Snowfall
 Mitchell Smith
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 FORGE/TOR
  ISBN: 0312878966


In a future Ice Age America, a clan of Trappers, surviving at the edge of the glacier, face a hostile incursion of a displaced tribe, & must choose to fight or take flight.

The next Ice Age is upon us: imagine the mile-high cliff of ice at your back, the Rocky Mountains are another impenetrable wall of ice to the west, & people from the east, who once occasionally hunted peaceably on the periphery of your territory, have turned hostile, intent on your demise, intent on taking over your traplines & your caves. Where do you go? Into the great, green forest to the South where the snow ends & monsters dwell?

Imagine what, from the past, might have survived. Mitchell Smith has created a whole new future, with particular attention to the anthropological aspects of how we might have made it, what things & thoughts might have survived from the Warm Time.

Snowfall is a blizzard of ideas, a peephole into a world devolved from our apogee of civilization. Here women, men & children are once again hunters & gatherers, with a difference. Now, once again, the weather, with less than a month of summer, is the foremost element in our lives & survival hangs by a thread.

I particularly enjoyed his fully realized heroines & heroes, those who die & those who survive. They have keen insights & eyesights that we, today in our citified lethargy, have long since discarded. Each person in Snowfall could have walked in today's world & felt a glimmer of recognition for us modern folks & our modern nation, except...

Snowfall is a marvelous, richly-textured adventure. Set in the future, it allows us a glimpse of what really might happen when our descendants have to grapple with the inevitable change in the Earth's climate. What will happen to Chicago, for instance, when thousands of feet of snow bury the city in congealed ice? What will happen to our store of knowledge, once we can no longer make electricity? What will happen to our society, once our land is covered with ice? Who then will be the readers of copy-books? Who then will be the doctors? The leaders? What kinds of relationships will we have?

Fascinating stuff!

When the Trappers, ravaged by a horde from the east, abandon their territory & head in the only direction they can -- South, they leave behind the bodies of their loved-ones & all that they have known, in particular, the snow. That element of weather that has shaped every aspect of their lives. Heading south means heading into a warmer, alien climate, into the great green forest of tall, dark conifers, dimly seen dangers, & inevitably unknown people.

When they do, eventually, meet a tribe in a valley of abundance, these fierce northern hunters must rethink their world as they encounter both a harsh & benign hospitality. From a world dominated by male warriors & leaders, the Trappers find themselves in a tree-dwelling society ruled by a Lady with strange & daunting powers. Where the making of paper has become a sacred & fiercely guarded secret. Where there is a library of copy-books, remnants of their ancestors libraries. It is here, among the Gardeners, that the mix of power within the Trappers begins to shift, & their doctor/warrior, Catania, surfaces as liaison & teacher.

The Trappers, however, long to travel on, to find their own territory. Now, their dog sleds are useless & most of their hunting, scouting & trapping skills are worse than useless.

Where will they go? How will they get there? Who is the mysterious Tattoo Newton, who has lived with them for years, & who now seems to be known across this new land, peopled by all sorts of people, speaking all sorts of languages?

Snowfall, while being listed as science fiction, is really science anthropology -- the kind of read I relish -- thinking about how we might live on this world, in the future.

If you read only one science/anthropology book this year, read Snowfall! Mitchell Smith has written a superb survivalist saga, that lingers in your mind for days after, wondering. It certainly deserves a sequel, for I would dearly love to know how Catania makes it to the Sierras & the snow-bound warrior/hunters who live there.

More from Mitchell Smith: Reprisal; Sacrifice; Karma.
(06/16/02)

Rebecca