Dragonflight (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)
McCAFFREY, Anne (intro. Gordon R. Dickson; illus. Michael Whelan). Dragonflight. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1988.
Octavo. Full red leather. Covers with gilt dragon design to front and rear boards. Spine with four raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. xiii, 337 pp. Double-page colour frontispiece and illustrations by Michael Whelan. Signed Collector's Edition. Part of the Easton Press Masterpieces of Science Fiction series. Signed by the author on the special title page. Includes signed Certificate of Authenticity, Collector's Notes, edition card, and bookplate adhered to front endpaper. Originally published New York: Ballantine Books, 1968.
Anne McCaffrey (1926–2011) was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction — for the novella "Weyr Search" in 1968 — and the first to win a Nebula Award for a novelette. Both awards recognised early versions of the material that became Dragonflight, the novel that launched one of the most enduring series in science fiction. She spent much of her adult life in Ireland, in a house in County Wicklow she designed herself and called Dragonhold-Underhill, a name that declared its allegiances with characteristic directness.
Pern is a planet settled by humans who have largely forgotten their technological origins, and whose survival depends on an ancient and imperfectly understood system of defence: dragons, genetically engineered from the native fire-lizards of Pern, who form telepathic bonds with individual riders and who alone can destroy Thread — a virulent spore-organism that falls from a neighbouring planet in regular passes and devours all organic matter it touches. Dragonflight opens in an era when Thread has not fallen for so long that most people have stopped believing it will return, and the Weyr (the dragonrider communities who exist to fight it) have been reduced to poverty and contempt. Into this situation comes Lessa, the last surviving heir of Ruatha Hold, who has spent her life in disguise as a drudge planning her revenge on the man who destroyed her family. Her discovery by F'lar, rider of the bronze dragon Mnementh, and her Impression of the queen dragon Ramoth, initiates a story that is simultaneously a quest narrative, a romance, and a meditation on memory, duty, and the knowledge that is lost when a culture stops taking the past seriously.
The novel was innovative in ways that are now so familiar they have become genre conventions: the telepathic animal bond, the ecological catastrophe averted by those who remember when others have forgotten, the woman protagonist whose agency is central rather than decorative. McCaffrey's achievement was to make these elements feel not like ideas but like lives, and the Pern series has remained in print continuously since 1968. The artwork by Michael Whelan, the pre-eminent science fiction illustrator of his generation, is entirely suited to the material.
Near fine. Some minor loss to gilt on covers; otherwise fine throughout.
This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000494
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Dragonflight (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)
Dragonflight (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)
McCAFFREY, Anne (intro. Gordon R. Dickson; illus. Michael Whelan). Dragonflight. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1988.
Octavo. Full red leather. Covers with gilt dragon design to front and rear boards. Spine with four raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. xiii, 337 pp. Double-page colour frontispiece and illustrations by Michael Whelan. Signed Collector's Edition. Part of the Easton Press Masterpieces of Science Fiction series. Signed by the author on the special title page. Includes signed Certificate of Authenticity, Collector's Notes, edition card, and bookplate adhered to front endpaper. Originally published New York: Ballantine Books, 1968.
Anne McCaffrey (1926–2011) was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction — for the novella "Weyr Search" in 1968 — and the first to win a Nebula Award for a novelette. Both awards recognised early versions of the material that became Dragonflight, the novel that launched one of the most enduring series in science fiction. She spent much of her adult life in Ireland, in a house in County Wicklow she designed herself and called Dragonhold-Underhill, a name that declared its allegiances with characteristic directness.
Pern is a planet settled by humans who have largely forgotten their technological origins, and whose survival depends on an ancient and imperfectly understood system of defence: dragons, genetically engineered from the native fire-lizards of Pern, who form telepathic bonds with individual riders and who alone can destroy Thread — a virulent spore-organism that falls from a neighbouring planet in regular passes and devours all organic matter it touches. Dragonflight opens in an era when Thread has not fallen for so long that most people have stopped believing it will return, and the Weyr (the dragonrider communities who exist to fight it) have been reduced to poverty and contempt. Into this situation comes Lessa, the last surviving heir of Ruatha Hold, who has spent her life in disguise as a drudge planning her revenge on the man who destroyed her family. Her discovery by F'lar, rider of the bronze dragon Mnementh, and her Impression of the queen dragon Ramoth, initiates a story that is simultaneously a quest narrative, a romance, and a meditation on memory, duty, and the knowledge that is lost when a culture stops taking the past seriously.
The novel was innovative in ways that are now so familiar they have become genre conventions: the telepathic animal bond, the ecological catastrophe averted by those who remember when others have forgotten, the woman protagonist whose agency is central rather than decorative. McCaffrey's achievement was to make these elements feel not like ideas but like lives, and the Pern series has remained in print continuously since 1968. The artwork by Michael Whelan, the pre-eminent science fiction illustrator of his generation, is entirely suited to the material.
Near fine. Some minor loss to gilt on covers; otherwise fine throughout.
This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000494
Original: $62.85
-65%$62.85
$22.00Product Information
Product Information
Shipping & Returns
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Description
McCAFFREY, Anne (intro. Gordon R. Dickson; illus. Michael Whelan). Dragonflight. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1988.
Octavo. Full red leather. Covers with gilt dragon design to front and rear boards. Spine with four raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. xiii, 337 pp. Double-page colour frontispiece and illustrations by Michael Whelan. Signed Collector's Edition. Part of the Easton Press Masterpieces of Science Fiction series. Signed by the author on the special title page. Includes signed Certificate of Authenticity, Collector's Notes, edition card, and bookplate adhered to front endpaper. Originally published New York: Ballantine Books, 1968.
Anne McCaffrey (1926–2011) was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction — for the novella "Weyr Search" in 1968 — and the first to win a Nebula Award for a novelette. Both awards recognised early versions of the material that became Dragonflight, the novel that launched one of the most enduring series in science fiction. She spent much of her adult life in Ireland, in a house in County Wicklow she designed herself and called Dragonhold-Underhill, a name that declared its allegiances with characteristic directness.
Pern is a planet settled by humans who have largely forgotten their technological origins, and whose survival depends on an ancient and imperfectly understood system of defence: dragons, genetically engineered from the native fire-lizards of Pern, who form telepathic bonds with individual riders and who alone can destroy Thread — a virulent spore-organism that falls from a neighbouring planet in regular passes and devours all organic matter it touches. Dragonflight opens in an era when Thread has not fallen for so long that most people have stopped believing it will return, and the Weyr (the dragonrider communities who exist to fight it) have been reduced to poverty and contempt. Into this situation comes Lessa, the last surviving heir of Ruatha Hold, who has spent her life in disguise as a drudge planning her revenge on the man who destroyed her family. Her discovery by F'lar, rider of the bronze dragon Mnementh, and her Impression of the queen dragon Ramoth, initiates a story that is simultaneously a quest narrative, a romance, and a meditation on memory, duty, and the knowledge that is lost when a culture stops taking the past seriously.
The novel was innovative in ways that are now so familiar they have become genre conventions: the telepathic animal bond, the ecological catastrophe averted by those who remember when others have forgotten, the woman protagonist whose agency is central rather than decorative. McCaffrey's achievement was to make these elements feel not like ideas but like lives, and the Pern series has remained in print continuously since 1968. The artwork by Michael Whelan, the pre-eminent science fiction illustrator of his generation, is entirely suited to the material.
Near fine. Some minor loss to gilt on covers; otherwise fine throughout.
This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000494
