2025 Re-Read
This novel is very much a product of the 1970s, as am I. It seems natural then that we would get along. There is an odd mixture of outdated and still relevant ideas between these covers. The setting is a post-apocalyptic Earth, seemingly ravaged by nuclear weapons. Civilization has been busted back to swords and horses. And yet, healers get genetic training and use laboratories. Our main character, Snake, created her tiger-striped pony as a sort of dissertation or graduation project. It is common knowledge that there are off-worlders in the few domed cities, but outsiders are rarely allowed in, and the aliens are buffered by a snobbish human population who serve as gate keepers.
What was cutting edge woman-power stuff in the seventies seemed pretty dated to me today, but with the direction that current societies seem to be moving, it could become relevant again sooner than I'm comfortable with. It's a world in which people have been trained to control their fertility through biofeedback and where sex has no shame attached (unless you blow it with the control). Snake has a profession (healer) that she is highly competent at, and she is able to manipulate the venom of the serpents she carries with her to provide medicines and vaccines to treat her patients. This is another skill that current research is exploring. Antivenins are produced from captive venomous snakes and newly discovered plants and animals are optimistically tested for useful compounds.
The most important serpent in her care is her dreamsnake, whose bite helps those who are dying, letting them make peace with their past and the transition. This is something that 21st century medicine is just starting to work towards using psilocybin from magic mushrooms. In Snake's world, the dreamsnakes are off-world creatures in limited supply and one cannot be a complete healer without one. Snake misjudges a family, whose prejudice causes them to kill the rare animal, leading to her quest to obtain a replacement.
McIntyre depicts a profession whose members eschew violence. Snake makes her mistakes largely through naiveté, trusting that others will share her gentle, nurturing world view. Her adopted daughter, a formerly abused child, is a foil to her adoptive mother, often pointing out when Snake is being too trusting too soon. I could wish for a more imaginative name for the healer character, not to mention better street smarts, but it is impressive how much the author was able to imply in such a short novel. I do wish she had revealed a bit more about the aliens and why they remain on Earth or why they confined themselves to the domed cities.
It had been 12 years since I read this book and I enjoyed revisiting it.
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