SOURCE: "From Alienation to Personal Triumph: The Science Fiction of Joan D. Vinge," in The Feminine Eye: Science Fiction and the Women Who Write It, edited by Tom Staicar, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982, pp. 103-30.

[In the following excerpt, Yoke examines the theme of alienation in Vinge's stories. ]

But she wore the nomad's tunic she had brought back with her from Persiponë's, the only clothing she owned, its gaudy color as alien as she suddenly felt herself, among the people who should have been her own.

These lines from the "footrace" scene in Joan Vinge's The Snow Queen clearly express the psychological alienation of Dawn Moontreader Summer, the novel's heroine. Though she stands in a crowd of people from her own clan, she feels that she is an outsider, that she is somehow divorced from the very culture in which she was raised. This is the fundamental experience of a person alienated, estranged, or disenfranchised. Any doubts about the nature of Moon's feelings are quickly erased by a closer examination of the scene, which Vinge has skillfully filled with cluès to induce such a conclusion.

The first comes as Moon waits for the race to begin. She suddenly feels a "tension" wrap around her "like tentacles," and to avoid it, she moves to the front of the forming field of runners. Though she believes the tension has been generated by a "certainty" that she will be chosen Summer Queen, that very possibility is born from the differences between her and the Summers. The tension she feels is symptomatic of the anxiety felt by an alienated person, and withdrawal from it is the typical reaction to it.

But there are other clues to establish Moon's alienation. While struggling to maintain her balance amid "the jostling mob of colored ribbons and eager Summer faces," for example, she describes them as "strangers." Moreover, while they are dressed in traditional Summer holiday garments, she is not. She wears instead a heavy Winter's nomad tunic. Though she is struck by the irony of the situation, she somehow feels it is appropriate. Further, to disguise her resemblance to Arienrhod, the reigning Winter Queen and her biological mother, she covers her head with a scarf. The other runners are bareheaded. And, since she displays no family totem as the others do, some of the Summers challenge her right to run, which forces her to bare the sibyl symbol tattooed on her throat. In addition to identifying the sibyls, the tattoo, a barbed trefoil, is the ancient symbol for biological contamination.

If nothing else, the fact that she is a sibyl would alienate her from everyone else. Viewed as seers by some and as witches by others, sibyls are simultaneously revered and feared. Obscured by time and superstition, the actual function of the sibyls is as vehicles for the transmission of Old Empire culture. When the Empire collapsed because of civil war, a group of selfless scientists, hoping for a rapid return to civilization, created a massive databank of knowledge in every area of human concern and genetically altered certain humans so they could tap into it. Able to pass this ability on to their children, these individuals (sibyls when trained in the use of their gift) suffer from a peculiar side effect. They can infect other humans with their blood, producing madness in some and death in others. This effect has given rise to the legend that it is death both to kill a sibyl and to love one. In turn, this has caused the Winters to ban all sibyls from the capital city of Carbuncle.

Yet another mark of Moon's alienation occurs when she is struck by the irony of her parentage as she waits for the race to begin. She was neither her mother's child nor Arienrhod's. As the clone of Arienrhod, she was raised by another, a Summer. Thus, she has roots in both cultures. This, plus the fact that she is a child without a father, makes her unlike anyone else in the crowd. It is the sudden recognition of her uniqueness and her divorce from both cultures that prompts her to question what she is doing there.

Another clue to Moon's alienation is found in her reaction as Fate Ravenglass performs the final bit of ritual in the choosing of the Summer Queen at the end of the scene. A part of her mind separates from the rest, and while she participates in the ceremony, she also experiences near panic from her sudden doubt that she will be chosen. Momentarily, she falls into "Transfer," that state sibyls experience when they are in contact with the Old Empire computer, then she is snapped to wakefulness and finds herself in Fate's body. She watches the candidates for Summer Queen file by, but she is barely able to see them because of Fate's near blindness. Then, she sees herself stumbling forward, supported by two other women, and she reaches out and masks herself. Immediately she is snapped back into her own body, and she realizes that Fate is also a sibyl. This experience of separateness is schizophrenic and that is exactly where modern psychiatry classifies cases of extreme self-alienation. Moreover, she also realizes that indeed she is being controlled, that she is being programmed through her experiences, and that her destiny is truly not hers to control.

Moon's portrayal as an alienated being is no accident. She is but one of several such characters in The Snow Queen. Equally estranged are Sparks, Moon's cousin and lover; Jerusha, a highly capable but emotionally tortured police inspector; BZ Gundhalinu, Jerusha's prideridden and rigidly structured aide; and Arienrhod, the beautiful but power-crazed Winter Queen. Moreover, these characters reflect a pattern that predominates in Vinge's writing. Most of her major works contain at least one alienated character, usually the protagonist. There are, for example, Betha Torgussen and Wadie Abdhiamal of The Outcasts of Heaven Belt, Mythili Fukinuki and Chaim Dartagnan of "Legacy," Amanda Montoya and Cristoval Hoffmann of "Phoenix in the Ashes," Etaa of Mother and Child, T'uupieh of Eyes of Amber, and Tarawassie and Moon Shadow of "The Crystal Ship."

To find alienation the major theme of Vinge's writing is no surprise, for as critic Blanche Gelfant has indicated, it "is the inextricable theme of modern American fiction." Indeed, it may well be the major theme of modern world fiction, for in addition to notable American writers like Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and Saul Bellow, it is also the primary subject of such foreign writers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Andre Malraux, Franz Kafka, and Herman Hesse, and as a literary form, it can be traced back directly to Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. While the characteristics of the alienated human have existed independently for centuries, their crystallization into a major phenomenon is primarily the result of the events of the last century: rapid industrialization, global wars, deterioration of the cities, pollution of the environment, dilution of culture, dehumanization of art, refinement of the establishment, mass anaesthetization of humans, and so on. Regardless of the causes, however, the result has been to create societies that are maladjusted and comprised of individuals who accept these maladjustments as normal without realizing that they will eventually find themselves alienated from them without knowing why.

Since the term alienation was first introduced into English with the publication of Erich Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man, it has been so overused that its meaning is often unclear. It may be defined metaphysically, for example, as G. W. F. Hegel does, or psychologically as Ludwig Feuerbach does, or economically as Karl Marx does. Despite this breadth of concept and its subsequent dilution, however, all the definitions have a common ground best set forth perhaps by F. H. Heinemann:

The facts to which the term "alienation" refer, are, objectively different kinds of disassociation, break or rupture between human beings and their objects, whether the latter be other persons, or the natural world, or their own creations in art, science and society; and subjectively, the corresponding states of disequilibrium, disturbance, strangeness and anxiety. . . . There is one point common to all of them, i.e., the belief that a preceding unity and harmony has been transformed into disunity and disharmony.

And, the psychological characteristics of an alienated person can be identified. In describing the "Underground Man," a neurotic extension of the alienated man, Edward Abood lists the following. (1) He is usually at odds with the prevailing norms of the society in which he lives and the forces that perpetuate it. This animosity may extend to Nature, Being, or God. (2) He may either be in active revolt against the society, or he may have turned in upon himself with such ferocity that he has been reduced to despair and a longing for death. (3) His commitments are subjective, and thus he is isolated and estranged. (4) Emotionally, he is lonely, frustrated, anxious, and tense. Sometimes, this is aggravated by a keen, often morbid sensibility. (5) His attitude is typically negative. If he does develop a positive philosophy, it begins with and is conditioned by a denial of the codes of conduct, especially the values, by which those in his culture live. To these we can add the feeling of being manipulated, used, or exploited, a characteristic identified by Marx and several psychologists. Taken together, these qualities comprise the prototype of an individual alienated to the point of being psychotic. It is important to remember, however, that there are differences of degree involved. Not all alienated individuals will display all the qualities that comprise the prototype, nor will they suffer them severely enough to be classified psychotic.

While being alienated certainly implies being neurotic, it does not inevitably spell psychological disaster. Some individuals do struggle and fail in their attempts to cope with their cultures. Others succeed. The latter group first began to appear in American fiction at the end of the 1960s when many authors started producing works in which the protagonists transcend their conditions: loneliness, estrangement from the world and from self. Inevitably, success is impelled by love, for it is characters who love themselves, another, and the world who do transcend. Abood confirms that alienation need not be fatal when he points out that Camus, Sartre, and Malraux all use the condition as a foundation for constructing new and positive value systems that permit their characters to reach some reconciliation with their cultures. The belief that man can transcend his alienation is held by several philosophers and psychologists, who have been termed "utopian existentialists." While accepting that estrangement is a condition of present-day society, they believe that it can be overcome by future sociological and psychological developments.

Among this group, psychologist Erich Fromm, in particular, believes that transcendence is possible. He sees alienation as evolutionary. "Human nature drives toward unity with the 'all,' with nature; but unity on the highest level requires a temporary separation, and consequent loneliness. One goes out in order to return enriched. Separation, though painful, is a progressive step." To accomplish the transcendence, man must establish a sense of identity based upon his experience of self as the subject and agent of his own powers. This will occur when he grasps reality both inside and outside himself. Transcendence is characterized by a productive orientation in which the ability to love and create is predominant.

Though there is no evidence that Vinge has consciously based her characters in Fromm's psychology, the fact is that they closely parallel his thinking. They exhibit the qualities of alienated individuals. Then, by virtue of their experiences, they form new value systems and manage to transcend their estrangement. They do this by learning to love, and they learn to love by learning to communicate. In maturing, some of them even develop the potential to change their cultures. A close examination of Vinge's stories will demonstrate this pattern.

Mythili Fukinuki and Chaim Dartagnan of "Legacy" both exhibit characteristics of alienation. They are at odds with the norms of their culture, they are lonely, tense, and frustrated. Chaim is a "media man," which forces him to survive by flattering the wealthy and powerful. It is a position of high esteem in the fragile Heaven Belt culture. Yet, his self-loathing produces such disgust in him that it is "transmuted into physical self-punishment" and his stomach "pays the price of too many false smiles." Still, he persists until the attempted murder of Mythili, whom he has come to care for, forces him to acknowledge his integrity and suffer the consequences of the action he must take to preserve it.

Mythili is equally at odds with her culture. She is a female spaceship pilot in a society that will not honorably permit its women any role other than childbearer. Moreover, she has voluntarily undergone sterility. She is resented both for her burning desire to succeed as a pilot and for choosing to eliminate her breeding capability when the Heaven Belt culture needs all the healthy children it can get to maintain its faltering technology. Steven Spruill writes: "She burns with inner integrity, a dedication to her self at the other extreme of Dartagnan's utter, if unintended, selfabnegation. By trying so hard to exist on her own terms, to resist the malicious pressures of maledom and the passive restricted example of her society's women, she courts paranoia and madness." Mythili's breech of Heaven Belt values is an active revolt against them. Dartagnan, on the other hand, has turned in on himself with such ferocity that he has been reduced nearly to despair. The commitments of both characters are subjective and their attitudes negative.

Both are also frustrated and lonely. This is most evident in the scene where they are just completing the exploration of a planetoid in the Main Belt. It had promised salvagable goods, but all they found were masses of old printouts and plastic packing crates and a pair of mummified bodies. Disappointed, Chaim returns to their ship and once inside begins to retch, a reaction to his ulcer. Concerned, Mythili follows and in the exchange that follows, he compares himself to "those crazy bastards down in the rock, drowning in garbage, dying by centimeters—just like this goddamned system!"

She suggests that they are not at all like that reclusive couple they found. He counters that they are worse because they had a chance to be something more, hinting of course that they could be lovers. She rejects the idea angrily. She still cannot forgive him for suggesting to Demarch Siamang, a man who tried to kill her because she was unwilling to help him cover up a murder he committed, that he abandon her on the surface of a hostile planet even though she knows that Chaim's suggestion was the only way to save her life. Defeated and frustrated, he replies, "Get the hell out of here, then. Let me be alone by myself." Other evidence of Dartagnan's loneliness is found earlier in the story. His relationship with Mythili seems very promising, and it suddenly occurs to him that the reason he has always hated prospecting was because of its loneliness. A moment later a book of poems falls open in his hands to a page where Mythili has written: "It will be lonely to be dead; but it cannot be much more lonely than it is to be alive!" Next to her plain, backslanted writing, he pens, "Yes, yes, yes."

Moon Shadow and Tarawassie of "The Crystal Ship" suffer the same characteristics of alienation that Dartagnan and Mythili do. They are at odds with the norms of their society, lonely, frustrated, and tense. Moon Shadow, a kangaroolike creature, is initially divorced from his own kind, called the Real People, because he is the last offspring produced by the mating of one of his own kind and one of the humans who came to colonize his planet. He has been ostracized from his kith because he insists upon trying to teach his people that change offered through the superior technology of the humans is preferable to their current stagnation. But they want no part of it. They remember too vividly how they were decimated and exploited by the humans. Moon Shadow, on the other hand, cannot help trying to teach them, for he is a repository for the memories of all his ancestors, and a special organ inside his pouch permits him to draw an outside mind into his own and down into his racial consciousness. Nonetheless, his compulsion to teach the ways of the humans is an active breach of Real People values. He has been hounded into a solitary, half-fugitive existence, spied on and abused, and denied the rituals of the clan.

Tarawassie, a young girl who lives in a starship orbiting high above the planet, is equally alienated. Like most of the other remaining humans, she is completely removed from reality, living initially only for the highs induced by chitta, a native drug that when introduced to the colonists five hundred years earlier caused the society to collapse. Happy and unaware at first, the deaths of a friend and then her mother stir her curiosity to wakefulness. Both committed suicide in the mysterious Star Well of the ship. When no one can satisfactorily explain what the Star Well is and why she has begun to have nightmares, she seeks an answer in the ruined city below because that is where Andar, her dead friend, had found it.

When she becomes lost in the city and cut off from any chitta, her long-suppressed emotions begin to take over, and she is overwhelmed by loneliness. As she continues to withdraw from the drug, she encounters Fromm's reality both inside and outside herself:

She remembered the sight of her own starved body, the reflection of a terrible truth. Because it was true, she was certain of it now. The self and the reality that she had always known had been a dream, a dream. But not a fantasy. She remembered her mother's death, the Star Well. Were this ruined world and her own wretchedness what her mother had seen without chitta? And was this what Andar had seen?

Moon Shadow tries to help her find an answer, and in the process she learns to read. This only increases her divorce from her own kind. When at last she is fully aware of how the colony fell and the insufferable dead end that now presents itself as her future, she thinks: "But even knowing that they [she and Moon Shadow] were valued by one another, she knew that they would both always feel isolated, alienated, lost, because they had no purpose here, no reason for existing in an alien world." Passive at first, Tarawassie actively revolts against her system's values and eventually steps into the Star Well to escape her living death. The Star Well, she believes, is a transporter that can create duplicate bodies at its terminus on Earth, and when Tarawassie steps into it she performs the ultimate rejection of her society's values.

Perhaps the purest and most direct example of a character at odds with the norms of her society, lonely, tense, and frustrated occurs in Amanda Montoya of "Phoenix in the Ashes." Like Moon Shadow she too has been ostracized. She chose love over a marriage arranged by her father, but when the sailor she promised to wait for fails to return, she is forced from her father's home and her dowry is distributed between her two sisters. Now she lives in an adobe cottage on her father's land but far from the main house, and gleans his fields for food. Though he refuses to acknowledge her existence, he has not so completely forgotten her that he would force her to become a beggar or a whore, the only occupations left to a woman of San Pedro who has lost her family sponsorship. In this rigid, male-dominated society, women are regarded as valuable property. From birth they are impressed with the need for obedience and chastity; their role is to serve their husbands and fathers blindly. They weave and cook but do not read.

Amanda's rebellion costs her dearly. Even though other pockets of civilization remain in this postbomb world, San Pedro maintains only limited trading relationships. Because of religious stringency, leaving the society is nearly impossible. So, eight years after her rebellion, Amanda survives at a minimum level. She is bitter, she is lonely, and she finds that "the staid ritual life in San Pedro [is] suffocating her, and her dreams [are] dying."

Amanda's rebellion extends beyond the defiance of her father. She rebels in fact against her God when she gives refuge to Cristoval Hoffmann, a prospector whose helicopter crashed into her father's field. Believing him to have been struck from the sky by God because he was an agent of evil, the villagers invoke their "Angel of the Prophet" to ward off any powers he might have and leave him to die. Amanda explains to him later that the villagers thought that by flying he was performing sorcery. He asks if she were not afraid of God's punishment for helping him, and she replies, "There's little more that God could do to me or I to God. . . ."

Hoffmann, a prospector of rare scrap metals for the Brazilian government, is as alienated as Amanda. He enjoys his profession because it takes him away from the greed and exploitation of his own society. During the exchange when Cohelo, his boss, asks him to take the assignment that brings him eventually to San Pedro, he says, "I use you, you use me. . . ." When Hoffmann crashes, his alienation is increased twofold because he not only loses his only means of returning to Brazil but also suffers amnesia, which prevents him from even remembering his previous life.

If Vinge's characters are not at odds with their own societies, they are at odds within the societies they find themselves and are alienated from them. This displacement occurs, for example, to Etaa, the Kotaane priestess of the powerful novelette Mother and Child. While she never loses faith with her own native Nature cult, Etaa is twice removed from it physically. First, she is kidnapped by Meron, King of Tramaine. Then, she is kidnapped from Tramaine by Wic'owoyake, one of the silicon-based life forms believed to be gods by Meron and his people. Nicknamed Tarn by Etaa, Wic'owoyake actually removes her from her home, a moon circling a giant, gaseous planet called Cyclops, to Laa Merth, another moon now uninhabited. Physical displacement and isolation are, of course, symbols of alienation, but there are other signs as well. Believed to be a witch and too uncouth to be a consort of the King, Etaa is rejected by the Tramanians. Her rape by Meron speeds her withdrawal and virtually eliminates all communication with him, but her disgust with the Tramanians is more fundamental. She believes them to be pitiful and cursed because they do not believe in the Earth-Mother goddess that dominates her religion.

When Tarn removes her to Laa Merth for political reasons, Etaa withdraws even farther. Not only does she cease virtually all communications with Tarn, she never ventures outside their shelter again by choice. Though estranged, manipulated by an outside source, and literally isolated, Etaa never falls into despair. She has Alfilere, her infant son, to think about and to care for. His welfare prevents her from becoming completely subjective, and more importantly he is a symbol of her love for Hywel, her husband. That her love for him still lives is confirmed by the fact that she kept the silver-bell earring he gave her close to her during her entire ordeal even though she believed him to be dead. . . ."

Eyes of Amber, Vinge's Hugo Award winning novella, presents an interesting variation of the alienation theme. T'uupieh the protagonist, is an excellent example of what Erich Fromm calls "socially patterned defect." As a female assassin among the winged creatures of Saturn's moon, Titan, she accepts the values of her culture, at least at the conscious level, even though her people are treacherous, devious, dangerous, unethical, and immoral by our standards. T'uupieh not only embraces those values but, in fact, promotes them. When she is dispossessed of her lands by the Overlord and is forced to live by her wits, for example, she resolves to become the best thief and cutthroat in the land. She succeeds amazingly well until a space probe introduces her indirectly to Shannon Wyler, an ex-rock musician with a facility for computers. T'uupieh is an excellent example of a person who has learned "to live with a defect without becoming ill" because her culture provides patterns that act as opiates.

The acceptance of Titan's values does not, however, prevent T'uupieh from becoming alienated and lonely. The loss of her lands and her wealth brings a radical change in her life-style and a subsequent loss of prestige and security. The marriage of her sister, Ahtseet, to the man who stole their lands and property, eliminates her closest companion and confidante. Her subsequent rise to leadership of a band of outcasts like herself forces her to maintain her distance from them in order to control them. And, when she finds the probe, it only serves to alienate her further:

She looked away again, toward the fire, toward the cloak-wrapped form of her outlaws. Since the demon had come to her she had felt both the physical and emotional space that she had always kept between herself as leader and her band of followers gradually widening. She was still completely their leader, perhaps more firmly so because she had tamed the demon, and their bond of shared danger and mutual respect had never weakened. But there were other needs, which her people might fill for each other, but never for her.

The more she relies on the probe, her demon, the greater her degree of alienation will become, for Shannon is weaning her from her values and toward ours. The process is aided by her perception of the probe as a supernatural thing. Her reaction is greatly influenced by her fear and awe of its powers.

T'uupieh is neither despairing nor longing for death. Her commitments are selfish, at least up until the time she is forced to admit to herself that her sister's escape from death pleased her. In fact, despite the loneliness, she feels good about herself. She is successful, but she does not realize that her feeling occurs because defect has been raised to a virtue by her culture.

From these illustrations, it is clear that alienation is a major component of Vinge's characterization. It does produce withdrawal from one's own kind, rebellion against a society's values, loneliness (the affective corollary of alienation), tension, anxiety, frustration, even physical illness, but it is not an irreversible condition like Sören Kierkegaard's "sickness unto death." Rather, it is evolutionary. It is a stage a personality must pass through on its way to transcendence. From this point of view, it parallels Erich Fromm's position and is much like what an adolescent passes through in his search for identity.

For Vinge alienation is the result of the compelling drive of her characters toward the realization of their potentials. Completing their quests for fulfillment brings them into conflict with the values of the societies in which they find themselves because the societies themselves are neurotic and unrealized. Yet, Vinge's characters escape their alienation with both dignity and integrity because they persevere in their attempts to grasp reality, both inside and outside themselves. They continue to strive to understand themselves, to align themselves with nature, and to communicate with all things, especially in emotional terms. Moon realizes this as she tries to make friends with Blodwed's caged pets in The Snow Queen. "She lost track of time or any purpose beyond the need to communicate even to the smallest degree with every creature, and earn for herself the reward of its embryonic trust. . . ." Like Moon, Vinge's other characters also succeed in achieving something like Fromm's "productive orientation characterized by the ability to love and create." For Vinge, communication and love are psychologically opposed to alienation and loneliness.

Because love is the ultimate communication, and communication, in the broadest and deepest sense of the word, is the means for breaking down alienation, Vinge frequently focuses her stories on love relationships. In particular, she brings together an alienated man and an alienated woman and lets them work at communicating. Bound together by their loneliness and prompted by the events of the story that continuously force them together, they eventually break down the barriers between them and achieve a love relationship based upon mutual trust. Their common enemy is often the values of the society in which they find themselves. From the exertion of their mutual struggle, they forge new value systems and come to a more complete realization of their own potentials. Battling to survive at both the physical and psychological levels, they do produce or promise to produce changes in the value system of the society itself.

Such is the case in "Legacy." Mythili and Chaim are both alienated. When he is chosen as media man and she as pilot of Sabu Siamang's rescue mission to Planet Two, a sequence of events forces them not only to communicate with but to trust one another. When Siamang kills Sekka-Olefin, the prospector he is supposed to be rescuing, for the computer software he controls and subsequently tries to cover up the crime, both Mythili and Chaim are forced to recognize the fact that the values of their society are not only undesirable but psychologically unhealthy. Mythili's refusal to cover up the crime forces Siamang to try to kill her. The incident makes Chaim aware of the limits of his own integrity and forces him to make a realistic choice in order to save them both: he convinces Siamang to abandon Mythili on the planet's surface rather than "spacing" her on the way home. He argues that she will either freeze or suffocate if they jam the oxygen valve on her suit. Either way, her death will look like an accident. But Dartagnan knows something that neither Mythili nor the drug-crazed Siamang knows—the air of Planet Two is breathable, at least for a short time. Olefin told him that when Siamang was out of the shelter. Chaim's choice is difficult but realistic. He also knows that Mythili can make it back to Olefin's shelter and fix his landing module, if she does not panic. Under the existing conditions, it is the best possible decision. When they finally land on Mecca, their home asteroid, Dartagnan publicly charges Siamang with the murder, knowing full well that he may also be charged with Mythili's death if she fails to escape. She does escape, however, and he ruins his career as a media man, but he has learned something valuable about himself and his world. So has she. Subsequent situations force greater understanding, eventually permitting them to build new, more healthy value systems and to fall in love.

The pattern recurs in "The Crystal Ship." Impelled by her desire to understand the Star Well, Tarawassie is forced to rely upon Moon Shadow. After an accidental meeting, she learns that he can help her to understand the terrible conditions of their society. In learning of the reality surrounding her, however, she increases her alienation from the remaining humans on the Crystal Ship. Through Moon Shadow's ability to draw her into his mind and thus allow her to become the ancestors who inhabit it, she not only learns the truth but experiences a schizophrenia similar to what Moon experiences when she invades the mind of Fate Ravenglass. While it is a symbol of alienation, it is also means for Tarawassie to develop a deep understanding of both Moon Shadow and humans who are not addicted to chitta. Their relationship, on the other hand, alleviates his loneliness. A genuine affection develops between them, one based in reality and in the new value systems each forms.

In "Phoenix in the Ashes," the pattern occurs again. When Hoffmann's 'copter crashes in Amanda's father's field, events are set in motion that make Amanda and Cristoval communicate with and rely upon one another. He needs her to nurse him back to health; she needs him to reaffirm her independence and integrity. Their continuous reliance upon one another forges a relationship based upon values different from San Pedro's and brings both of them a new perception of reality. Eventually they marry, and Amanda learns that a realistic love relationship is very different from the romance she sought with the sailor who abandoned her.

The pattern is varied somewhat in Mother and Child. Etaa's psychological journey is cyclical: from love and communication through alienation and loneliness and back to love again. But the love she feels by the end of her journey is much different than what she felt at the beginning. It is a love based in maturity and reality rather than one based in innocence. It is broader, deeper, and wiser. Events again force her to rely on alienated individuals: Hywel, her husband; Meron, the King of Tramarne; and Tarn, the shape-changing, alien, xenobiologist. Each of them is initially alienated and lonely, but their experiences with her change them. Each achieves a new perception of reality, new understanding, and new value systems because they learn to love her.

She too is changed by her ordeal. Believing Hywel to be dead, Etaa finds solace in her responsibility to her infant son. But she is forced to rely first on Meron and then on Tarn for her physical survival. She grows from her experiences with them. She matures; she broadens her understanding of reality; she forms new values:

"I am not what I was. And neither is the world." Her hands dropped; her eyes found my face again. "One's truth is another's lie, Tarn; how can we say what is right, when it's always changing? We only know what we feel . . . that's all we ever know. . . ."

Eyes of Amber presents yet another variation on the pattern. While both T'uupieh and Shannon Wyler are alienated and lonely, there is never any physical contact between them. In fact, T'uupieh is not even aware that she is in contact with another intelligent being. In her highly superstitious society, she believes the probe through which they communicate to be a demon. It brings her power, so she relies on it more and more to accomplish her ends. In the process, however, she becomes more and more alienated from her own kind. Because the probe is animated, she develops a relationship with it analogous to love. In replying to a question from one of her band at the end of the story, for instance, she says, "The Wheel of Change carries us all, but not with equal ease. Is that not so, my beautiful Shang'ang [her name for the probe].' She stroked its day-warmed carapace tenderly, and settled down on the softening ground to wait for its reply." Communication between T'uupieh and the probe has eased her loneliness and altered her values. While she has begun to accept Wyler's values, he has learned that communication can indeed make a difference. He did prevent T'uupieh from murdering her sister. In the process, he has reached an understanding with his mother that promises to alleviate his own alienation from her.

The Snow Queen presents an even more complicated variation on the pattern. It is similar to Mother and Child in that it moves cyclically, from innocent love through alienation to mature love, and it involves more than one other alienated individual. As the novel begins, Moon and Sparks are naively happy, but when they both seek acceptances as sibyls and Sparks is rejected, he leaves his warm, southern homeland for Carbuncle, the capital, in the north. As Moon's selection for training overtly marks the beginning of her alienation (she is unaware that the very nature of her birth has already marked her), Sparks's rejection marks his alienation. Instead of being forced together to learn to understand each other, themselves, nature, God, and their people, they are torn apart. Reality is thrust upon them through their experiences and relationships with the outside world. Into the mix, Vinge inserts Arienrhod, the Winter Queen. She is Moon's mother, by cloning, though the two do not know one another, and she is Moon's mirror image: evil, insensitive, power mad, and accomplished in the ways of the world.

As events unfold, Arienrhod permits Starbuck, her right hand and lover, to be ousted by Sparks and then takes him as lover. The relationship is logical. Arienrhod possesses the secret of longevity, so age is not a factor, and as Moon's genetic equivalent, she bears the physical and mental characteristics that attracted Sparks to Moon in the first place. But her power over Sparks is so complete that she corrupts him, and as he becomes more dependent upon her, his alienation deepens.

The relationship among Moon, Sparks, and Arienrhod is broadly defined by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, also entitled 'The Snow Queen" and one of the novel's sources. In Andersen's story, Kay, a young boy, is struck in the eye and the heart by silvers from a magic mirror invented by a wicked hobgoblin and then shattered. The mirror's power is to distort all that is beautiful and to turn the heart cold. Kay wanders off to live with the Snow Queen, oblivious to the cares and concerns of Gerda, a young girl who loves him. She is persistent, and she learns what is wrong with him, finds him, and heals him with a kiss whose power is drawn from her innocence.

Moon's psychological journey, however, is not that simple. While Sparks is writhing uncomfortably in the clutches of Arienrhod, she must first solve the problem of her own alienation. Her destiny is not her own; she is manipulated by the Old Empire computer, which places her inevitably into conflict with the values of both the Winters and the Summers. While she is trying to realize her personality, she is also gaining experience that broadens her perception of reality. Though she bears the same genetic program as Arienrhod, environment has shaped her differently.

In the other stories, communication between the alienated female and the alienated male mutually brought them to a better understanding of reality and fostered new value systems that brought love, but in The Snow Queen it is Moon who must force the personality transcendences. Not until she finally locates Sparks and sleeps with him is he even aware that he is under some kind of "spell." Only then, and after his father has acknowledged his parentage, is Sparks's alienation resolved. In a conversation with Moon about the pledge they made to always love one another but subsequently broke, Sparks dismisses his need for a festival mask by saying, "No . . . I don't need one. I've already taken mine off." His literal reference is to the mask he was required to wear as Starbuck, but his symbolic reference is to the persona he has shed in casting off his alienation.

While the pattern of an alienated woman forced through a series of experiences with an alienated man expresses Vinge's concern for communication, the enlarged perception of reality that each character aquires also brings a benefit with it. It is that each transcended protagonist finds herself with the ability to change the values of her society or the promise to do so. As the Summer Queen, for example, Moon will integrate the values of the Winter and Summer peoples and through the power of the sibyl computer, will begin to recreate the Old Empire civilization on Tiamat. Where Arienrhod has failed because of her insensitivity and alienation, Moon will succeed because of her ability to love in a psychologically healthy way. With the power of the probe, T'uupieh possesses the capability to change her culture's values. With the fusion reactor engine of the Ranger, Betha possesses a tool to teach the Heaven Belt peoples the value of cooperation. Because of her unique relationship with Tarn and the belief that her son is the heir to the Tramaine throne, Etaa possesses the means to change not only the societies of her own world but also those of the aliens. Amanda's rebellion has brought San Pedro Hoffmann's knowledge of crop rotation and the promise of a more productive agriculture. And though not made clear until Vinge wrote the "Afterword" to the story, Tarawassie and Moon Shadow do eventually set in motion the forces that will bring understanding to both the humans and the Real People of their world.

In order to frame the fight her characters must wage against the values of the various societies in which they find themselves, Vinge usually sets her stories in worlds that are either very primitive or have been destroyed by some disaster. This permits her to create societies that have values that are obviously unhealthy and that suffer from Fromm's socially patterned defect. The distopic worlds, where created by technology, also suggest the dangers of human folly.

"Legacy" and The Outcasts of Heaven Belt, for example, are set in an asteroid system whose civilizations have been virtually destroyed by a civil war that killed a hundred million people. What remains are fragile societies slowly disintegrating into chaos. Natural resources are scarce. Radiation has produced sterility and a high number of cripples. The will to survive has given preeminence to greed and selfishness. The Demarchy is marked by lying, cheating, distrust, convenience, and suffering. People must scavenge to live. Women are valued only for their fertility. Cooperation has been replaced by division. It is a society that is psychologically unhealthy and one that easily breeds estrangement.

The planet upon which Tarawassie and Moon Shadow live, in "The Crystal Ship," contains the remains of a society destroyed by drugs. Its population has been depleted of both humans and Real People. Its cities are crumbling, its machines lie rusting, its libraries gather dust, its people are starving. Fear and superstition prevail. Progress is ignored. Technology is distrusted. Even the purposes of the books and machines have been forgotten by all but a few, and the humans, who do apathetically survive, dream away their lives in drug-induced trances, some of them in the beautiful crystal ship that orbits endlessly above the pinwheel-clouded world. The Real People have returned to the ways of the past and reject any suggestion of progress, regardless of how difficult living may become. Because it is a world whose peoples refuse to recognize reality, it is a world that promotes alienation.

The setting for "Phoenix in the Ashes" is Earth of the future, devastated by an atomic holocaust that has left isolated pockets of civilization. The San Pedro group, to which Amanda Montoya belongs, is primitive and fundamentalistc. Wrapped in religious superstition, it values its women only as servants to its men. Agriculture dominates, technology is feared, contact with other surviving cultures is limited because of distrust. Morality is strictly regulated. It is a rigid and conservative culture that suppresses personal development except through prescribed and narrow channels.

The world of Mother and Child has been ravaged by a plague that left most of its people either infertile or crippled by mutations. Vision and hearing, in particular, have been severely affected. The two principal societies of the world have developed along lines dictated by these impairments. Their religions especially reflect them. People with perfect vision, for example, are said to have "second sight" and become priestesses among the Kotaane. On the other hand, the church of the Neaane believes hearing to be a curse and punctures the eardrums of any child born with that ability. Rather than working toward some reconciliation beneficial to both societies, however, the Kotaane and the Neaane have developed a deep distrust of one another. Their cultural stagnation has been encouraged by the shape-changing aliens, thought to be gods by the Neaane because they fear the potential destructiveness of humans. While living in primitive harmony with Nature is the principal concern of the Kotaane culture, the Neaane's concerns are more material. Both groups are ignorant of their true situations. Therefore, their values breed an unhealthy psychology and eventual alienation.

Though no specific cause is given, the Titanian civilization of Eyes of Amber is also dystopic. It is primitive compared to Earth, with knowledge of even the basest technology almost nonexistent. Fear and superstition dominate. Murder, thievery, deceit, and other acts regarded as sins on Earth are held in high regard. Indeed, the better one practices these vices, the better one's chances of surviving, and survival is the ultimate goal of Titan's population. Greed, selfishness, and distrust are the dominant values of this society and the enemies of psychologically healthy communication. So, alienation and loneliness are inevitable. Since the Titanians know nothing else, they learn to live with it. . . .

[One] supportive device is the fertility theme. It has obvious connections to the archetype because the death and subsequent revival of vegetation implies infertility and fertility, respectively. Except for Eyes of Amber, where no particular emphasis is given to it other than the fact that Titan is just entering its spring season, all the stories place a premium on fertility. In Mother and Child, for example, it is expressed through motherhood. The plague that struck the planet not only produced undesirable mutations but more importantly limited the ability of humans to reproduce. Lack of fertility thus gives birth a special emphasis. A respect for fertility is also apparent in the Kotaane religion, which makes "Mother Earth," and therefore "Mother Nature," its center and engages in a variety of fertility rituals.

In "Legacy" and The Outcasts of Heaven Belt, fertility is again conspicuous by its absence. Atomic spillage and the normal radiation from space have left most of the asteroid belt people either genetically defective, so that they fear to have children, or sterile. So concerned are they about their falling population (their failing technology requires a certain manpower level to maintain it), that they value their women almost exclusively for their ability to reproduce. Wadie Abdhiamal sums up the fate of a sterile woman in his society quite nicely when he says, she "had only two alternatives: to work at a menial, unpleasant job, exposed to radiation from the dirty postwar atomic batteries; or to work as a geisha, entertaining the clients of a corporation."

San Pedro, the primitive, agricultural village of "Phoenix in the Ashes," treats its women with equal defensiveness. Amanda Montoya' s ostracism is an example of the punishment inflicted upon one who places herself outside the rigid mores of the community. Women are viewed as property, and their proper role is as servants to their fathers and husbands. They are expected to marry and raise families. The San Pedro religion is nature-centered. Their prophet, the son of God, who led them to the Los Angeles Basin from the south, revealed "that the only true and righteous life is one within the pattern of nature, the life all creatures were meant to live." And a seasonal cycle runs through the story. Hoffmann, who will increase their agricultural productivity by introducing them to crop rotation, comes to Amanda and the community from the field where he crashed while suffering from amnesia. Figuratively, he is reborn. Through the winter, he and Amanda lie fallow, and then in the spring they both bloom: "Amanda had blossomed with the spring, the ache of hunger forgotten. . . ."When Hoffmann's experiment at crop rotation produces wheat that grew taller than ever before, Amanda's father rewards him with the gift of a cow. Vinge leaves no doubt that the fertility images are to mirror the psychological development of her characters.

In The Snow Queen, fertility is treated more subtly. The shift of power to the Summers, after the ritual destruction of the Winter Queen, certainly suggests it since summer is the season of lush vegetation. But equally important is the symbolic value of Moon who becomes the Summer Queen and who is identified with the New Moon of the "White Goddess" symbol. It is the aspect of regeneration, growth, and rebirth. It is also important to note that Arienrhod is sterile. This is a side effect from taking the "waters of life," which though they extend life and suppress the effects of aging, do cause other problems. In "The Crystal Ship," there are no specific references to either fertility or motherhood, but fertility again becomes conspicuous by its absence. The preoccupation of the remaining human population with drugs has virtually ended all breeding, and from a simple lack of interest, the humans are now in danger of extinction.

In addition to the fertility theme, Vinge also uses a cluster of images suggesting coldness to support the dying and reviving vegetation archetype. Snow is the most prominent image, but also included in the cluster are ice and winter and adjectives like frozen and white, which suggest coldness. As a symbol, the cold cluster signifies the winter season, that season when the Earth is devoid of most vegetation. Psychologically, it signifies that period when the character is alienated and lonely. But, like winter it holds the promise of rebirth, renewal, and regeneration.

In Mother and Child, for example, Hywel is orphaned near the end of winter, which marks the beginning of his alienation and loneliness, relieved only when he falls in love with Etaa, who as the priestess of the clan is the symbol of summer and fertility. When they are separated, it is at a cliff where "snow-water dashed itself down, down to oblivion." And Hywel, while relating the first part of the story, lies, his back broken in the leap from the cliff to escape King Meron's soldiers, in cold, drizzling rain under gray skies. Later, when Etaa is kidnapped by Tarn and taken to Laa Merth, they arrive in a cold, gusting wind, and they spend the winter inside the shelter with virtually no communication between them. It is not until spring that a breakthrough comes.

In Eyes of Amber the spring melt is just beginning, and both the world and the characters are described in cold images. Chwiel compliments T'uupieh, for example, when he says, "You are carved from ice, T'uupieh," and later when she is speaking, Vinge describes her voice as one "which snapped like a frozen branch." Moreover, the frozen landscape of Titan stands in sharp contrast to the warm, interior scenes in the laboratory on Earth where Shannon Wyler works. The contrast marks the antithesis in values between the two cultures, and the cold images of Titan signify the alienation that exists in its people.

In "Legacy" and The Outcasts of Heaven Belt, the cold symbol takes a subtle and pervasive form. Integrated fully into the world of the stories, its primary manifestations are the near absolute cold of space and the "cold" fire of radiation. The people of Heaven Belt live inside asteroids with no atmospheres to protect them. Cold literally surrounds them as it surrounds the spaceships upon which most of the scenes of both stories are set. Vinge establishes the vastness and coldness of space as a symbol of alienation at the beginning of The Outcasts of Heaven Belt when she merges the icy images of Morningside's dark side with those of space and likens the Rangr's flight to a moth drawn to the candleflame of the stars. But the cold symbol is also amplified by radiation, the heatless fire, which is everywhere in the system. Because of the failing technology, dampening screens no longer protect the people from it, either on the surface of the asteroids where many are forced to work or on their ships.

Snow does appear in both stories. In "Legacy," Planet Two, where Chaim, Mythili, and Siamang go to rescue Olefin, features snow and deep cold. Mythili is abandoned there and figuratively dies only to be reborn later from her alienation. The planet also offers hope for the Belters as a habitable world. In The Outcasts of Heaven Belt, the "Snows-of-Salvation" is a Ringer plant that processes snow into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is an important fuel. Snow itself, while symbolizing the alienation of the Belters, also holds out the promise of salvation.