SummaryA woman, a healer named Snake, has three snakes named Mist, Grass, and Sand, and uses them to heal the sick. She enters a hut to heal a child but comes into conflict with some members of the tribe who fear snakes.
Analysis (with minor spoilers)This makes a great opening to a novel (Dreamsnake, which is discussed here). It doesn't feel like a short story, though. There is no character arc or speculative problem solving. Healer heals, a tribe kills one of her snakes, she feels like hurting but doesn't, and a man wants to get with her but can't. I love that Snake doesn't seek revenge. There's nothing inherently wrong with the narrative, but it doesn't give shape to a story. Maybe it was always intended as a novel.
Still despite the lack of an arc, it captured people's attention. Why? A number of possibilities crop up.
First, the paradoxical style of vague specificity has a mysterious power that is estranging. It draws some readers batty while it entrances others. Consider even the name of "Snake" who is not a snake and snakes named after non-snake (not even animal) things. As Terry Carr points out in his introduction to the story, we don't even know where or when the story takes place: "The setting may be another planet, a far future Earth, or perhaps an alternate time-stream."
[Curiously, that is not the end of the sentence. Carr finishes, saying, "but the story is clearly about the problems of scientific knowledge--and the kind of person who must use such knowledge." Maybe, but not so clearly as the next two interpretative possibilities suggest.]
Second is McIntyre's quiet, non-confrontational feminism, as James Gunn points out in his introduction to the story. Usually, feminism displays a dominant male or female, privileging one group over another. Here a woman is put in power without comment, without having tear someone else down. Unobtrusive.
Third is the snake motif. Kate Wilhelm quotes Joseph Campbell: "where the serpent is cursed, all nature is devaluated." She goes on: "the serpent appears, and is not cursed.... Within us, modern, civilized humankind, there is something that recognizes and responds to the ancient symbols. Something that answers, yes, I am still here."
While these three ideas are all interesting and productive, they may be doomed to failure (or contrarily, be equally good) due to a problematic structure (at this level, that is). The first isn't necessarily the main narrative although it explains a major scene and not the ending. The second is more subliminal than overt but it might explain the ending, not the major scene Carr's does. Kate Wilhelm's, while it also fails to explain the ending, is an interesting case.
For an SF encyclopedia, I was assigned "snakes and worms," and of course, read McIntyre's work in preparation for the article. I don't believe I happened to read Wilhelm's remark. I dug into myths and religions, trying to get at how they were used. The Bible had two main uses: the snake 1) deceives/destroys, and 2) heals (Israelis were attacked by fiery serpents and they had to look upon a bronze snake to get healed [Numbers 21]). Each speculative story I happened to read fell neatly under those two motifs. McIntyre's fell under #2 although it hinted at #1 as well--perhaps each meaning in dialogue.
The article came back, revised, so that McIntyre's use of the motif was unique, the first to ever use the snake as healing. Needing money and wanting a copy of the encyclopedia, I didn't protest. Whatever rubric/interpretive schemata McIntyre devised the story/novel excerpt, the interpretative possibilities remain in the air. I recently ordered the SFRA book to see how they decided to discuss it. If it's interesting, I may revisit and revise this article.
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