1978 Hugo-, Nebula- and Locus-award-winning science fiction. On a
post-apocalyptic earth, various small groups of people scratch out a
living; Snake is a healer, using bioengineered venomous serpents to
produce drugs that cure ills and relieve pain.
It's picaresque in form: for reasons which don't hold up too well
in retrospect, Snake travels to various parts of the blasted world in
order for the author to show the reader what's there. There's some
overarching plot, but it's fairly minimal.
The book is highly enjoyable but often heavy-handed: apparently nobody
except Snake is able to work out that there's a problem in whichever
place she's visiting, and the idea of drug addiction comes as a
surprise even to her. She comes over as a bit of a Mary Sue at times,
fixing everything more by being herself than by being smart or strong…
and riding a tiger-striped pony of her own genetic design.
The world is more interesting than the people. Although nobody outside
the City (there's only one) seems to be using electricity, they – or
some of them – remember what radiation poisoning is, and somewhere
really civilised has methane-fed gas lamps. There are aliens, or at
least offworlders, and dealing with them is tricky, All this is kept
to the background, but I'd love to know more about it.
The writing is very fine, with excellent descriptions of landscapes
and fairly good ones of emotional states. There are non-binary
relationships and child abuse and other "soft" subjects; the science
is plausible for the time but very clearly invented. This was only the
third Hugo novel winner to feature a female protagonist (the others
being Lieber's The Big Time and Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet
Birds Sang).
I finished this book and wondered why I haven't read more McIntyre.
This is a clear ancestor to Rosemary Kirstein's excellent The
Steerswoman series, and I think it stands well now even though it's
very obviously a book of the late 1970s. All the same, it doesn't
"feel" as though it has the quality of bigness and impressiveness that
I associate (perhaps incorrectly) with the idea of a Hugo winner.
Other nominees were McCaffrey's The White Dragon, Cherryh's The
Faded Sun: Kesrith and Tom Reamy's Blind Voices (posthumous
publication), so I don't think it's unfair to call it a weakish year.
Reread for Neil Bowers'
Hugo-Nebula Joint Winners Reread.
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