During the second half of Dragonsdawn, a rather epic event took place: the colonists, in their bid to reestablish the colony on the Northern Continent, create a huge convoy of boats and ships to convey people to the new settlement. But because Dragonsdawn was mostly about how the dragons were created, this got pushed aside in favour of having the fledgling dragonriders learn about travelling between and teaching their mounts about breathing fire.
And in a shrewd marketing move, this was originally published as a novella by Wildside Press in September 1993 (just two years after they had published “Rescue Run”). This story also appeared in the Anne-thology (you’re stuck with that term now) The Chronicles Of Pern: First Fall, published in November 1993 (there’s one more story that was also published in September 1993 that appeared in that collection and it comes up next in Pern Appreciation Month).
I call it shrewd because having it appear in two editions published just a couple of months apart in the second half of 1993, created a little bit of anticipation for The Dolphins Of Pern, which was published in 1994.
So what’s going on here in this story?
Well, it’s the story of Jim Tillek, Captain of the Bahrain, one of the three colony ships that brought humans to Pern. He’s returned to an old love of his, sailing, on his new home and he also works with the dolphins in their new habitat.
However, when disaster strikes in the form of a volcanic eruption, Tillek finds himself in charge of a ragtag fleet of humans and dolphins heading North.
Adventures ensue, with storm and Thread being among the perils they face.
This is a really different flavour of Pern adventure because the dragonriders barely feature in it, and it’s more about the concerns of regular people trying to survive a disaster.
It’s where the dolphins of Pern (not the novel – that’s coming up a bit later on) begin to come into their own. They aid the fleet by giving navigational aid, rescuing people suffering from mishaps and providing some light relief during tense situations.
These are not the uplifted, university- and academy-trained dolphins of David Brin’s Startide Rising, however: these dolphins have been genetically engineered but only to raise their intelligence and to assist in their linguistic skills when communicating with humans.
It’s a teaser for their upcoming novel, really, but it’s also a fun maritime adventure, too. It’s dramatic when it needs to be, breezy when it needs to be and fills a gap we weren’t aware that we needed filled.
But it’s a necessary novel because it sets up Tillek as an important figure in dolphin lore on Pern – in The Dolphins Of Pern the head of the dolphin community is referred to as “The Tillek”, a sign that he continued his work with well beyond the pages of this book.
A story like this is a clever way of developing ideas further than they possibly might have been on the page, or avoiding masses of exposition in later stories when a reader might be asking a question like “Why is this minor background character from Dragonsdawn suddenly a mythical figure in dolphin mythology?”
Honestly, the way that McCaffrey takes minor characters and turns them into somebody important to other stories is something that I love about these books and have done since Nerilka’s story. Or even the mention of K’van in The White Dragon. It fleshes out the world a little more, giving it a sense of history that it might not normally have. It also takes the pressure off our regular heroes, knowing that not every book is going to be about them (F’lar can only get into so many knife fights, after all). And with a series that spans as much time as this one does, it’s good to know that there’s a wide range of characters and stories to read about.
Coming Up Next: “The P.E.R.N. Survey”
