Dragonsdawn (1988) is the 9th book written in the Dragonriders of Pern series.In chronological order it is one of the stories set during the 1st pass (1st pass includes from just before settlers landed on Pern until about fifty years afterward).

In the beginning, before Thread, before the Dragons, before the Holds and the Weyrs and the elite Dragonriders of Pern, was just the great ships gliding through space with nearly six thousand colonists prepared to tackle the mighty task of beginning a new world on a strange planet.

It was a jewel of a planet, with rivers and seas and mountains, and breathable air and growing things. Then came the terror. The strange, unidentifiable circles in the grass suddenly revealed a meaning, and every living thing was at risk. Many died – a horrible and consuming death. All resources, every man, woman and child had to fight the terrible nightmare of Thread.

But a new creature was about to save the planet. From the delicate fire lizards a new life was born – a new symbiosis between man and beast.

Author Biography

Anne McCaffrey was one of the world's leading science-fiction writers, and won both the Hugo and Nebula awards as well as the Margaret A. Edwards' Lifetime Achievement Literary Award. Born and raised in the US, although of Irish extraction, she spent the last years of her life in Ireland, in the heart of the Wicklow Mountains. She died in 2011 at the age of eighty-five. She is the creator of the Dragons of Pern series.