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language: English
country: USA
year: 1988
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Dragonriders of Pern, #9
dates read: 3.8.13-4.8.13, 26.8.24-29.8.24
Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsdawn is a prequel to the rest of the Pern series, telling the story of human colonists’ first arrival on the planet approximately 2,500 years before the main series. despite the fact that it’s ostensibly closer to our present, it has possibly even more unhinged gender and sexual politics than the main series. this is because while the main series is at least somewhat conscious of its own wild sexism (and critical of homophobia, and also lacking a clear concept of race and so of racial prejudice as such, though it encodes certain elements of racism despite this), this book insists that it is showing us an egalitarian space future while nonetheless being. quite sexist. it also throws in some flagrant racism just for good measure.
the book is divided into three parts: the first tells the story of the first year or so of the colony, exploring the planet, establishing the principle settlement at Landing, and discovering — among other things — the “dragonets”, ancestors of later firelizards as well as, ultimately, dragons; the second part, set eight years later (perhaps uncoincidentally the same as the gap between Dragonflight and Dragonquest), is about the advent of Thread, which catches the colonists totally off-guard and kills many of them, including, of course, all of the (quote-unquote) “ethnic nomads” (Tuareg and Irish Travellers are specifically named, although some of the Travellers do survive. not the Tuareg, though, except for two babies who can be safely adopted by sedentary people); and the final and shortest section is about the evacuation of Landing and, eventually, the geologically unstable Southern Continent as a whole and the maturation of the first dragonriders.
woven through the first two parts is a subplot about Avril Bitra, an explicitly West/South Asian (though also ambiguously multiethnic) woman who uses her sexuality to manipulate people into helping her extract a bunch of precious stones, which she plans to smuggle off-planet. thanks to the timely intervention of Sallah Telgar (a ton of the names in this book are the names of major or minor Holds in the main series), who heroically sacrifices herself to prevent Bitra from escaping the system (seemingly just out of spite) and to more accurately launch some probes to get the colonists vital information about Thread.
as a standalone sci-fi novel, the pacing is a little weird — the final section in particular is a bit…mm…boring, frankly. the second section is probably the strongest, balancing tension, the real emotional impact of Sallah’s death (until you think about it too hard), and a dramatic race against time to genetically engineer the dragons who will someday protect the entire planet. the racism and sexism also are repeated problems.
the first section is simply extremely colonial. the colonists repeatedly and enthusiastically identify themselves with the “pioneers” who conquered North America (tellingly, the first song they sing on arriving on the planet is “Home on the Range”). the whole settlement plan makes no sense if you think about it for more than two seconds, as well as being right-libertarian. they apparently made no serious provision for any kind of continuing governance or legal system. their magistrate is a retired great-grandmother who has to be specifically reminded that the basis of the criminal law portions of their Charter is “innocent until proven guilty”. they explicitly say they’re hoping in the future they won’t need their handful of lawyers anymore. just absolutely no thought about the future, despite their insistence that they want to create a colony that will be sustainable in the long term. their goal appears, in fact, to be not to live in a society, if they can avoid it, which is just silly.
as a prequel to the main Pern series, it answers some questions — in particular, how did the space colony end up a feudal nightmare. the answer is “libertarianism”, but it’s also not clear to me whether McCaffrey realizes that was the answer she was providing — it seems like she thinks the original colonial plan is utopian and good. okay.
there’s a lot more to say, but it’ll have to wait for another time.
(also: Ted Tubberman did a few things wrong, to be sure, but not nearly as many as the book insists.)
moods: adventurous, dark, tense, wacky