Back when it pull ahead the Hugo in 1979 , Vonda McIntyre ’s Dreamsnake was one adult female ’s radical ride through a post - apocalyptical world . Too bad it ’s been out of print for over a decennium .
I ’ll be honest , I was n’t on the dot sure what I was gon na say about Dreamsnake . The book had me a turn stick and , though it also won the Nebula and Locus awards , people do n’t talk about it much any longer .
But I pay off lucky . Vonda McIntyre , who write it , has chip in a brace of recent posts to io9 ( seehereandhere ) , and she graciously agreed to talk to me about the playscript .
https://gizmodo.com/how-one-of-the-first-star-trek-novels-was-written-5574037
https://gizmodo.com/the-thing-i-couldnt-say-to-mr-spocks-dad-5646665
The benefit to me was twofold : One , of course , I got some backstory and linguistic context from her that help oneself me understand why Dreamsnake made the impression it did when it was released . Two , and more important , the fact of my impending conversation with her force me to think real firmly about the book — and though , as devotees of this newspaper column are mindful , I attempt to avoid that sort of strenuous activity at all price ( it makes my angina flare up ) , in this pillow slip I will admit it deepen my appreciation for what I ’d read .
Dreamsnake start as a short story called “ Of Mist , and Grass , and Sand , ” for which McIntyre bring home the bacon the Nebula . I knew this because I am a consummate researcher of the account of scientific discipline - fiction literature , and because it said so on the back cover of the book . you could recover the storyfor innocent on the author ’s website , but I opted not to study it until after I ’d finished the refreshing proper . My rationale was that I would attempt to hazard , as I read , what share of the book came from the original short story and which parts were added in the process of expansion .
I finish the first chapter and straightaway concluded that it , for sure , had been written on the fly , presumably to mollify some publish muckety - muck who did n’t think reviewer were smart enough to infer obvious last on their own . The chapter introduces us to a therapist appoint Snake , who has traveled across a desert of black sand to aid a sick child who belongs to a kinship group of nomads . To do her piece of work , Snake River apply music made from the spitefulness of three serpent she carries with her . There ’s Mist , an albino cobra ; Sand , a rattler ; and Grass . Grass looks like a regular tiny green reptilian , but is a dreamsnake — an foreign animal whose bite is n’t poisonous but peacefully hallucinogenic .
Snake cures the little son , but the nomad — who fear Snake , because of the baneful vipers that inhabit the neighborhood — terminate up kill Grass .
This is a fairly big job for Snake . Dreamsnakes are implausibly rare , and nearly impossible to breed . They ’re not give to just anyone , and definitely not the sort of thing you let get hacked in one-half on your vigil , especially if you ’ve just graduate from therapist school and are out on a journeying to prove yourself worthy of your occupational group , as Snake is . She ca n’t even really charge the nomads for it : they ’re pretty skillful folks , just a little on the ophidiophobic side — and she knew that and still , with young nerve , leave Grass unattended with them , assuming they ’d accept her judgment without account and leave the poor psychoactive critter alone .
One nomad , a young man refer Arevin who has delay up all night helping Snake mend the child , feel terrible about his people ’s error and wants to make up for it . ( The two of them also have sort of a love - at - first - batch connexion brewing . ) But Snake is all , “ Nope , I got ta get back to civilization and desexualize this myself , ” and so , following a poignant trade good - bye , she rides aside . destruction scene .
The next chapter begins with Snake back at her camp , stewing . If you just begin the level here , you ’d still ascertain pretty chop-chop that ( 1 ) her dreamsnake was wipe out by otherwise well - entail desert ethnic music , and ( 2 ) this death has instigated a professional and personal crisis . And so I , with my matchless powers of literary perception , assumed that this must be where the original short storey originate — in medias res , child , right in the midsection of the action . Good Lord , I thought . Vonda McIntyre must ’ve been so irritated to have had to indite that first chapter and lay it all out so annoyingly explicitly .
Well , of course I finish the Quran and discovered briefly thereafter that in fact , that annoyingly explicit first chapter was actually the honor - advance “ Of Mist , and Grass , and Sand ” in its entirety . I still think it ’s one of the weaker parts of the novel , and I still think you could cut it from the manuscript in toto and , with a few very minor edits further on , be exit with a utterly comprehensible narrative . Thankfully , though they likely regarded it with more affection than I do , Snake and Arevin imagine they merit treatment beyond what the first chapter offered them , too , and so they hang around in McIntyre ’s head , insist that she write more about them .
Most of Dreamsnake mass with Snake ’s risky venture over what we discover is Earth , ravaged long ago by atomic state of war , embark on when a rider named Merideth point up in her encampment seeking help for a severely wound partner . Though she ’s worried about how much she can do without Grass ’s anesthetic , Snake grabs her typesetter’s case moderate the other two serpents and heads off to help oneself .
As it turns out , her power to help Merideth ’s fellow traveller Jesse is severely hampered without the dreamsnake , and the whole experience leaves her even more convinced that she needs to replace Grass to practise her art . The one vivid musical note is that Jesse — a wild child from a loaded home who track down off into the wild — yield her an melodic theme : to go to the stone - enclosed city of Center , where offworlders sometimes follow to patronage , and see if she can obtain a dreamsnake there . For years , Center has n’t opened its gates to healers , but Jesse ’s connection might get Snake in .
McIntyre unveils her world very gradually . There are no infodumps from an omniscient storyteller ; instead , we learn about things as snake in the grass encounters them . And because in some casing , she ’s not all that sure of what to ask in this part of the world ( the therapist have n’t cross the mountains to the neighborhood in many years ) , and in others , things that would be odd to us are simply fact of her life , there ’s minimal foreshadowing and short idea of what ’s drop dead to pass . ( Contrast it with previous Hugo winnerGateway , where from the start you know Bob Broadhead will finally end up on a trip in a Heechee ship , orThe Gods Themselves , where it ’s clear some resolution will be found to the problem of the Electron Pump , or evenStranger in a Strange Land , where though you do n’t know exactly how it ’ll work out , there ’s an almost tangible sensory faculty of the conflict construction between Valentine Michael Smith and the earthly authorities . ) This organic fashion gives many revelations in the book a matter - of - fact feeling — sort of like in a pipe dream . And because Snake is n’t tug by an outside goal ( she does want a raw dreamsnake , but the stakes are n’t death if she does n’t find out one ; really , her quest is actuate by an internal sense of responsibility and professional pride ) , the plot move along a bit languidly , but not unpleasantly — sort of like follow a snake meander along .
https://gizmodo.com/gateway-by-frederik-pohl-the-most-dreadful-of-hugo-win-5659500
https://gizmodo.com/isaac-asimov-s-the-gods-themselves-in-which-scientists-5589704
https://gizmodo.com/stranger-in-a-strange-land-is-the-catcher-in-the-rye-of-5460352
On the way of life to Center , Snake stay for a while in a town call Mountainside , where she treats its ugly mayor for a leg wound ; helps the mayor ’s son , Gabriel , with a more sexual affliction ; and adopts a fire - marred twelve - yr - sure-enough named Melissa , who has a troubled past . The writing is so straightforward that it would be easy , I think , to disregard much of what happens in this section as rather sameness . I think that ’s what I did on my first read . Reflecting on them now , though , while they ’re not work with earthshakingly refulgent language , the Mountainside scenes demonstrate a real steadfast hand on McIntyre ’s part , and a keener sixth sense into human psychology — particularly the psychological science of sexual practice — than we ’ve escort in most of the Hugo books so far .
It ’s this stuff that made Dreamsnake controversial . For one thing , there ’s the sex . Though it ’s not vivid ( and certainly not pornographic ) , the book deals with intercourse more openly and thoughtfully than any of its Hugo precedents . One of its SF conceits is the idea of “ biocontrol ” — nascency restraint practice through psychosomatic handling of the reproductive system . Because this ability is possessed by the man in Snake ’s world , their liaisons are far less constrained by concerns about offspring and the social construction that rise from such concerns .
And then , even more important , there ’s the sex activity — that is to say , the purpose of gender in Dreamsnake . I have to confess that although I knew full well it was only the third Hugo - winning record to have a woman booster ( The Big Timewas the first , Where Late the Sweet Birds Sangthe second ) , it was n’t until I speak to Vonda that I had any real sense of how much that stand for .
https://gizmodo.com/the-big-time-is-a-mystery-morpheus-would-approve-of-5413239
https://gizmodo.com/kate-wilhelms-sweet-birds-how-protecting-a-species-can-5643371
Snake is sure as shooting more expressly “ female ” than either of the other volume ’ leads . I put that in quotation because I mean it in a somewhat traditional sense , and want to acknowledge that there are surely countless other valid definitions of the word . you could be distaff in a hatful of ways . In the case of Dreamsnake , though , I think it ’s worth apply a blanket , mainstream interpretation of “ female ” to its master fictitious character , simply because she stand as such a marked dividing line to the traditionally masculine fiber that pervaded ( and still pervade , although not quite as much ) the male - dominated field of SF .
First , of row , Snake is a therapist , as controvert to a warrior . She not only does n’t seek to have injury , even to her enemies , but is actively oppose to wound anyone unless she ’s left with no other selection . And then there are her sci - fi super - baron , so to speak : Rather than a suit of battle armour or some exchangeable nauseous potentiality , she ’s assist by an immunity to snakebite and an increased capacity for healing .
There ’s also Arevin . When his kinship group breaks camp to move for the time of year , he sets off to retrieve Snake , so that he can guarantee for her to the other healers , and take responsibility for his people ’s kill of Grass . As he ’s never been out into the great wide world , it ’s a supremely brave task . But it ’s an act of scruples , not physical speciality ; and though he and Snake are eventually reunited , his function is n’t to be her knight in shining armor . severely as it might be to consider in 2010 , back when the book was issue , that rubbed some folks the unseasonable way .
Dreamsnake ’s careful but not mawkish treatment of child sexual abuse set about under some hide , too , and oh , what else have I neglected to bring up ? ophidian does make it to revolve about finally , and beyond ; she ’s pursued by a crazy abandoned ship whose identity comes as a surprisal ; and though Vonda assure me quite sincerely that she never trigger on any of that funny hooey even though it was the ’ 70s , the coup d’oeil we get of what it ’s like to be under the influence of dreamsnake venom is one of the better depictions of being on drugs that I ’ve scan . Ah , and there ’s a groovy little trick in the book that I ’d bet most mass miss ( I did ) — a character whose sexual urge is never specified .
Anyway , more on that coming up ! Yup , this weekend you ’re generate double your money ’s worth out of Blogging the Hugos , because we ’re gon na play along up this post tomorrow with an anaconda - size of it interview with Vonda McIntyre . See you then !
Dreamsnake isavailable as an ebookat Book View Cafe .
take our interview with Dreamsnake source Vonda McIntyrehere .
https://gizmodo.com/in-arthur-clarkes-fountains-of-paradise-man-makes-tidy-5682551
Josh Wimmer is a freelance writer in Madison , WI . He can ordinarily be foundhere .
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