Dreamsnake (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Vonda Neel McIntyre
- First Published: 1978
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—post-holocaust
- Time of Work: Indefinite future
- Setting: An unidentified desert, a mountain village, the healers’ community, and a dome that shelters an alien ecosystem
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction, Fantasy, Apocalyptic and catastrophe fiction
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Children, Folkloric or magical people, Snakes, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Abused persons, Future, Science or scientists, Villages, Friendship, Obsession, Substance abuse, Feminism, Robbery or robbers, Adoption or adopted children, Drug addiction or addicts, Health, Adventure, End of the world, Nuclear warfare or weapons, Giants, Animals, Deserts, Mountains, Mutations or mutants
- Locales: Earth, alternate versions of
The Plot
In “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” (1973), the Nebula Award-winning novelette that became the first section of Dreamsnake, Vonda Neel McIntyre introduces her protagonist Snake, a young traveling healer who uses her knowledge and her genetically altered snakes to treat illness and suffering. Snake is called to help a family whose son is dying of a large tumor. To comfort him, she leaves Grass, her treasured dreamsnake, on the child’s pillow while she prepares Mist, her cobra, to treat the child. When she returns from a strenuous night of altering Mist’s...
[The entire page is 939 words long]
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