I’d have been perfectly content if this had been the last novel in the series. It’s a great place to finish: during the course of this book the threat of Thread is eliminated, there’s a tearful ending of a long and fruitful life and the promise of a better future for those who want to grasp it. You can argue that this is a cozy novel with low stakes but that’s the point of it: it’s about a planet making a collective choice to embrace the lost knowledge of their past to improve their future: the low stakes/excitement are more akin to the scientific advances of our own age, where we won’t know the true results and benefits of our actions until years into the future.
But what I love about this book is the reality of it: the technology of Pern is set to make huge improvements and increase the quality of life of everyone. So it makes sense that the villains of the piece will be recognisable to anyone who’s paid attention to the news in recent years.
So what happens in it?
Well, when we left everyone at the end of The Renegades Of Pern they had just uncovered the computer system at Landing. Introducing itself as AIVAS (Artificial Intelligence Voice Activated System), it doesn’t take long to bring itself up to speed with what has been happening on Pern since the building housing it was covered in volcanic ash during the climactic events of Dragonsdawn. Our heroes (focusing particularly on Robinton and Jaxom again) are quick to take advantage of the situation in their never-ending quest to improve life on Pern and destroy Thread forever.
However, the biggest surprise is when AIVAS actually provides them with a plan to destroy Thread forever and the dragonriders of Pern must take part in his timeline of learning in order to bring it about.
I said I love this novel. I love it because it’s a genuine novel of ideas, that poses a legitimate question of what happens when a society gains access to knowledge that can enhance their world. The exploration of this idea is thoughtful and realistic and plays out logically but with a couple of surprises.
But there’s a lot here that I dislike as well. It’s the sort of novel I don’t often enjoy: AIVAS gives the Pernese access to new (to them) technology which means that they begin to enjoy a lot of things that were unknown to them previously: computers; printed books; electricity, and countless other benefits. It should ruin the setting, which had been previously laid out as a society full of strong individuals who must band together to fight a common biological foe. Giving them technology just makes them similar to any other faux-exotic culture in SF.
It also does then ridiculous thing of having dragons traveling to spaceships and doing spacewalks.
It makes the series cozy and comfortable.
But this is where it gets awkward: Pern is my cozy reading place. There’s a lot of places in speculative fiction that I love to read about, but there’s not many of them that I would like to visit. The existential threats being posed by the problems and villains of other stories are conspicuously absent on Pern: they lead a remarkably urbane and familiar life there. There’s a monstrous, horrific terror that falls from the sky every few days, but everybody cooperates to mitigate that. The issues facing the average Pernese are no different to our problems but they fall into two camps, mostly: some people want more than their share and are prepared to use their clout or other means to achieve it; or, we have an idea about making life better for everyone here but some people don’t believe in it as much as we do.
There are variations to this, but they are also remarkably familiar to our real-world problems (sorry, Menolly).
Really, Pern is a place where I can go to see people facing problems similar to those faced by people in my own world… but with DRAGONS!
And this book makes it into DRAGONS IN SPACE! Which is where my issue is. It feels a bit too cute to work properly.
But it does.
It takes a while to set up. McCaffrey sensibly takes a lot of time to set up the action, but that makes everything more realistic.
AIVAS wants to be sure that the people of Pern are going to be able to work the technology it is gifting them with so it sets up a program of study for them to follow.
But we learn that this program has a deadline: AIVAS is also plotting to get rid of Thread once and for all so all the milestones it has set up need to be followed rigidly. This results in a faster than possibly useful distribution of new tech to a population that might not be ready for it.
Which is where we get the real plot beginning to unfold: there are some people who distrust the new technology and believe that it’s a plot to get rid of centuries of tradition and destroy livelihoods.
It’s all rather ridiculously predictable, which isn’t a fault of McCaffrey: we see this sort of reaction today.
Conspiracy theories begin to abound, people who had been mildly conservative become rigid and hidebound in their attitudes… it all plays out just as we’ve seen in our own lives over any number of issues. And the conspiracy theories are just as deranged as those that were beginning to become mainstream at the time of publication and that have become commonplace since the advent of the internet and social media.
And I did note the irony of the Pernese getting upset at an Artificial Intelligence helping them to make their lives easier and more productive, when large portions of the population are getting upset with AIs that are threatening to undermine the activities that we consider to be creative (which is an argument for another day).
But all is not perfect here in this rather idyllic novel: there’s a couple of things that I’m not overly thrilled with.
First up is the notion that AIVAS posits regarding dragons and their abilities. AIVAS, after studying the dragons and fire lizards, comes to the conclusion that their psychic abilities (telepathy, teleportation, etc) are limited only by the imagination of the creature. This means that there possibly isn’t a limit to what dragons can do. Admittedly, this was hinted at in The White Dragon, but it’s terrible seeing the idea pushed forward to some kind of conclusion, because it reduces the dragons from marvellous creatures to giant flying wish-fulfilment devices who can do anything. It comes to a sort of conditional conclusion a few books from now but it’s an idea that just weakens the entirety of the premise of Pern and its dragons.
The other problem I have rears its head in the last pages of the book and it’s easy to take no notice of it.
Religion.
Religion is conspicuously absent on Pern. There’s a healthy adoration of dragons and their riders, but nothing has ever approached the level of an organised belief system. However, at the end of this novel Robinton and AIVAS are having a conversation:
‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven, Master Robinton.’
‘That is poetic, Aivas.’
There was one of those pauses that Robinton always thought was the Aivas equivalent of a smile.
‘From the greatest book ever written by Mankind, Master Robinton…’
There won’t be another mention of anything else resembling religion for about ten years but it’s a little annoying that it’s being brought up at all, frankly. The colonists in Dragonsdawn had specifically hoped to leave all their conflicts behind and had started their new lives without any mentions of higher powers in their Charter. To see a casual mention of any religion sort of shatters the illusion that we are in a future that belongs to an offshoot of humanity who have gotten by without it for centuries (You are more than welcome to disagree, but I’ve had thirty years to stew on this).
Part of that anger is at what is also happening in that conversation. I’m not going to break my “no spoilers” rule but this is an absolutely heartbreaking scene and one that will have repercussions for many books to come.
But not for the next clump of stories.
Coming Up Next: “The Dolphins Bell”
