Anne McCaffrey’s Pern is, to all appearances, a secular society. There is no organized religion in Pern—no mention of gods or supernatural spirits. While there are fantasy elements—most notably dragons and a form of empathetic telepathy–Dragonflight is rooted in hard science fiction. The author and her universe are interested less in magic and spirituality and more in knowable, observable truths.

That being said, belief and faith are powerful elements in Dragonflight because McCaffrey posits a world in which so much time has passed that scientific knowledge has become “myth.” In the far-distant past, human beings from Earth used modern science to combat the Threads. They developed flamethrowers, used genetics to breed dragons, and leveraged scientific theories (like Arrhenius’s theory of panspermia) to make sense of and control their world. But due to the passage of time, their scientific works became unintelligible to their descendants, and those who believe in them are seen as superstitious and disconnected from reality.

Thus the question of “faith” becomes one of the major tests for characters in Dragonflight: Do they “believe” in the truth of the old treatises—now relegated to legend—or do they prioritize only what they can see right in front of them? The Lords, for example, think there is no profit to be had in the silly superstitions of the Weyr, and they pay dearly for their neglect of Pern’s defenses.