The beatiful planet Pern seemed a paradise to it's new colonists - until unimaginable terror turned it into hell. Suddenly deadly spores were falling like silver threads from the sky, devouring everything - and everyone - in their path. It began to look as if the colony, cut off from Earth and lacking the resources to combat the menace, was doomed.

Then some of the colonists noticed that a small, dragonlike lizards that inhabited their new world were joining the fight against the Threads, breathing fire on in, and teleporting to safety. If only, they thought, the dragonettes were big enough for a human to ride and intelligent enough to work as a team with a rider...

And so they set their most talented geneticists to work to create the creatures Pern so desparately needed - Dragons!