Dreamsnake

by Vonda Mcintyre

Paperback, 1986

Status

Available

Publication

Dell (1986), Edition: First Priniting

Description

A New York Times bestseller and winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Dreamsnake is the haunting, critically acclaimed novel of an extraordinary woman and her dangerous quest to reclaim her healing powers. When the healer Snake was summoned, she traveled the blasted landscape with her three serpents. From the venom of two of them, she distilled her medicines. But most valued of all was the alien dreamsnake, whose bite could ease the fear and pain of death. When the dreamsnake is killed, Snake's powers as a healer are all but lost. Her only hope of finding another dreamsnake lies in a treacherous journey to the far-off Center City, where Snake will be pursued by two implacable followers: one driven mad by love, the other by fear and need.

Rating

½ (422 ratings; 3.9)

Media reviews

Denn die größtenteils gute Übersetzung holpert doch an manchen Stellen, weist ab und zu falsche Konjugierungen von Verben auf (auffallend hier vor allem das immer wiederkehrende und zur sonstigen Atmosphäre absolut nicht passende, altertümliche "Schnoben" der Pferde, anstatt daß sie
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schnaubten, wie die ansonsten modernere Sprache nahelegen würde), und auch im Satzbau erweist sich diese Übersetzung nicht immer als die sattelfesteste.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member TadAD
A good plot concept, disjointed writing (the book is sewn together from short stories), a well-fleshed-out main character but rather weak secondary characters, some confused messages about the roles of genders, a very interesting social backdrop.

I'm not sure why this book has achieved quite the
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status it has; I'd call it good but not great. I'm puzzled that it won the Nebula over Cherryh's The Faded Sun: Kesrith, a setting just as interesting with better depth to the characters (winning the Hugo was more understandable as the contenders weren't quite as strong due to the differing nomination rules). Oh well, everyone's entitled to an opinion.
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LibraryThing member krazykiwi
So hard to review a book that I loved so much as a teenager, and still read through rose-coloured glasses. And again with the crossover - although this reads very much like high fantasy, and that's what you'd probably think it was from the blurb, it's really a far-future post-apocalyptic
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sci-fi.

It's also super-typical seventies feminist fiction (for both the good and the bad that brings).

Snake, the protagonist, is a healer, using a curious mixture of what at first glance seems like shamanistic snake charming, and to this end she has a small collection of snakes that she carries with her as she wanders around looking for patients. Humanity now resides either in huge domed cities full of high tech, or, like Snake, outside in small tribal familial groups -- and they are not welcome in the cities. When Snake loses one of her snakes, the one that's actually an alien creature, and doesn't breed properly on earth, it's a big problem, because without them she can't do her job. She resolves to fix the problem by asking the city folk for help, and off she goes on a quest that ends up taking her somewhere else entirely

As a 17 year old, I would have rated this book a million stars out of five. As an adult, I have to give it four. The pacing is insane, the last quarter of the book is utterly nuts (but fun!), and I can't really gloss over the instalovey romance thing like I did back then. But the romance is a very tiny part of this book, a handful of pages at most.

It's also a fast and easy read, with a strongly written woman as protagonist: Snake is self-reliant, sometimes to a fault, and she is utterly determined against overwhelming odds. She is also imperfect, she struggles with self-esteem issues after losing her beloved snake, she doesn't always read people well or know how to deal with them, and comes off a little naive. She just always picks herself up and keeps going though. I like Snake a lot, it's just about everyone else in the book I could give or take

Somewhat interestingly given current puppy antics surrounding sci-fi, this book grabbed the hat-trick of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus (and it didn't stop there, it got tons of awards).

Also don't let the feminist slant put you off either. It's there, but in a very sci-fi way which is actually pretty fascinating and thought provoking.


For instance, Snake runs across a character who is vilified because he accidentally got a girl pregnant - although both men and women are able to control their own fertility through bio-controlling their own temperature, she was too young and untrained (he was supposed to be her "practice dude" more or less, but he was just bad at it and messed up.)


I expect this isn't too easy to find these days, but if you ever notice that distinctive girl on the tiger pony cover in a used book store, you could do a lot worse than throwing a dollar or two at it.
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LibraryThing member Karlstar
This is a post-apocalyptic story of a young healer who heals by using snakes as carriers for biological agents. In societies of hunter-gatherers, she's the only healer. There are some surprising contrasts of technology and lack of technology. The book is mainly about her quest to remain a healer
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through difficult times, and an exploration of the world (is it earth, or not?) that remains after some long ago nuclear war. There are also those with technology, and contact with off-worlders, though that's not really a major part of the book.
This is well written, though fairly simple, and it ends a bit quickly. A good, but not great book, overall.
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LibraryThing member bragan
The story of a young healer who wanders through a long-post-apocalyptic world using genetically modified snakes to produce drugs and treat disease. The plot is a bit rambly and isn't in itself terribly exciting, at least not until the last hundred pages or so when things start to come together. But
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the small, gradual glimpses we get into this world and its people were enough to keep me interested. The whole healing-with-snakes thing is perhaps a bit difficult to swallow, but it works considerably better than I might have expected it to. I'm not sure if this is quite Hugo-caliber -- it won in 1979 -- but it is a nice, readable SF story with a well-rendered, believable female protagonist.
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LibraryThing member satyridae
Post-apocalyptic fantasy with magic snakes and true love- it's as though McIntyre wrote it for me. I wish I'd read it in the late 70s, when it was new. I found the story to be a bit dated stylistically but very absorbing and nicely done.
LibraryThing member suzemo
3.5 stars, but if I had read it when I was younger (and I wish I had), it would be a 5 star book to me.

Snake is a healer on a post-apocalyptic Earth, off on her proving tour through the desert-lands, where healers typically do not travel. Along the way she has a mishap and she must then travel
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(first to her home, but then to a big City) do her best to right what has happened. Along the way she has a greater journey to a discovery that will (probably) forever benefit the healers in the future, and also makes personal gains.

The book is a bit dated, with flavors of the time period when it was written. Free sexuality (and total internal birth control)and less patriarchal norms is something that was probably more interesting at the time. However, it's still a good novel with a good story; McIntyre shows that a sci-fi fantasy novel doesn't need to be 700 pages and describe everything in painful detail to be good.

I like that in this post-apocalyptic world, there's a mix of primitive tribalism and hard-living survival right along with genetic manipulation and biotechnology that's commonplace. You get a glimpse of a city that is technologically advanced, but forbidden to "outsiders" and you hear of off-worlders (whether they are pre-apocalypse terrans that made it to the stars or aliens is unclear), so the world is varied and interesting.

I guess some people would want to have a lot of their questions answered (what happened to Earth to cause the nuclear war that has so scarred the land, how have these different people formed, what's with the domes and the "alien" life forms in them, what's with the City, what's with the offworlders, how did the technology become dispersed, what was the pre-war/nuclear world like, etc.), but I quite enjoyed the glimpse into this world as an observer with Snake on her journey.
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LibraryThing member bunwat
If I had lived in the distant past I think I would have been a sucker for travellers tales. I would have loved reading the travels of Marco Polo, or Viking tales of dragons and skraelings or the songs of Odysseus and his journeys. There's something in my character that just rises to the idea of
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sailing over the horizon into the unknown and encountering, oh no one knows what we may encounter, its a world of unlimited possibility and danger.

But today's traveller's tales lack those limitless possibilities. I know what is on the other side of the ocean, and its interesting, don't get me wrong. Its exciting and there's lots to learn, but there's not much likelihood that the next thing to appear over the horizon is a completely unknown territory filled with blue flying creatures with jeweled eyes singing in harmony and swooping down to eat the mast of the ship.

Except in science fiction. There I truly don't know what I'm going to encounter next. It could be anything. Dreamsnake works for me because its a traveler's tale full of limitless possiblity and hard work and danger and loss, and courage and fear and death and love and people striving to behave honorably. Its there and back again and what we found there. With snakes.

It may be a little bit dated, it may be a little bit self concious about its strong heroine and its sexual acceptance, it was written in the 70's and sometimes it shows. Its still my kind of people having my kind of adventures.
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LibraryThing member Snukes
"This book came as a recommendation, so I knew to expect a slightly feminist-flavored science fiction novel, which left me a little wary. I've rarely been disappointed by Hugo novels, though, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I was drawn into the story from the first chapter. McIntyre's narrative
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style is easy to read and she unfolds her world carefully so that the reader never feels lost, but is always discovering something new or putting together pieces.

That said, when the story ended, I felt a little disappointed that more pieces hadn't been explained for me. Are we really on a post-nuclear holocaust earth, or are we elsewhere? What are the domes? Why did those aliens leave? Why is the City so awful? With that much left unsaid (but intriguingly laid out, in great detail) I would have expected this to be the first of a series, or at least the first of several stand-alones based in the same setting. Alas, I'm out of luck."
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LibraryThing member ispeaknerd
Snake, the protagonist of this novel, is a healer and uses genetically manipulated snakes to cure all manner of ailments. When one of her rare alien snakes is killed, she embarks on a quest to find a replacement so she can continue practicing her profession.

What was most interesting about this
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novel is how it deals with science and the post-apocalyptic landscape. Initially, it seems like the action is taking place in a generic fantasy landscape and the snake healing is some kind of magic. It’s only very slowly revealed that the bleak surroundings are actually the earth after centuries of nuclear fallout. Similarly, what seems like mysticism is eventually explained to be very careful genoming projects and genetic manipulation. The ambient effect of these reveals is that all of these actualities seem to exist in the same space and time; it sounds confusing, but it is refreshing and challenging. I love genre-fuckery.

Dreamsnake is adorably 70s (I mean, just look at the title/cover) and I found it an enjoyable read. Apart from the interesting pieces I’ve mention, nothing was particularly revolutionary. It was just fun, well constructed, and ably-written.
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LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
This 1978 novel won both the Nebula and Hugo Award for Best Novel in its year, which puts it in very select company with Herbert's Dune, Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, Card's Ender's Game--less than a couple of dozen in all. And no, I wouldn't think it quite belongs in
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such a list--but it is good.

Snake, the protagonist is a Healer in her "proving year." Like an internship--but more actually in the old way of journeymen traveling about on her own learning by doing what it means to deal with the sick, injured and dying. But what makes Snake different, and earned her that name are her three snakes: Two are genetically altered terran snakes whose venom can be changed into medicines, Mist an albino cobra and Sand, a rattle snake. Her third, Grass, is special and quite rare--an alien "dreamsnake" who can bring comfort to the dying. Without Grass she can't do her job, and when Grass is killed, that leads Snake on an odyssey across an altered world in search of a replacement. What that world is, I'm not sure. I think a post-nuclear holocaust Earth, but it's never spelled out, and by and large I'm fine with that--I think part of what keeps things interesting is trying to figure out this world we find ourselves in and the people in it.

McIntyre may not have turned out to be the second coming of Ursula Le Guin, and her best selling, best known novels are her Star Wars and Star Trek novels. When I first read this as a teen, it impressed because it was so rare to find strong female protagonists--not that this comes across as a feminist screed. On second read decades later, no I wouldn't rank this among my favorites--but it is a good yarn, well-paced and with a flowing, immersive narrative, and with characters I cared about.
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LibraryThing member knownever
Sadly out of print, but it has a smooth, comfortable pacing and an intriguing, fully realized vision of a post apocalyptic world that make it well worth reading.
LibraryThing member bfgar
[This isn't done yet.]

Damn, I love this book.

Once upon a time, when I was in high school for heaven's sake, I read the first section as a short story in an anthology for which I can't even remember the title. However, the power of "Of Grass, Sea and Snake," as the story was called, stayed with me
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for many years. Finally, perhaps 20 years later, I spotted this book.

I don't think I'm going to spoil anything by discussing how McIntyre combined snakes and healing. It's not a completely alien idea, after all, since the Ancient Greeks identified them with their god of healing. And in Ancient Egypt, the cobra was thought of as a god of protection, even if its bite could kill.
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LibraryThing member dbsovereign
A book I would recommend to anyone who contemplates getting into a profession that will force them to give up almost everything - including love and happiness.
LibraryThing member isabelx
When I read 'Dreamsnake' parts of it seemed really familiar, so I must have read the short story 'Of Mist, And Sand, And Grass' which is also about about Snake the healer and her snakes, a long time ago.,
LibraryThing member quondame
Re-reading this, the number of unexplained aspects of the post-apocalyptic world bothered me and the insistence that having a dreamsnake was an absolute necessity when there were several essential medical services that had nothing to do with dreamsnakes reduced the motivation and quest connecting
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the episodes into a novel to a gimmick. The range and development of the characters is good, though the shifts from realism to to-good-to-be-true are a bit jarring.
The story of the itinerant healer remains original in its focus and developments after nearly 5 decades.
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LibraryThing member mykl-s
When I heard of Vonda N McIntyre's Dreamsnake, it sounded so much like a story I had loved in a scifi magazine years ago that I had to find this novel. Yes, it was from Analog magazine in 1973, still a heart rendingly beautiful tale, and maybe even better expanded into a novel. The concept was like
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nothing I'd read before, something that felt true and real despite its setting.
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LibraryThing member electrascaife
A post-apocalyptic landscape, in which a healer woman and her three poisonous snakes wander the lands looking for people in need of her services. When her rare dreamsnake is killed, she must find the means to replace it and faces dangers and meets new friends along the way.
After reading the first
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three pages I nearly put this one down (I have a snake phobia and I didn't think I could manage an entire book in which they play such a big part and are described in such detail). I'm so glad that I decided to stick with it, because it's such an excellent read. The characters are wonderfully drawn, the world is interesting and imaginative, and the story compelling and smart. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member readingover50
I read this book when I was a teenager, and read scifi/fantasy almost exclusively. This was one of my favorite books at the time.
LibraryThing member MaowangVater
In the centuries since the world was blasted by nuclear war, the practice of medicine had made some unusual developments. Snake is a healer. In addition to medicines, her little black bag contains three living instruments: a cobra, a rattlesnake, and an alien reptile called a dreamsnake. The
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dreamsnake can provide an anesthetic effect on a patient as well as pleasant and comforting dreams. But when a superstitious and fearful desert tribe kills her dreamsnake, Snake must go on a quest to find another of the rare creatures.

Snake’s adventures won McIntyre science fiction’s highest awards the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus for best novel when it was first published.
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LibraryThing member joecanas
2.5 stars. Might have been a 5-star book (and it was a Hugo/Nebula/Locus award winner) in the late '70s, but it hasn't aged well. Yes, there are two strong female protagonists, plus gender- and sexuality-positive themes and casual asides. Also alien snakes! But it feels like a novella that got
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padded to three times its length. So much description, so much repetition, and ultimately, a perfunctory ending.
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LibraryThing member Noeshia
This is soft sci-fi that reads as almost fantasy. I seem to really love that combination. The premise is unusual and interesting. A healer woman whose main healing technology is the use of venomous snakes whose bodies make her medicines after she gives them chemicals to induce their production. An
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oddly medieval world with occasional spurts of high technology, like solar panels and bio-engineering. An alien species of snake whose venom causes people to dream which healers use to allow the dying to die in peace. Radioactive craters, domes full of alien life, and an enclosed high-tech city that lets no one in. I am in love with the world and I really like the characters. I'm not so pleased with my romp in that world being over. I would really have liked it if the author had written more than they did because there was quite a bit of story yet to be had in that world with those characters. I see that there is another book set in this universe about a different person, so I will read that as soon as I can get it, but I would have liked to see the next step in Snake's journey.
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LibraryThing member strangerrrs
sweet little book. it's a bit difficult to get into in the beginning, as everyone is referred to as "the
boy", "the elder parent", "the clan leader" etc and we have no idea what the wider world is like,
but it gets much better as named characters are introduced who stay for a more than a few
pages and
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we get more familiar with the world. I'm glad I stuck to it despite some poor reviews.
the subplot with melissa isn't half as silly as one reviewer put it.

also, interesting choice to make the protagonist's companion for the journeys across the desert a child. the romance lover in me was clamoring for snake and arevin to reunite, but I
appreciated the original plotting.
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LibraryThing member petricor
[read as an audio-book]

It's the future and a healer uses special snakes to cure and/or soothe sick people.

Liked:
- the female protagonist
- the first chapter which focused on the relationship between the healer and the snakes (and their work) (easily a 4-5 star chapter)
- the narrator of the
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audio-book and the prose, both had a comforting quality

Disliked:
- the loss of focus on the healer, the snakes, and their work past the first chapter
- the substitution of social commentary and situations for expansion of sci-fi building (the bit about breeding and intercourse was made the more awkward for how developed it was to everything else)
- the meandering

Final Words:
I can see how the first chapter was an award-winning stand-alone entry. The rest of the book gets progressively worse for wear and never delivers the way the first chapter does. A pity. Would love to see this made into a sci-fi film.
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LibraryThing member kslade
It's been so long ago that I don't remember much, but it was a good read at the time.
LibraryThing member sarcher
My expectations aren't high for a book that starts by introducing a wandering healer with magical snakes, but I truly enjoyed this. It stuck the landing way better than I expected. Could have left the chapter or two that covers 'birth control by thinking real hard' on the cutting room floor though.

Awards

National Book Award (Finalist — 1980)
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novel — 1979)
Nebula Award (Nominee — Novel — 1978)
Locus Award (Finalist — Novel — 1979)
Ditmar Award (Shortlist — 1979)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1978

ISBN

0440117291 / 9780440117292
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