Dragonsdawn's most striking literary antecedent is Johann Rudolph Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson (1812). Like the famous family, the colonists are equipped to establish themselves in their new home, and they are quite ingenious in adapting to their new environment. Like another famous castaway, Robinson Crusoe, they are fiercely selfsufficient and renounce their dependence on Earth when Thread devastates their homes and families.

The theme of the survival of a colony is reminiscent of tales of the American pilgrims and Puritans and pioneer tales of the westward expansion, particularly narratives told mostly by women—a newly-rediscovered genre of American literature. McCaffrey does not depict the colony as a western-style boomtown, with bars and brothels as the first establishments, but as a homesteading community, where the first priorities are farms and schools. She even follows the old homesteading guideline: You own as much land as you can work...