Dragons Made Me Do It: Bonus Episode #1: World-building and Backstory

Lleu: And welcome to Dragons Made Me Do It, one of potentially many podcasts about Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series.

Tequila Mockingbird: I’m Tequila Mockingbird and I read… some of these books, sporadically over the course of my adolescence.

Lleu: And I’m Lleu, and I also read some of these books sporadically over the course of my adolescence, and then a lot more of them as an adult.

Tequila Mockingbird: Today we’ll be doing a bonus/introductory episode about the world-building of Pern for the benefit of people who read these books when they were 12 and haven't thought about them since; or for people who… for some reason… are listening to this podcast despite not having read the books at all.

Lleu: Before we get started with the world-building information we wanted to flag a bunch of things that, while they won't come up in every book, do recur through the whole series at various points.

Tequila Mockingbird: McCaffrey's world-building rests on a foundation with a lot of bigotry baked in, and this manifests in some subtle and some very obvious ways throughout the book series. There is:

Lleu: A lot of homophobia; a lot of sexism, some of which is criticized and some of which is not; both implied and explicit eugenics, especially around disability; a lot of issues around consent; a lot of general ableism.

Tequila Mockingbird: Racism, mainly present in the prequel novels that are set when humans first settled Pern, but not entirely disappearing later; limited transphobia, but only because it's not clear whether McCaffrey knew trans people existed; child abuse, sometimes extreme; and more.

Lleu: Not all of these will come up in every episode, but we will be discussing issues around sex and consent, and also homophobia, in almost every episode.

Tequila Mockingbird: If you would like more specific warnings about episode content, please let us know, and we are happy to provide them. And now, Pern!

Lleu: The problem with Pern is that in order to talk about it with people, they need to understand a large volume of world-building concepts and they need to be able to understand them immediately when you reference them. So our goal in this episode is to give a brief and hopefully somewhat accessible introduction to… all of that.

Lleu: So the series covers a period of about 2,500 years in the history of the title planet, Pern, colonized by humans who wanted to return to a low technology agrarian lifestyle. The central premise is that another planet in Pern’s solar system, the Red Star, periodically passes close to Pern and brings with it an aggressive alien life form referred to as Thread because it looks like a bunch of silvery threads. Thread crosses the space gap between the two planets and falls on Pern where it consumes any organic matter it touches. And in order to combat Thread the colonists genetically engineer a native Pernese species to create dragons which closely resemble mythological dragons, including breathing fire, but are telepathic and permanently bond with or Impress their riders when they hatch and are capable of teleporting across large distances by traveling through a frigid void called “between.”

Lleu: Over the centuries Pernese society develops a complicated social structure with feudal elements. The majority of people live in Holds which are governed by a feudal Lord Holder and are primarily engaged in agriculture; Crafts or Crafthalls are each governed by their respective Craftmasters, are politically independent from Holds and provide specialist or skilled labor as well as art; and finally Weyrs are home to the titular dragonriders, their dragons, and large civilian support staffs.

Tequila Mockingbird: Having given you the roughly 2 minute version, we’re now gonna zoom in a little bit on each of those ideas, if you want to keep listening to understand a little bit more. So when the first colonists arrive on Pern, it’s clear that there’s been some kind of big and messy interstellar war. A lot of them are specifically, like, veterans, a lot of them are specifically trying to get away from whatever unhealthy war culture was going on. It’s also clear that humans have kind of spread out beyond just the planet Earth and that there’s this culture of technology and of genetic manipulation and enhancement of humanity that a lot of these people are specifically trying to get away from. The ideas is that this is sort of a sleepy backwater community; that definitely has some kind of creepy ethno-fascist undertones in some ways that McCaffrey doesn’t really address, but the idea is, like, oh, it’s this bucolic agrarian society where everyone’s just gonna go back to the land and live in harmony. It is very libertarian, they’ve got colonists and contractors and they all have land rights.

Tequila Mockingbird: And this is all thrown into chaos when Thread shows up and instead of their sleepy happy world, they have to deal with this sudden, violent threat. They take a native life-form, the fire lizards that are kinda like mini-dragons, and they bio-engineer them into being larger and into being more kinda connected to humans, upping that telepathy, that empathy so that they bond with the human rider. They also are able to breathe fire not just automatically but by chewing what’s called firestone, which allows them to basically burp out a gas that ignites as soon as it comes in contact with oxygen. It is plot-relevant, however, that by chewing firestone, female green dragons become infertile, so the golden “queen” dragons are the only ones that cannot breathe fire but can lay eggs. And this becomes kind of important, as we will talk about later, to the Weyr culture. Eventually they have to leave the Southern continent and move to the Northern continent, because the Northern continent has more caves where they can hide from Thread, because water, rock[*] and stone are the only things that stop it. So the First Pass, or the first time that Threads attack Pern, ends with them having all abandoned the South continent and having moved to the Northern continent of the planet.

Lleu: They make it through the First Pass, and then there’s a period of about 200 years, plus or minus about 50, during which the planet is Thread-free; they can expand, build new Holds. By the time Thread is approaching for the second time, they’ve started to realize that certain aspects of their society are unsustainable. In particular, they’re not gonna be able to sustain the level of technology that they have for the long term. Their kind of alien battery packs are running out of power, their computer systems are constantly on the verge of collapse. In the plot of Dragonseye, which we’ll talk about later, is essentially a bunch of people asking the question how can we make sure that essential knowledge about Thread, fighting Thread, history, all of these things, is conveyed into the future. So they develop a bunch of complicated strategies for this; in particular the use of music is something we’ll talk a lot about in the context of Dragonsong and Dragonsinger, and certain essentially… monoliths that are installed at the Weyrs in order to alert people when a Pass is imminent, when the Red Star is close enough that Thread will fall, and all of these other things. And we get to see a bit of how the feudal society or essentially feudal society that we see in later books began to develop out of the initial culture and charter of the early settlers. Then the books kind of jump ahead… well, Todd McCaffrey wrote some books that are set in the past, but we’re gonna skip over those.

Lleu: We don’t read those. Then there’s ah… two books that are set during the Sixth Pass, during which, notably, there is a major plague that kills, in some places, up to 90% of the population, which creates a massive disruption in the transmission of knowledge. It’s heavily implied that there are things that they still knew about Pern’s history, things that they still knew technologically, that become impossible as a result of this plague. And so it significantly disrupts the long-term transmission of history and knowledge, setting the stage for the main series, which is set during the Ninth Pass, so approximately… what, 400, 600, 800… about 900ish years later, where they have forgotten almost everything about the early history of the planet. There’s some vague awareness that Pern was “settled” from somewhere else, but they don’t really understand what that means. So they have a lot of questions, and the… part of the plot of the main series is their rediscovery of all of this history.

Tequila Mockingbird: When they move up to the North continent, as we were saying, they’re kind of developing this more feudal culture, and one thing that ends up being central to all of this is the idea of a Hold. And it’s implied, or maybe outright stated, that that’s the name because it’s Holding these people safe from Thread. So the idea is that you find a cave system, you dig a hole in the rock, and you get in there, you have big metal doors that seal you off during Threadfall and you are safe.

Tequila Mockingbird: So you have these Lord Holders who assume this kind of feudal, aristocratic power, and then you also have small Holders who are just individual households or small collections of families, and cotholds and things like that. But all of them are organized under this hierarchical, feudal authority system, where there’s a Lord Holder who’s in charge of a large area of the planet and other smaller Holds inside of that fall under his authority. It’s pretty clear that it’s not exactly a primogeniture situation because marriage gets a little wonky. We get this sort of vague understanding that these Lord Holders are having sexual relationship with a lot of women they are not married to, but who do live in their household and fall under their authority, but that there are legal marriages and the descendents of a legal marriage do have a better chance of inheriting.

Tequila Mockingbird: But it’s also stated at some points that there’s a Conclave of Lord Holders who all get together and have to vote on tricky questions of inheritance. It’s… I think some of that is sort of alliance based, but some of it is also, well, if someone technically could inherit two different Holds because they married someone who’s in the line of inheritance, how is that settled, and things like that. This also pretty clearly demonstrates that the rights of women have done a major backslide… we don’t i think see any female Lord Holders after, like, the… Third or Fourth Pass? And it definitely seems very unusual by the time we get to the Ninth Pass when the main plot of the books start.

Lleu: It is in fact a major point of contention in one of the middle books of the Ninth Pass books.

Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. So we see that there’s this idea that you have to have this kind of strong… patriarchal or singular authority to keep people safe during Threadfall, and that there’s an element of, you need to kind of… coerce or control the population and that some of the Lord Holders’ job is specifically to control population growth. Because they can’t get too big or they won’t all fit in the cave! And that cracking down on that is part of their reason for existing and part of… what they provide to this society. There’s also a very clear class system within the Hold, including a class of people called “drudges” who are… sort of standing in for servants and sort of for enslaved people? And, uh, it’s a pretty messy world-building concept that does not, I think, get as much attention as it really should within the narrative.

Lleu: So, alongside Holds there are a large number of Crafts. And the Crafts are basically any skilled trade, so Smithcraft, which also encompasses theoretical sciences. The Harpercraft which is music but also education. The Minercraft, Fishercraft, Weavercraft, Farmcraft, Beastcraft. So obviously many people on the planet are engaged in herdsmanship or agriculture in a variety of ways, it’s implied that that kind of… Farmercrafthall where you get formal training is more like a kind of technical school where you’re getting formalized training in agronomy, rather than just sort of… going out and planting seeds and reaping eventually. Likewise, the Beastcrafthall is not just where you learn about animals but specifically is training people to be, like, veterinarians or zoologists. To do more technical work in the fields in question. So the Crafts administer themselves, essentially, as independent guilds. They all are situated at particular Holds, so the Harper Hall for example is at Fort Hold, the first Hold on the Northern continent, but they are administratively independent.

Lleu: A Craftmaster has, notionally anyway, equivalent legal status to a Lord Holder and is, kind of, the absolute master of everything that goes on within their Crafthall. One salient point about Crafts is that the status of women in Crafts is somewhat more liberal than the status of women in Holds, in that we occasionally are aware that there are, for example, women who hold rank in the Fishercraft towards the end of the Interval before the Ninth Pass begins, or women who are of… hold rank in the Weavercrafthall. The Smiths in particular have a reputation for being egalitarian. The Harpers, we know that there have been on and off women in the Harpercraft, also women on and off in the Healercraft, which I forgot to mention earlier. So the Crafts are on the one hand closely related to Hold culture and mirror it in many ways, but also are politically and in some ways socially distinct.

Lleu: The Crafts are all organized essentially in a three-tiered system. You have apprentices, who have no particular legal status and are entirely subject to journeymen or Holders of rank in any Craft of Hold. Then there are journeymen, who do have legal status and are only subject to their Master or to people that they are under contract to. So, Harpers for example will take up contracts in particular Holds and are paid at a particular rate for the time that they are in that Hold. And then there are masters, who are again notionally equivalent to a Holder of rank, of aristocratic status, even if they are not The MasterHarper or The MasterSmith. Both Holds and Crafts are legally and by custom bound to provide tithes of goods and also services to the Weyrs.

Lleu: So the Weyrs are where the dragonriders live, so obviously the most interesting and most important part of the series.

Lleu: Yes, at least the shiniest. So, at the beginning of the Ninth Pass, there is only one Weyr. After the events of Dragonflight, there are six Weyrs. The first and oldest was at Fort, then there is a Weyr at Benden. Fort is kind of in the south, Benden is sort of in the northeast. There’s a Weyr at Telgar, which is kind of in the north in the middle of the continent. A Weyr at High Reaches, which is way in the northwest, very snowy, very cold, and then a Weyr in Igen which is in the desert, and a Weyr in Ista, which is on a big island off the coast of the northern continent.

Lleu: Again, in theory the Weyrs are all politically independent, the leader of a Weyr has again notionally equivalent status to any of the Lords Holder or any of the Craftmasters, and has absolute control over everything that goes on in the Weyr. But because dragons are responsible for protecting everyone on the planet from Thread, in practice everyone in a Weyr, or at least all dragonriders, are of a significantly higher status than basically anyone except Lord Holders and Craftmasters. Even a kind of, a green dragonrider, the lowest of the social hierarchy within a Weyr, can expect to go to a Hold and be fed, and quartered if he wanted to stay there for some reason. And possibly even demand luxury goods as, essentially, due payment for the work that he does every time there’s Threadfall. This becomes a major point of contention as the series goes on, because after the kind of 400 year gap before the beginning of the main series between the last time there was Threadfall and the beginning of the Ninth Pass, the Holds have expanded and there has been 400 years during which dragons served no apparent purpose. And a lot of people still feel some resentment about the idea that they’re expected to provide food and services and everything else to the Weyrs for… no benefit that they can perceive, until Thread starts again, but even then some of this resentment lingers.

Lleu: Within the Weyr, social status is determined by two things. First, the color of your dragon. So there are five dragon colors, and this is the part where things start to be like… this is too much! But you have to understand this. There are five dragon colors. There are green dragons, who are female and are approximately half of the dragon population. There are blue dragons who are male, brown dragons who are male, bronze dragons who are male, and a handful of queen or gold dragons who are female. As Tequila Mockingbird mentioned, green dragons are rendered infertile by chewing firestone, so the only dragons who are able to reproduce are queen dragons. As a result, the rider of the senior queen dragon at a Weyr is the Weyrwoman. So she’s in charge of all of the domestic, administrative things at the Weyr: keeping the Weyr supplied, making sure they have enough food, tracking medical situations, all of that stuff, keeping the Weyr records, also.

Lleu: Alongside the Weyrwoman is the Weyrleader. The Weyrleader is the rider of the dragon that mates with the queen dragon, the senior queen dragon, during her mating flight. Dragons are telepathically bonded with their riders, and dragons also have a kind of heat cycle. Periodically a female dragon, regardless of whether she is fertile or not, will go into heat and rise in a mating flight during which all the male dragons will pursue her. One of them will eventually catch her and they will have sex, regardless of whether this results in eggs or not. When the senior queen dragon rises to mate, the bronze, usually, dragon who catches her, his rider becomes the Weyrleader. Who leads the Weyr is determined by who your dragon had sex with, and so, who you had sex with, because you are telepathically bonded to your dragon. And when they are horny, you are also horny and you will have sex with the rider of the dragon they’re having sex with.

Lleu: There’s a bunch of weirdness around this, in particular the fact that Pern as a whole is quite sexist, so the Weyrleader is kind of of higher status than the Weyrwoman, but also the Weyrleaeder is only the Weyrleader because of the Weyrwoman’s dragon… and the book never really faces this conflict head-on, the series, but it is there. The other aspect of this to consider is that almost all dragonriders are male. All bronze riders are male, all brown riders are male, all blue riders are male during the main timeline, and almost all green riders are male. By the time of the Ninth Pass, all green riders are male, green dragons only start Impressing women again partway through the series and it’s a surprise and people don’t really know how to deal with it. But, green dragons still have mating flights. The result of this is that, first of all, green dragons make up approximately 50% of the dragon population, so approximately 50% of the mating flights are a green dragon being caught by a blue dragon, a brown dragon, or a bronze dragon, and then their two riders, both men, having sex.

Tequila Mockingbird: But McCaffrey did not seem to particularly want to engage with this in any meaningful way during the books…

Lleu: Except for the part that she keeps having to come back to it, because she wrote it into her world, into her world-building, as central to the social structure of Weyrs. So you get all of these at times intensely homophobic moments, but she keeps having to put them in. Because she wrote it this way, for some reason.

Lleu: It really is. So on the one hand I’m obsessed with it, and on the other hand it’s so frustrating. But we’ll talk a lot more about this in, well, we’ll talk a little bit about this in our Dragonquest episode and we’ll talk more about this in our episode on The White Dragon, for sure. And also when we talk about Moreta. And Dragonseye. It comes up a lot for some reason, despite the fact that she didn’t really seem to want to think about it in much detail.

Lleu: When a dragon lays eggs, the Weyr depends on kind of two different sources for candidates to Impress the dragons that hatch from those eggs. One is children who are born within the Weyrs. So, especially during a queen dragon mating flight, it’s not just the people whose dragons are involved in the mating flight who get really horny, because the dragons and their riders are all telepathic, everyone in the Weyr gets horny. So the mating flights are basically just a giant Weyr-wide orgy under normal circumstances. This results in usually a fair number of children. The Weyrs often can provide a number of candidates internally from children who were born and raised in the Weyr. One aspect that is important here is that because dragon sexuality is so central to Weyr social organization, the Weyrs are very liberal, at least in theory, about sexuality, and in particular about sex between men. And the Holds and the Crafts are very conservative about this and regard this as bad, um, there are…

Tequila Mockingbird: I think it’s also worth pointing out that, on paper, it’s also about sex with women, right? That the Weyr has this sort of liberated sexuality concept, where women having casual sex is fine, and that is very very forbidden in Hold and Craft culture.

Lleu: Yes, also true. And something that the series has a somewhat ambivalent relationship to, but does pay lip service to the idea that also, anyone can have sex with anyone at the Weyr and that’s just… isn’t that great. None of this is the case in Holds and Crafts, so the Weyrs are on the one hand regarded with awe, and as obviously important. They’re saving the planet constantly. But also with a certain amount of suspicion because they have all of this freedom and they seem to represent kind of the opposite of all of the sexual and social mores of Holds and Crafts.

Tequila Mockingbird: And there’s also some resentment because the other pool of candidates to Impress a dragon are taken on what’s called Search. Which is when dragonriders just show up and kidnap people!

Tequila Mockingbird: It’s clear that sometimes there is a, ‘hey would you like to come possibly ride a dragon?’ And everyone is hunky-dory with this, but it is also clear that sometimes —

Tequila Mockingbird: — this is a lot more like a kidnapping or that they are allowing a young person, tween, teenager to come to the Weyr when their parents would very much not like them to be allowed to Impress a dragon. Which is, at least on this planet, still legally kidnapping even if the kid is totally enthusiastic about it.

Lleu: It’s complicated, actually. It’s something that comes up in Dragonseye, so we’ll talk about it when we get there, for sure. Yes. We definitely are told that, especially the Oldtimers do sometimes kidnap people, particularly girls, as candidates or at least notionally as candidates. It does seem to be less common for boys for it to be kidnapping as such. We are definitely told… we get a couple portrayals of Search and all of them essentially include the dragonriders being instructed to, like… go out and mingle! Because essentially what they’re looking for is A: who’s hot? Because canonically dragonriders are all sexy, and B: who’s mildly telepathic? Which is what their dragons are for, to help them assess that. So they just kind of… do that.

Lleu: What a world. The one other thing that I wanted to highlight was, in terms of Searches and candidature, one again, element of sort of… Weyr sexual politics that is constantly brought up even though she could have just ignored it, is we’re constantly, over and over again, told that Weyrbred is best for green riders. Because of course children who grew up in the Weyr understand that sometimes men will have sex, especially during a mating flight. And children raised in Holds wouldn’t necessarily understand that. And again, I’m just raising this because, like… she didn’t have to do that. She didn’t have to write that in, multiple times, in multiple books. But she did. Why.

Tequila Mockingbird: And if you want to try and answer this question with us, along with several other questions that do in fact boil down to: Anne McCaffrey why? Why. Please feel free to check out the rest of the episodes where we will be going into more depth on specific books and plots.

Tequila Mockingbird: If you have any specific questions about a world-building element or something that we say that doesn’t quite make sense, please feel more than free to reach out to us on our tumblr and ask us about it. We both do, for whatever reason, enjoy thinking and talking about this series of books. So that’s dmmdipodcast at tumblr dot com.