It took news of Vonda McIntyre’s death to spur me to read Dreamsnake, which had been sitting on my shelf above two years before I cracked it open. I deeply regret that, because it means I’m far too late to be able to write her a fan email telling her how much I appreciated this novel.
Dreamsnake was first published in 1978. It still feels contemporary, which is not something that can be said for most books nearly a decade older than me. It sets itself in a future where civilisation has collapsed and re-arisen from the ashes of a nuclear conflagration (the particularly nuclear vision of its civilisation-reducing apocalypse is perhaps the only thing that might be said to have dated), and its main protagonist, Snake, is a young travelling healer whose major tools and partners in her craft are a set of snakes, genetically modified to produce venom that can be used to treat illnesses. Of her companion snakes, one, the alien dreamsnake that brings relief to the dying, is most precious. Dreamsnakes are all but impossible for healers to breed, and they’re very rare.
When Snake’s dreamsnake Grass is killed, she’s consumed with guilt and a sense of responsibility: If she returns to her mentor without a dreamsnake, their support for her as a healer is far from guaranteed. And with dreamsnakes so difficult to breed, the healers eventually are almost certain to run out. Snake finds herself set on a path to try to find more dreamsnakes to bring home. Her passage through the world is reminiscent of the ideal of knight-errantry: There are many calls on her skills as a healer, and her encounters with people are based around her profession. Along the way, she meets a lot of people, encounters much injustice, and adopts a young girl as her daughter.
McIntyre’s prose is spare and restrained, evocative and eloquent without ever veering into overstatement. Her characters are richly drawn with minimal wasted motion—though some of the young men come across, intentionally I believe, as a bit overwrought. This is an atmospheric, haunting novel, and now I want to read every novel that McIntyre ever wrote.
Buy the Book
Velocity Weapon
Velocity Weapon is a much younger book than Dreamsnake—it’s just out. Megan E. O’Keefe brings out the big space opera intrigue guns in a novel with remarkably little shooting but an awful lot of secrets and lies. It’s got an AI spaceship (The Light of Berossus—Bero to his friends) with a serious case of trauma; gunship sergeant Sanda, who’s woken up on board an enemy vessel (Bero) missing a leg and having been informed that more than two hundred years have passed since the war ended in mutual destruction, leaving the star system a blasted wasteland (but Bero is traumatised and cannot be trusted: The lie’s easy to spot, but the question is why?); a young politician, Sanda’s younger brother Biran, whose shiny idealism gets progressively more scuffed as he faces political shenanigans as his home is confronted by crisis and as he tries to find out what’s happened to his military sister; and a youthful criminal in a neighbouring star system, Jules, who stumbles into the middle of a strange conspiracy that may have consequences for all the characters.
Delightful, epic, sweeping in scope, fast-paced and casually queer, Velocity Weapon is a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to seeing what O’Keefe does next.
What are you guys reading lately?
Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, was published in 2017 by Aqueduct Press. It was a finalist for the 2018 Locus Awards and was nominated for a 2018 Hugo Award in Best Related Work. Find her at her blog, where she’s been known to talk about even more books thanks to her Patreon supporters. Or find her at her Twitter. She supports the work of the Irish Refugee Council, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, and the Abortion Rights Campaign.
Velocity Weapon! Which I also liked quite a bit.
Max Gladstone’s Empress of Forever, also fantastic.
The Outside by Ada Hoffmann, which is Lovecraftian entities, AI gods and space opera in an intriguing package.
I read Dreamsnake when it was first published and thought it very done: the protagonist was a healer, something new and unique, especially for that time. Glad to hear it’s still available and withstood the test of time.
Dreamsnake was a favorite of mine.
Vonda McIntyre did some excellent novelizations of Star Trek movies. Showed a talent for a movie plot full of holes into a fine and engaging novel that made sense. You might like them.
Dreamsnake was one of my most influential teenage reads back in the late 80’s. It really opened my mind to a universe outside of my small town childhood. Julian May and Arthur C.Clarke were two of my other school library finds. Now I read almost exclusively female authored sci-fi and I’m constantly amazed by the quality, the creativity and the amount!! Currently reading Elisabeth Moon’s Vatta series. Have just read Becky Chambers, Martha Wells, Emma Newman, Linda Andrews. The list goes on!
The Apple-Tree Throne by Premee Mohamed. It’s just wonderful.
I read Velocity Weapon per Yoon Ha Lee’s recommendation, and the mid-book twist was one of the best I’ve read in ages.
The downside is that it feels a bit incomplete — it’s very much the first book in a series. One of the three POVs doesn’t really connect with the other two at all, in fact.
My favorite Vonda McIntyre novel (and it was a HUGE influence on me as a writer) was her historical fantasy The Sun and the Moon. I read it many times in a row in my early 20s, and I was so glad to be able to tell her in person a few years later just how much it meant to me.
well written and interesting review, thanks, so nice to discover these lost works![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
Dreamsnake sound interesting, Velocity weapon does not. I wasn’t a big fan of Scorched Continue by O’keefe, didn’t even enjoy the writing style. I won’t be jumping into any of her novels soon.
At the moment I’m reading Deman Cycle series.
Dreamsnake was one of my first, very favorite, books, and I still reread it every few years (I’m about due actually). I always love seeing some Vonda love here.
Currently reading Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. He has a tendency to info dump sometimes, but the story is very gripping and I highly recommend it.
Dreamsnake is a great book. I’d also recommend McIntyre’s Superluminal.
Just finished Jo Walton’s new book, Lent. I thought it started slow, but got more and mor interesting and beautiful as I went. Still reeling from the punch of the ending.
I read Dreamsnake when it came out having loved Fireflood and other stories. It has perhaps the best message for parents that I’ve seen in a book – that if you lie to your children there will be conseqences when they discover your lies, and those consequences may be fatal. It applies to so many things that too many people feel they must lie about to their children ‘to keep them safe’. And it is just something that we see as part of Snake’s journey.
Dreamsnake was probably the first SF book by a woman I’ve ever read, back in 1979, when I was twelve years old and the German translation was new. There was a short article in a TV guide about new SF content, mentioning Alien and “another story about a woman, but one who sees her calling in healing rather than killing”, and I thought, wow, this one is for me!
“It sets itself in a future where civilisation has collapsed and re-arisen from the ashes of a nuclear conflagration (the particularly nuclear vision of its civilisation-reducing apocalypse is perhaps the only thing that might be said to have dated)”
Are you sure? More nations have nuclear weapons now than forty years ago, and if we can’t contain climate change, there may be some nasty resource wars coming.
In my opinion, the only thing that has dated is biocontrol. That sounded a lot more plausible in the seventies.
I’m currently reading Malka Older’s Null States. I enjoy the politicking, the international playground, the quirky political system and new technologies, and the intelligent and devoted young protagonists.