Tipping the scales: Dreamsnake (1978) by Vonda N. McIntyre

A unique and moving feminist post-apocalyptic tale

Generations after a catastrophic nuclear exchange, society has reorganised along simpler, sparser lines. Small communities eke out a basic existence, towns make do with basic industries, and the only known city jealously guards its advanced technology. A clan of wandering healers provide medical aid with their unusual snakes - some a product of human bioengineering, others of alien origin. When one healer loses her alien “dreamsnake” due to the fear and superstition of her patient’s family, she sets out in a desperate bid to replace it.

Written by Vonda N. McIntyre (1948 - 2019) and originally published in 1978, Dreamsnake was a major critical success. It secured the “triple crown” by winning the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for Best Novel. McIntyre’s work was also recognised for its notable feminist reconfiguring of the heroic quest in science fiction. However, the novel still fell out of print - there were no new English-language print editions published between 1994 and 2016. Today, Dreamsnake is a highly recommended work of feminist, post-apocalyptic SF.

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Vonda N. McIntyre and the hatching of Dreamsnake

Trained as a geneticist, McIntyre began her career as an SF writer in 1970. In that same year, she graduated from the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop. In 1971, she set up Clarion West, and continued to run it until 1973 - collaborating in part with Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the workshop’s instructors. She published her successful short story “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” in the October 1973 issue of Analog. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1974, and went on to become the first chapter of Dreamsnake.

Two other stories, published shortly before the novel, were also incorporated into it. These were “The Serpent's Death” and “The Broken Dome”, published in the February and March 1978 issues of Analog. All the Dreamsnake stories were bought by Ben Bova, who edited the magazine from 1972 to 1978.

A different hero for a different post-apocalypse

The novel is set in the prototypical post-apocalyptic venue - a blasted wasteland in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Several key hallmarks are present, from the much-reduced population to the relative absence of modern technology. In other ways, Dreamsnake is very different to other post-apocalyptic settings, like Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley (1969). This is a quieter, subtler story which emphasises strong and believable characters, but also has interesting and mysterious SF elements.

Known only as Snake, the protagonist is a well-realised female character at the centre of a subversion of the traditional SF quest tale. Snake was trained by a clan of healers, who each have three snakes with powerful medicinal capabilities. Snake’s own creatures are Sand (a rattlesnake), Mist (a cobra) and Grass (her alien dreamsnake). Their unique properties - which in the case of Sand and Mist are the product of human genetic engineering, a skill which still remains - are crucial to the healer’s practice.

While Snake is treating a young boy who has a tumour, his family mortally injure Grass due to their fear of and superstition about snakes. With her dreamsnake dead, Snake decides to venture out in an attempt to acquire a new one. Her journey takes her in unexpected directions, to find unforeseen love, and to revelations about her world.

Mysteries of the aftermath

Le Guin praised Dreamsnake, calling it “a book like a mountain stream—fast, clean, clear, exciting, beautiful”. The novel has a number of similarities with Le Guin’s work, including its deliberate pace, humane qualities, focus on sex and gender, and rejection of the logic of violence. In the new “primitive” societies, social dynamics are significantly changed. Early on, Snake meets a kind of triad partnership of two men and one woman - apparently a common situation. Snake’s bid to save the woman and keep this family together is arguably the novel’s most moving episode.

McIntyre’s approach to her setting is intriguing because it preserves a strong air of mystery. Many aspects of Snake’s world remain essentially unknown and unexplained - these include the causes of the nuclear war, the persistence of the healers’ genetic techniques, and the origin of the dreamsnakes. The emphasis is on enduring ideas - of responsibility, purpose, and the roles of women - rather than on the ephemera of specific plot points.

McIntyre also sidesteps various common or predictable approaches. Her protagonist is a woman - still a relative novelty in 1978 - but it goes further. In Dreamsnake, neither force nor technology can solve problems. This is a stark break with much of the SF of decades past, and would have been particularly striking in Analog, previously edited by John W. Campbell Jr., the central icon of that earlier ethos.

A wasteland landmark

Dreamsnake is a clear landmark in 1970s SF. It is a strong example of the greatly increased presence and importance of women in the genre. It presents an unusual version of the post-apocalyptic setting, which is divorced from the contemporary “civilised” world, but which has a unifying logic of its own. It is also a humane, thoughtful story, which explores its themes deeply and in a stimulating way. 

While it may be a surprising omission from some notable SF lists - like David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (1985) - Dreamsnake is undoubtedly an enduring classic of its time. In particular, no deep exploration of women and feminism in 20th century SF can afford to omit this novel.

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• The novel evokes the traditional connection between snakes and the practice of medicine, as in the Rod of Asclepius (correctly used in medical contexts) and the caduceus (widely used incorrectly in the United States).
• Prior to Dreamsnake, only six other novels had won the “triple crown” of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for Best Novel. These included The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin and Gateway (1977) by Frederik Pohl.
  
• Joachim Boaz reviewed Dreamsnake in 2022, and made a connection between Snake and Alyx in Picnic on Paradise (1968) by Joanna Russ: “As with Alyx, Snake is the antithesis of the clichéd pulp woman in distress.”