[Comments] Vonda N. McIntyre Month

[Fillyjonk]

It is summer. You are rollerskating around a cul-de-sac in 1978, definitely rocking your velour pants, but not wearing a helmet because safety hasn't been invented yet. You love worlds of magic and danger, Big Hero moves, dragons, exploring crypts, derring-do and doing dares. Your grape Otter Pop (your brother took all the red) is wilting into purple slag as the noon time sun reaches its fiery zenith, and you are tired of mundanity....

 

I just said your OTTER POP was failing. You get heat stroke and die. THE END.

 

Well. It's cool. But you can't find yourself in it because you are a girl and in ALL the stories you like best, girls are basically a sex objects to be kidnapped, rescued, banged and forgotten, or they are pure and lovely and die to motivate a man, or a man kills them for being evil withcy temptresses. You internalize buckets of misogyny and make bad choices about who to date in high school. THE END.

 

You are grudgingly allowed. But. Since you are the girl, you have to be the cleric and not talk, but hey, at least you get to play. Sit quiet and wait for 5e. THE END.

Or you can choose to "discover Vonda N. McIntyre," and turn to this page right here. She is the Nebula and Hugo award winning writer who centered female characters in sci-fi/fantasy in ways that blew my tiny little mind and which resonate with me still.

This month in book club, we can each choose our own VNM Adventure--- Pick any of her fine novels!

DREAMSNAKE: Nebula Award Winner that follows a healer who has lost her vital Dreamsnake on a Hero's Journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This is a quest story that turns tropes on their butts.

THE EXILE WAITING: A companion book set in the same world, but in the only remaining city center as a young girl with illegal, invisible, and powerful mutations tries to escape ruined earth and forge a viable future.

THE MOON AND THE SUN: Now a terrible movie called THE KING'S DAUGHTER starring Pierce Brosnan's wig (!!!! Cannot recover from the wig...) this alternative history has King Louis XIV of France convinced a "sea monster" holds the secret of immortality; his daughter has other ideas about what this monster means...

Here is a full list-Which one do you think you will go for?

[Fillyjonk]

I am going to read THE MOON AND THE SUN because I read both DREAMSNAKE and THE EXILE WAITING again in the last 18 months and am already excited to discuss these with anyone who picks one or the other, and because I have not read TM&TS in years, and because I want to watch the movie RIGHT after reading the book and just WIG BOGGLE and try to understand WTH the film makers were thinking.

[DeletedUser79558]

I bought Dreamsnake when you first mentioned her as a possible for this month, so I will read that one. Though I may also pick up the wigbook too.

[Sprite]

I'm reading (well listening to) The Exile Waiting, since I read The Moon and the Sun and re-read Dreamsnake recently.

[Sprite]

Page 8 of Clarion West's Annual Report published today contains updates about Vonda's works. Clarion West is a six-week writer's workshop Vonda co-founded and executor of her literary estate.

[GeneT]

I am Estivating with Dreamsnake. Then hopefully Exile and finally the Moon.

But unlike my wife, who consumes 100's of books a year, I read much much much slower.

[AnotherDragoon]

Oh nice, my library app has both Dreamsnake and The Exile Waiting. I'm much more likely to finish e-books whilst wrangling a toddler. Appendix N is gathering various things on the table right now... Anyway, I'm a big fan of dreamsnakes already so looking forward to that story!

[Fillyjonk]

Dreamsnake is a SHORT read, GeneT… and the dynamic sounds familiar. my husband reads very slowwwwly. But he retains 97.69428% of what he reads. I eat books like cookies and instantly forget 92% of it.

Me too. I want one, Goonie

[DeletedUser79558]

Gene! Good to see you here joining in!

[lostcheerio]

Yay, glad to see GeneT joining the book club! Welcome to our little nerdy corner of the nerdiverse!

I'm reading Dreamsnake as I have never read any of her works, and my copy came yesterday -- AMAZING cover. The font, the colors, the image, everything is so 1978 I love it.

Let's go!

[GeneT]

Thank you.

Ah, the 1970's. My parents started givin us money at Xmas for books. First 5$, then 10$, etc. Every day after Xmas, or maybe the day after that if we could contain ourselves, we'd Run out to the bookstore to spend hours hunting and deciding what we'd get. Xmas is that for me. Getting that envelope and making that trip every year. Grabbing a book, looking at the cover, putting it to my nose and flicking the pages. The fantasy and science fiction isle was soo much smaller than everything else. And the RPG section, at first unheard of, then grudgingly, little by little, having its own compressed section of a shelf. Vonda McIntyre wasn't something I coulda found in 1978 in the bookstore I hunted nor one, I imagine, I coulda snuck out with at 9.

[Fillyjonk]

GeneT we are the same age.

I found my copy spending the summer at my grandparent's. A retirement community in S Florida with a HUGE bookstore. My gramma would buy us BEEBO BEAR snack cakes (like off brand Ho Hos) and HARDBACKS. This, to me, was the ultimate in Luxury. I could imagine no greater glory than being allowed to shop in the NEW Hardbacks section of a bookstore.

[GeneT]

Hardbacks..........were never a consideration. It's simple math. Walk out with an armful, or handful at least, of paperbacks or splurge on one hardback. Yet, somehow, I snagged a 2nd edition Fiend Folio some years later.

I think later in life, once I returned to the States, I'd walk into a Books a Billion or BDalton and be overwhelmed. Soo many books. Soo many choices. How was anyone to make a choice in just a few hours or a whole afternoon? You had to know ahead of time what you were lookin for instead of just pulling books from the shelf and figuring it out on the spot. You only had so long. Your parents weren't gonna stay there all afternoon for goodness sake. You'd be lucky to get 2 hours.

A bookstore to me is small. Tight. Isles too narrow to accommodate passing. You juggle a bunch of books in one hand or lined up on the floor doing math in your head, counting the flimsy green bills and coins in your other hand. Do I have enough? Which ones do I put back? Do I pick a series or just the first book of each? Complicated decisions for a 9-10-12-year-old. But fantastic.

[Sprite]

I'm pretty sure I never went to bookstores as a child. My elementary school had a library, and the summer when I was ten I discovered the public library, but getting there wasn't easy.

Now, my all-time favorite bookstore is Powell's in Portland, although it's a 3-4 hour drive away.

[AnotherDragoon]

Well, I'm roughly a quarter of the way into Dreamsnake and am thoroughly engrossed. The world is familiar yet just a tiny bit alien with the black sand desert. There is a heavy blanket of tragedy and sadness tempered by the whisper of hope and community which I find very comfortable, to be honest. Snake is great and I can't wait to see how she develops further but already she is a badass with a heart of gold.

I have never read Vonda N. McIntyre and am so glad to be experiencing her for the first time. Thanks for suggesting these wonderful stories!