History Literature / DragonridersofPern

* MarketBasedTitle: ''Dragonseye'' was published in the UK as ''Red Star Rising''.

* TearsOfJoy: In ''Dragonsong'' Menolly breaks down in these when she truly realizes that she has escaped the dour misery of Half-Circle Sea Hold.

* DeathByChildbirth: Happens to Jaxom's mother, and is generally a significant risk in a low-tech, frontier, feudal society.

* DiseaseByAnyOtherName: 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 RealLife influenza epidemics.)

* EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion: 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 [[KillItWithFire fire]] and cold. In one book, 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.

** In ''All 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.

* IJustWantToBeNormal: 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.

* LargeHam: Master Shonagar from the Harper Hall trilogy, fills his room with his melodramatic declarations, banging, and shouting all done with an eloquent vocabulary.

* NeverAcceptedInHisHometown: 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 Master Harper 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.

* ObsoleteOccupation: 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 [[spoiler: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.

** Lessa (parents murdered by Fax), Jaxom (mother died in childbirth, father was the aforementioned and unlamented Fax), and others.

* ReallyGetsAround: Green dragons are the only other females, besides gold dragons. They're also far more promiscuous than golds. Fortunately, chewing firestone renders them infertile. Otherwise, the dragon population would explode into unsustainable numbers.

* JackieRobinsonStory: Menolly becoming the first female Harper in the Harper Hall Trilogy. Albeit, 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.

* LivingMoodRing: Dragons' and fire lizards' eyes change color according to their mood, red when agitated or angry.

* LostColony: The colonists wanted Pern to become this to live peacefully; the later discovery of Thread by a rescue ship mean it's now permanently lost as the entire system is under quarantine.

** Also justified because Pern was settled by SpaceAmish who wanted to get away from technology and develop a more agrarian society (see also MetalPoorPlanet below), though they didn't want to decay quite as far, hard or fast as they did.

* MustHaveCaffeine: 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. On Pern, the latter is fulfilled by a boiled tree bark beverage called klah.

* NoMereWindmill: 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.

*** 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.

** 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.

* SyntheticPlague: [[spoiler: 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.]]
* TeacherStudentRomance: Robinton and Menolly, but an unusual example. They know they're fond of each other, and after [[spoiler: 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.

** 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.

* DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: 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.

There was also a [[http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/23879/nova-games-english-edition board game from Nova Game Designs]].

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* AndThenWhat: Used on Lessa in ''Weyr Search''; she had never thought beyond the moment when Fax was dead.

* BadMoonRising: Well, technically it's a planet, but the Red Star definitely counts.

** This applies even to queen fire lizards. In "Dragondrums" Sebell's Kimi refuses to share any fish she caught.

* BondCreatures: Both dragons and fire lizards, since the former are descended from the latter.

* BrainyBrunette: Lessa.

** Lessa. 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.

* CometOfDoom: The Red Star, although it's technically not a comet, serves the role plot-wise. There's a more direct example in ''The Skies of Pern''.

* FantasticTimeManagement: Used mostly-trivially by Jaxom, and far more seriously by Moreta.

* HordeOfAlienLocusts: Thread.
* HorseOfADifferentColor: Dragons, of course, although real horses and oxen do exist.

* IHaveYourWife: How F'lar manages to convince the Holders to cooperate with Benden Weyr after the Long Interval -- he sends dragons to abduct their wives and daughters.

** Lessa, before impressing Ramoth. She gets better.

** Her dragons do have at least one characteristic that quite unique--PsychicTeleportation (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 [[TeleFrag 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.

* ThePlague: The plot of ''Moreta'' and ''Nerilka's Story'', as well as ''Dragonsblood''.

* ProperlyParanoid: F'lar, about Thread.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: 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.

* SuccessionCrisis: A few of them:
** A minor one in ''Dragonflight'', where 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, Fax is the usurper, and F'lar unseats Fax, but in favor of Fax's son Jaxom rather than in Lessa's favor. In F'lar's defense, he didn't know at the time that Lessa was farther up the line of succession. No one except Lessa did.
** 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.
** In ''All The Weyrs Of Pern'', Oterel's death requires the other lords to vote on his successor. 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.
** The manner of resolving these changes across the books. In ''Dragonflight'' F'lar resolves the matter of Fax's succession by himself. In ''Dragondrums'' the matter of the Nabol succession requires an explicitly named successor. ''All the Weyrs'' has a Council of the combined Lords and Craftmasters electing a new Lord when there is no named successor, with the chosen Lord being appointed after the meeting is over. ''Skies'' has another Council-appointed Lord Holder, only this one is appointed moments after being elected by the Council, and is invited to sit on the Council as a full participant for the remainder of the session.
* {{Synchronization}}: Riders and their dragons.

* ''Dragonflight'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragonquest'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragonsong'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragonsinger'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''The White Dragon'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragondrums'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Nerilka's Story'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragonsdawn'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* "The Impression" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Renegades of Pern'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''All the Weyrs of Pern'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "The Survey: P.E.R.N." (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "The Dolphins' Bell" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "The Ford of Red Hanranhan" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "The Second Weyr" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "Rescue Run" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''The Dolphins of Pern'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Red Star Rising'' / ''Dragonseye'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''The Masterharper of Pern'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''The Skies of Pern'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''A Gift of Dragons'' (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "The Smallest Dragonboy" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "The Girl Who Heard Dragons" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "Runner of Pern" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
** "Ever the Twain" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* "Beyond Between" (Anne [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragon's Kin'' (Anne and Todd [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragonsblood'' (Todd [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragon's Fire'' (Anne and Todd [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragon Harper'' (Anne and Todd [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragonheart'' (Todd [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragongirl'' (Todd [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragon's Time'' (Anne and Todd [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Sky Dragons'' (Anne and Todd [=McCaffrey=])
* ''Dragon's Code'' (Gigi [=McCaffrey=])

** In the ''Harper Hall Trilogy'', Masterharper Robinton is going against centuries of 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 wife Kasia was a Harper, and the prohibition on female Harpers only occurs after her death. Plus it's presented as less an official rule, and more something that happened accidentally while Robinton was grieving.

* MonstersFavoritePettingSpot: Dragons are known to love having their eye ridges scratched.

* DeathByChildbirth: Happens to Jaxom's mother, and is generally a risk in a low-tech, feudal society.

* ActionGirl: 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.

* AMasterMakesTheirOwnTools: 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.

-->'''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!"

* BreathWeapon: 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.

* DeathWorld: [[spoiler: 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.

* DomesticAbuse: F'lar is ''very'' rough with Lessa at first; he gets less so as their relationship matures.

* FateWorseThanDeath: 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.

* GoshDangItToHeck: 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."

* HideYourGays: 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.

** 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.)

* JackieRobinsonStory: Menolly becoming the first female Harper in the Harper Hall Trilogy.
** Well, 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.

* LegendFadesToMyth: 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.

* LivingMoodRing: Dragons' and fire lizards' eyes change color according to their mood.
* LivingRelic: 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 LostTechnology to bring the Pernese back to the level the colonists originally intended. It even [[spoiler: helps the Dragonriders end the threat of Thread forever]].

* ManipulativeBitch: Lessa, before impressing Ramoth. She gets better.

* MedievalStasis: 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.

'''F'nor''': "We cleaned up those kitchens."
-->'''T'ton''': "According to Mardra, no man can ''clean'' anything."

* TheNapoleon: Lessa

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: 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.

* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: 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]]The specific quote he gives comes from Ecclesiastes, which even noted atheists like Creator/RichardDawkins have called the most beautiful piece of literature in the English language[[/note]]
* ParentalAbandonment: Lessa (parents murdered by Fax), Jaxom (mother died in childbirth, father was the aforementioned and unlamented Fax), and others.

* PlanetaryRomance

* PullingTheThread: 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.

* RapeAndSwitch: Anne [=McCaffrey=] had [[http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Tent_Peg_Statement an infamous opinion]] that anal rape releases hormones that turn men permanently gay; according to WordOfGod 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.

* RebelliousPrincess: 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.

* ScienceFantasy: One of the classic unclassifiables. [[WordOfGod 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.

* SeriesContinuityError: Quite a few;

* ShoulderSizedDragon: The fire-lizards.

* SyntheticPlague: [[spoiler: 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.]]
* TeacherStudentRomance: Robinton and Menolly, but an unusual example. They know they're fond of each other, and after [[spoiler: 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.
* TechnicianVersusPerformer: Petiron vs. Robinton/Menolly.
* TeleFrag: One of the risks of going ''between'' with a poorly visualized destination.

* TeleportersVisualizationClause: Dragons are capable of teleporting to any location that they know or that can be accurately described to them. It works [[TimeTravel 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. [[spoiler:They 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.]]

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
** 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.

* NotGoodWithPeople: Lessa would be a combination of both types in her childhood and young adulthood, lavishing love and tenderness on the castle's watch-wher, while people were just pawns on her telepathic chessboard toward her ultimate revenge against the man who murdered her family.