Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre

Dreamsnake won the Hugo award in 1979. The premise of this story is the healer Snake goes beyond the first desert (against the advice of her teachers) to the outer tribes to give aid. She carries with her three snakes: Mist, a cobra; Sand, a rattlesnake; and her most valuable snake, Grass, a dreamsnake. While helping the young boy with an advanced tumor, the parents kill Grass thinking the small snake is going to harm him.

During her brief and tragic stay with the desert people, she befriends Arevain, cousin to the young boy. He asks her to stay, to help other tribes, but without her dreamsnake, Snake cannot call herself a healer and she must return to her training center for guidance. For dreamsnakes are given to only a very few Healers as they are extremely rare.

Snake's return to the training facilities is very indirect - she is called upon to help heal a prospector, only to find the woman suffered extreme radiation poisoning and the most Snake can do is ease her death. However, this woman has ties to the Center (the domed city that has ties with the offworlders) which may help her obtain more dreamsnakes. Snake leaves the now dead prospector and her family and continues on. When she returns to her camp after the prospector, she finds it was raided: her cloths slashed, her meager belongings bent or destroyed, her journals and maps missing. With resignation she continues on to the lush and beautiful city of Mountainside, where it seems everyone is drop dead gorgeous.

It is here that Snake adopts an abused 12 year old girl and informs an 18 year old that he can receive better training for his, ah, "lack of control" from certified trainers who aren't 100 years old. (If that doesn't have you intrigued I don't know what will.) Snake takes the young Melissa with her across the very dangerous desert to the Center's walls, where she finds they have now closed them for the winter sand storms and will not admit anyone, especially a healer. It is here Snake captures the person who riffled her camp previously and has been following her. He talks of dreamsnakes by the 100's, and so now she must follow him to try and regain one.

This was an odd book. It straddled the line between being a futuristic world and setting and a middle ages fantasy. There are people who know about gene splicing and modification, yet they administer drugs through snakes and have only a rudimentary understanding of surgery. People partner in groups of three and birth control is taught using biological methods where both guys and gals learn to increase or decrease their body heat. The desert people have cool names, everyone else is called Jesse, or Alex, or Melissa, or something rather mundanely modern. It seemed to be a book about personal emotions and sex with a bit of science tossed it. I also felt this book was incomplete - not only did the ending leave me rather dissatisfied, but there were several avenues that could have used further elaboration.

Again, I am left wondering if this was truly the best the Hugo's had to offer for 1979 or if she won the popularity vote.

Hugo Winner's left to read:
Johnathon Strange and Dr. Norell by Suzanna Clark
The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge