[SA7]⇒ Download The Flight of Dragons Peter Dickinson Wayne Anderson 9780879518394 Books

The Flight of Dragons Peter Dickinson Wayne Anderson 9780879518394 Books

Download As PDF : The Flight of Dragons Peter Dickinson Wayne Anderson 9780879518394 Books

The Flight of Dragons Peter Dickinson Wayne Anderson 9780879518394 Books

For a used book it looks new. I think anyone who's into dragons will love this book. For me it takes me back to childhood. This is a wonderful book. You won't be disappointed.


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The Flight of Dragons Peter Dickinson Wayne Anderson 9780879518394 Books Reviews

My son enjoyed this book.
The book & the movie really need to be a set, they just complement each other!
Fast shipping and great product!
Very entertaining and different twist on dragons; definitely recommended
I remember this being cooler when I was a kid, but looking through it now, there are only a few decent pictures. His explanations of dragons are fascinating, however.
The premise behind Peter Dickninson's book The Flight of Dragons is quite fascinating. Namely, the book speculates on how dragons could have been possible and how their biology would have been like if they were real.
A similar idea was later done in the documentary Dragon's World A Fantasy Made Real, though this documentary portrayed dragons quite differently from how Dickinson portrays them (and in my opinion it also portrayed the dragons a lot better, with the exception of the rather silly concept of platinum being used as the catalyst for fire-breathing).

The Flight of Dragons begins with the whole problem of how something as gigantic as a dragon could fly. Dickinson offers the idea that they contained massive quantities of hydrogen gas, which made the dragon almost like a living balloon or airship. This hydrogen needed to be burned off now and then and this is how the dragon's fire-breathing capabilities are explained. (NOTE The dragons-used-hydrogen idea has also been used in a number of later speculations other than Dickinson's).
To produce the hydrogen, the dragons ingested large quantities of calcium, obtained from limestone caves (a classic dragon habitat), from the bones of their prey and from partial digestion of their skeleton. The large acid chambers that comprise much of the dragons' interior structures form the basis for the myths about dragons having "poisonous blood".

Dickinson avoids the whole six-limbed-tetrapods issue by rejecting the idea that the wings developed from the forearms (as was the case in birds, bats and pterosaurs), and instead portraying the wings as fin-like extensions of the ribcage. Because the wings are used more for steering and propulsion rather than lift, they needed hardly any flight muscle.

Because Dickinson's dragons were evolutionary descendants of theropod dinosaurs, they walked on their hind legs, though they would get on all four if facing prey or dangerous animals (such as weapon bearing humans), so as to protect their underbelly.
Dickinson gives dragons a huge level of sexual dimorphism by portraying just the males as being flying animals, and having the females be semi-aquatic.

Overall, I like Dickinson's premise. But there are some problems.

First of all, because Dickinson's dragons use solely hydrogen to get in the air, with the wings just used for steering and propulsion, they need to be extremely massive (generally approximately 30 metres long) to fit enough hydrogen inside them to get off the ground. Thus, when it comes to all those dragon legends telling of dragons considerably smaller than this, Dickinson states that these understated the dragons' true size.
A better explanation would have been that the dragons used massive flapping wings with powerful wing muscles in addition to the hydrogen gas. This was what was, for instance, shown in the documentary Dragon's World. Such an explanation would allow for smaller dragons and one would not have to resort to saying anyone understated any dragon's size.

Another problem was the unusual life cycle Dickinson gives the dragons, with the young cannibalising each other in their aquatic freshwater habitat. Seeing as his dragons are dinosaur descendants, it would have made more sense for dragon mothers to care for their young just like any other dinosaur mother. But then this book was made back in the 70s when dinosaurs were still strongly misunderstood, so perhaps I'll let this pass.
Also, the strong dimorphism between the sexes seems a rather stretched speculation.

The part of the book explaining why there are no cave paintings of dragons is rather unnescessary for the simple reason that there ARE cave paintings of dragons. As cryptozoologist Richard Freeman points out in his book Dragons More than a Myth, a prehistoric cave painting in Baume Latrone in France shows a serpent dragon dwarfing mammoths, whilst another dragon can be seen in prehistoric rock art in China's Shanxi Province.

The books strongest fail point was the claim that dragons could hypnotise their prey, thus explaining legends about dragons' mesmeric powers and speech (the speech would have just been a person hearing his/her own subconscious thoughts as voices in his/her head while hypnotised). For a real life biological example, Dickinson claims snakes and tigers can actually hypnotise their prey. Sorry, but no. These claims are no more than fictitious myths about the animals and have no real biological basis whatsoever.
A more sensible explanation for dragons paralysing people could involve them emitting intense sound blasts at the right frequency, and the speech could be simply explained as a case of mimicry (like how parrots can imitate human words and sentences). Again, the Dragon's World documentary featured these abilities (the prehistoric dragon in the documentary could emit a painfully loud screeching sound, and the Chinese forest dragon could mimic animal sounds).

Finally, Dickinson focuses almost entirely on the classical four-legged winged dragon of European mythology and folklore (this dragon type is known as the fire drake), with a small bit of info on Chinese dragons. He also mentions the wyrms, but neglects to mention how these are traditionally portrayed as legless. However, not a single mention is given to such other dragons as the wyverns (two-legged dragons with no arms) and the sea serpents.

Overall, this was a fairly interesting book with an interesting premise, but I would have liked some better arguments and explanations.
My wife mentioned in passing that she had this book when in college but it got lost over time and really thought our daughter (a Dragon 'nut') would have liked it. She did make a quick stop at a couple on-line auction sites and found the prices were way out of our price range. On a whim I checked here on and snapped it up immediately.

The book has great drawings and interesting writing 'documenting all the facts' about Dragons. Great read for someone looking for a fun Sci-Fi/Fantasy "resource book".
For a used book it looks new. I think anyone who's into dragons will love this book. For me it takes me back to childhood. This is a wonderful book. You won't be disappointed.