Dragonsblood is a science fiction novel by Todd McCaffrey in the Dragonriders of Pern series that his mother Anne McCaffrey initiated in 1967. Published in 2005, this was the first with Todd as sole author and the nineteenth in the series.
Collaboration
Todd's solo contribution followed two years after the first published collaboration between mother and son, Dragon's Kin. Although set only a decade later, Dragonsblood is not a sequel. During the next few years, the McCaffreys co-wrote two sequels to their Dragon's Kin and Todd completed two sequels to his Dragonsblood.
Plot overview
All of Todd's novels are set just before or at the beginning of the "Third Pass", about 500 years after human settlement on Pern (500 AL, "After Landing") and 2000 years before the "Ninth Pass" events chronicled in most of Anne McCaffrey's Pern books.
Dragonsblood features an epidemic that strikes fire-lizards, probably first, and dragons (reptiloids). The people of Pern have regressed since its settlement by colonists from Earth and have already lost the knowledge and equipment to handle such a bio-medical crisis.
In Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern (1983) and Nerilka's Story (1985), Anne McCaffrey had featured a plague that decimates humans and apparently passes among mammals. That happened 1000 years later in Pern history.
Plot summary
Occasional chapters of Dragonsblood are set soon after the end of the First Pass of the Red Star, nearly 450 years before most of the action. There (or then) the elderly Wind Blossom, a geneticist and daughter of the legendary Kitti Ping, is bemoaning the gradual loss of manufactured items and the technology to create them. She and her ex-protégé Tieran are startled by two fire-lizards who literally fall from the sky. One, a gold, dies upon arrival. They nurse the other one, a bronze, back to health, using the last of the antibiotics. Not knowing if the fire-lizard's sickness is contagious, they quarantine it until it recovers. Tieran adopts the fire lizard and names him Grenn – the name found on the harness he was wearing. Further investigation of the decorations on Grenn's harness leads to the incredible conclusion that he is from the future. Since fire-lizards provided the genetic basis that Kitti Ping used to build the Thread-fighting dragons (and Wind Blossom used to build the watch-whers), they speculate that this future affliction of fire-lizards might be fatal to dragons, and that is confirmed when a dead gold dragonet appears – one obviously sickened by the same future disease. The dragon's body is destroyed, but Tieran recovers a decorated piece of metal from its harness.
In order to save the dragons of the future, Wind Blossom and Tieran devise a plan to educate someone from the future in genetics and the scientific knowledge to isolate the disease and devise a cure. They create hidden rooms in Benden Weyr and fill them with instructions and equipment to educate that future person. Tieran believes that both the fire-lizard and dragon came from the same woman in the future, since both had similar harness decorations and only women impress gold dragons. He further believes that she has some connection with himself and Wind Blossom – a connection that both dragon and fire lizards followed. He leaves a small souvenir for her in the hidden rooms.