The Monstrefact Redux: The Flight of Dragons

In this classic episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses a curious proposed method of dragon flight proposed by author Peter Dickinson in the 1979 book “The Flight of Dragons.” (originally published 4/17/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and This is the
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters
in time. Our recent Weird House Cinema episode on the
nineteen eighty one film Dragon Slayer got me thinking once

(00:30):
more about dragon flight. In this film, noted for its
superb dragon effects, we get to see Vermathra's pejorative soar
terrifyingly across the sky like a fighter jet, as well
as swooped down from craggy Peaks, but we don't see
the creature engage in vertical takeoff. In the special features

(00:51):
for the excellent twenty twenty three remastered Blu Ray release,
the effects team indicated that they intentionally avoided depicting the
dragon taken to flight in order to avoid challenges in
making the feat seem believable, because, of course, dragons, while
creatures of fantasy, should feel believable on the screen, and
that may often mean choosing what to depict and what

(01:13):
to leave to the audience's imagination. But in raising the
specter of believable dragonflight, I was reminded of an older
episode of Weird House Cinema in which I discussed the
nineteen eighty two animated film The Flight of Dragons with
Seth Nicholas Johnson. The film from Rankin in Bass was
based on the nineteen seventy nine book by Peter Dickinson

(01:35):
and illustrated by Wayne Anderson. Part coffee table fantasy art
book and part speculative natural history of dragons. The book
is an absolute delight, and affordable used copies are still
very much in circulation. Dickinson lays out one of the
more intriguing models for dragon biology and flight, which I'll
briefly summarize here. For starters, the dragons of flight of

(01:59):
dragonagons are quote flying bricks. They have thick bodies and
short wings, but are very capable of flight. The wings
for starters are too small to support their weight and
are not proper limbs, but rather webbed spines that evolved
from their ribs. The dragons only use these wings for
propulsion and maneuvering because their large bodies contain lighter than

(02:22):
air gas, specifically hydrogen, which the dragon produces via digestion
of limestone. The fiery breath then is a byproduct of
their mode of flight. They must regularly vent hydrogen as
a means of lowering their altitude when in flight, or
as a matter of course, when not engaged in flight.
Via structure known as thors thimble and the roof of

(02:44):
their mouth, the dragons are able to ignite the hydrogen
as a great burst of flame. The film does a
fine job relating all of this, and the book ruminates
on the speculative evolution, life cycle, and biology of fire
breathing dragons as well as dragon slayers. It's a great
deal of fun, but also rather insightful and clever. I

(03:06):
highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the
monster sciences. While we don't have any terrestrial organisms that
engage in this mode of flight, science fiction contains numerous
other examples of creatures that fly via bladders of lighter
than atmosphere gas. Artist and author Wayne Barlow, a legend
in his field, for example, envisioned the Eosapiens in his

(03:30):
nineteen ninety book Expedition. Barlow envisioned them as the most
advanced life form on the planet Darwin four, floating in
the atmosphere via two bladders of methane in the planet's
oxygen rich atmosphere. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster, Fact,

(03:51):
The Artifact, or Anamalia Stupendium each week. As always, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
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