The Introduction opens with a question: at what point does fact evolve into myth? Does fact’s relegation to myth over time make it any less true?

In the distant past, colonists from Earth settled on the planet Pern in the solar system of Rukbat. Pern is Earth-like and hospitable to man, but every 200 or so years, a wandering planet (the Red Star) nears its orbit. This planet’s indigenous life forms, which resemble silver threads, attack Pern when the gap between the two planets is small. Their onslaught eventually severed contact with Earth. To counter the Threads, the people of Pern bred specialized local life—dragons—but the last Thread attack was long ago. Without any Threads to fight, Pern’s guardians, the dragonmen, have fallen into disrepute. Many Pernese now doubt that Threads exist at all.

A psychic sense of danger wakes the book’s protagonist, a kitchen drudge named Lessa. She felt a similar warning here in Ruatha Hold 10 years (or “Turns”) ago (1). She touches base with her only friend, the Hold’s ugly old watch-wher (a creature similar to dragons), and determines that the danger she senses is not imminent, nor does it stem from Ruatha’s usurper, Lord