The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (1993) is the 12th book written in the Dragonriders of Pern series, and is a short story collection.In chronological order it is one of the books set during the first pass (1st pass runs from just before settlers landed on Pern until about fifty years afterward).

Here are five gripping episodes of early Pern – from the very first space survey recommending colonisation, to the last, where the early world, its young dragon culture undetected, is condemned to be isolated in space.

Here is the saga of the mass evacuation from the volcanic southern continent, an entire group of people moved across the dangerous seas, guarded and guided by a flotilla of dolphins. Here, too, is the story of the creation of Ruatha Hold – a mammoth undertaking in the early days of Pern.

And here is one of the most fascinating dragon tales ever written by Anne McCaffrey, when Fort Weyr was the only weyr, and when dragonriders and dragons were overcrowded to danger point. As the news broke of three fresh weyrs to be established, a young girl, Torene, came to realize that her dragon could be the next Queen of the newly formed Benden Weyr.

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.