Editing Anne McCaffrey (section)

==== Dragonriders of Pern series ====
{{main|Dragonriders of Pern}}
{{Hatnote|See lists in [[Anne McCaffrey bibliography#Dragonriders of Pern series|publication order]] and [[List of Pern books|Pern chronological order]]}}
McCaffrey's best-known works are the ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'' series.  When colonists from Earth and other planets make a decades-long space journey to Pern (an acronym designating "Parallels Earth, Resources Negligible" stamped on the original exploration team report) to escape interstellar wars, their fledgling society is threatened by ''Thread'', a mindless organism that falls like a "hungry rain" to consume all organic material. The survivors of the original expedition create genetically engineered "dragons" from a native species of small fire-breathing, winged reptiles as self-propagating weapons to destroy the encroaching organism in the sky. The majority of the [[Dragonriders of Pern]] books take place approximately 2500 years after the planet's colonization, when new challenges face the now low-tech, agrarian society that depends on the telepathically linked dragons and riders for protection from their ancient menace, and their long-forgotten origins are ultimately rediscovered.