs.
- Unusual Euphemism: "Shards", "Shells", "Scorch it", and various other oaths are employed by Weyrfolk, mostly relating to dragons or Thread. Makes sense, as there's no religion on Pern, but respect for the dragonriders as saviors from Thread kind of fills a similar cultural role. "Fardling" is their variant of the "F" word. There's an index specifically for these in the early novels.
- We Could Have Avoided All This: Silvina's reaction in Dragonsong when she finds out Menolly is Petiron's secret prodigy. She becomes rather angry at all the trouble they all could've avoided had Petiron trusted in Robinton not to dismiss such a talent simply because of her gender.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Robinton grew up as one; his father ignored him in favour of his work and never gave him any approval despite how accomplished he was even as a young child. Even when Robinton proved his abilities beyond what anyone expected of him, Petiron wouldn't praise him, he'd just act as though it was the bare minimum required and criticise his son for faults nobody else cared about.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Mardra abruptly vanishes halfway through The Renegades of Pern and is never mentioned again. She does play a major role in the later novel Masterharper of Pern, but that's a prequel.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Dragons? Gaze up in awe and go "whoa, cool!" Fire lizards? Gather round and Squee over the pretties. Watch-whers? Chained to a wall as barely tolerated "watchdogs". Although they are shown as capable of friendship and loyalty, and their distant kinship to dragons is mentioned from book one, it is not until the prequels that their origin is revealed — partially failed experiments in creating a second type of dragon.
- Wild Card: Toric of Southern, in particular, seems to go back and forth between grudging ally and scheming antagonist. For the most part he's an over-ambitious control freak who, for various reasons, dislikes most of the series' protagonists and enjoys inconveniencing them, but doesn't really cross the line into actual villainy; he can even be occasionally helpful. In the later books, however, he becomes more and more obsessive and secretive, and his agenda more overtly sinister.
- We find out in later books that Toric's master plan was to claim as much of the Southern Continent as he could clear as his own holding. Even after the events of All The Weyrs made this impossible, and Toric still claimed the largest holding on Pern, Toric resented the fact that he was stopped from claiming even more, putting the blame in particular on Robinton, F'lar, Lytol, and Jaxom.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Several of the Ninth Pass books are a bit inconsistent with their events and what year they took place in. For example, The White Dragon is repeatedly said to take place five years after Dragonquest, yet the date given — 15PP — is actually seven years afterwards. In one particularly jarring example, Readis is said to be seven at the beginning of The Dolphins of Pern, despite the fact that his parents only met each other five years prior.
- You Already Changed the Past: There are no Temporal Paradoxes in this universe. If you use Time Travel to go backwards, you had already been there and had done what you did. In fact, several characters use this type of foreknowledge specifically to plan their trips, setting up a Stable Time Loop.