The Anne McCaffrey sci-fi series with dragons telepathically bonded with humans to fight Thread.
Can teleport across space time by going between Here and There (extra-dimensional space…Hyperspace? Subspace?)
Going between is known to cause miscarriages, so a young lady who wishes to terminate an unwanted pregnancy will sometimes, take a short ride on a dragon.
Dragons, and the fire lizards they were genetically engineered from, have an adoration of birth/hatching and there is celebration when a new little one enters the world.
So, what do dragons think of being used to induce abortions?
Their bonded rider. If the rider wants that between jump, they will get it, unless it disproportionately risks the life of rhe rider. And it’s a high threshold, since the canonical reason for a dragonride is fighting Thread, a gravely dangerous activity.
Though we can make some guesses from things she wrote. The world of Pern seems to be a fairly secular place.
Asked why there was no religion on Pern, she said something like, it’s my world and that’s how I want it. There are Harpers who are are custodians of wisdom and knowledge, but no priests.
Don’t recall where I came across it, but ISTR one reasons dragons can fight Thread is that they live in the moment and don’t give too much thought to the past or future, So the consequences of spending “just the right amount of time” between (as one character put it) wouldn’t bother them too much.
Which doesn’t mean McCaffrey was absolutely consistent. As an example, when Ruth (the white runt) hatched one of the dragons predicted he would “prosper.” Which he did.
This was probably both emphasizing how Ruth’s hatching and bonding were extraordinary and unexpected, and to foreshadow his importance (as a main character). Kinda like pointing out plot armor.
Kylara (had to look her up). Casually aborting her “brats” was hardly the worst of her flaws. And IIRC you’re right that she was the only one around whom the topic was raised; I have a feeling that McCaffrey used it as an example of her overweening narcissism rather than a statement of her personal views on the subject.
Dragons seem pretty clear that humans and dragons are different critters. What’s right for dragons and what’s right for humans aren’t always the same thing and the dragons seem OK with that.
Kylara was the only character who explicitly used between for abortions but the effect was known before she existed so other female dragon riders were probably aware of that and occasionally used it.
Lessa only had the one child, but she also had one of the longest jumps between ever known. There was some implication that she was sterile, but whether that was due to difficulty birthing her son, too long between, or something else was never mentioned in the books.
Counterpoint - Green fire lizards are female, and can and do lay clutches, but don’t generally hide nor care for them as well as Golds do, so very few green fire lizard clutches survive. For that matter, as in the matter of the White Dragon, they’re utterly emotionally distant from non-viable offspring of their own - many eggs never hatch. I’m pretty sure they’d be equally unmoved by a human embryo or fetus that doesn’t reach viability. Granted, they are empathic and telepathic, and can be moved by their partners mood. So if a human female lost a child, they’d grieve, but if the partner is unmoved or relieved, they’d probably share that sentiment as well.
Plus… -sigh- if we’re going to seriously discuss Pern’s morality, we are literally talking about a gene-engineered slave race (Dragons) that was created to serve as warriors to protect alien invaders. Uplifted, impression intensified to make them emotionally dependent on humans, and yet not (in the main) given any actual rights of self-determination.
And leaving out that gigantic moral abyss, there’s the whole thing with F’Lar’s psychological and sexual abuse of Lessa. You can choose to follow the explicit story where she forgives him and loves him in the end, but dear god, when I went back to the series as an adult, I was seriously, unforgivably creeped out.
I haven’t read Dragonflight in decades, but my recollection is that F’Lar and Lessa’s first sexual encounter was during their dragons’ mating flight, when all inhibitions are off the table.
Were you perhaps thinking of F’Nor and Brekke? That was indeed creepy
Well, I should be clear that there are MULTIPLE problematic relationship dynamics, but no, I was talking about F’Lar. Basically, he takes a young, emotionally scared woman, sweet talks her into abandoning her birthright, takes her to a new society and keeps her largely ignorant, DOESN’T MENTION anything about what said mating flight will entail, and largely keeps her as a figurehead to support his political efforts.
Sure, in the course of the story, his means possibly justifies the ends in large part. But fundamentally, he still took advantage of an emotionally abused woman, fundamentally date-raped her (again, he KNEW what would happen during the mating flight yet never told her or sought consent / permission / understanding) and left her with plenty of privilege but minimal actual authority and contact. I strongly suspect that if she didn’t have her bond, and her ability to communicate with other dragons as well, she’d have proven just as great a disaster to F’Lar as she did to her previous “master”.
Also granted, if he had left her in her home hold, after the death of the prior overlord, she’d probably have not succeeded there EITHER, but in all cases, he treated her largely as a child to be used. Possibly understandable by the standards of the feudalist society of Pern, especially with an ELE coming, but as I said, not something I was comfortable with reading as a full adult 10-15 years after I read it as a teen.
It is explicitly said that F’Lar and Lessa’s first sexual encounter was also Lessa’s first sexual encounter ever. It is very heavily implied that F’Lar, not knowing that, acted in a manner that was not good and Lessa held it against him for some time. There’s a scene with F’Lar contemplating that if he had known Lessa was a virgin he would have somehow or other acted differently.
Later books give the impression that while it was required/a compulsion for the dragons’ humans to likewise have sex when the dragons were it was not unknown for Weyrleaders to NOT have sex with each other outside of that, the relationship being business and not pleasure, so to speak, even if other such couples acted more as a long-term marriage.
^ Basically that.
I don’t think F’Lar intended to be a cad, it was more thoughtlessness and the culture he lived in. Which doesn’t make it any less damaging, but the lack of malice in him was probably a factor in Lessa later coming to truly partner with him.
My reading of the situation was that F’Lar seriously misjudged Lessa and didn’t have a clue how naive she was.
There was, of course, the added pressure of there only being one gold dragon at the time on the entire planet and preserving that dragon and continuing dragonkind was subservient to all else because without dragons human society would end with the next Pass.
Sure, the politics of it all sucked, and the compulsory relationships between dragonriders, and the way the society of the Weyr had to conform to the needs of dragons, and the whole engineering of the dragon species, had much that sucked about it but for centuries the survival of people on Pern was dependent upon that structure. The society of the Holds and Halls wasn’t really any better given the constraints of protecting against Thread.
When you’re a teen/young adult it’s a ll “ooo! Dragons!” and fighting and harpers but when you get older you can see past that to some of the underlying ugliness of the social structure and the Weyrs.
Good review @Broomstick. Again, I tried to grant the point that the ends possibly justify the means in this case, and I admit I am giving F’Lar very little benefit of the doubt. So, each person reading the series should make their own judgements. But yeah, it’s a very very different read when I was a lot older, and at least slightly wiser, especially in the ways of male-female relationships.