The more technological a society, the less reliance on physical brawn - and the more level the playing field, in terms of achievement. The idea that a society can achieve faster-than-light travel when the female half is relegated to chattel slavery (in the case of Ondinee) or permanent subservience (Newhaven, and Kharemough to a certain extent) is … well, unlikely, in my book. As a plot point, this never made sense to me historically, the most advanced societies are those in which all members contribute, and partake of education. The misogyny of the Hegemony, in particular its police force, seems a definite throwback to the emerging (and often heavy-handed) feminist awareness of 1970s, the time when The Snow Queen was written.
Of course, there are aspects to the series that would be considered problematic in today’s cultural milieu. The Summer Queen shows what happens when fairytales are exposed to the grim light of two-sunned day: marriages crumble beneath the weight of incompatibilities everyone saw except the lovers, the need for change wars with the stultifying chains of conservatism, and the preservation of the natural world only can be achieved, in the end, by a species’ utility to humans rather than its imminent worth. The Snow Queen in particular is fascinating - a retelling of the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale, remade into space opera. While it’s hardly high literature - Tangled Up in Blue is, in particular, quite campy - and some aspects of it are quite dated, the series is just as enjoyable on a second read. I’ve been re-reading Joan Vinge’s The Snow Queen series lately - or rather, re-reading the The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen, interspersed with two books I hadn’t read previously: the prequel Tangled Up in Blue and the book in between the two Queens, World’s End. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. Love and hate don’t stand a chance against it. It makes everything it touches meaningless. “Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. “Indifference.” Jerusha surprised herself with the answer. “But what force in the galaxy is stronger than she is?” Winter is a bit like sickness or injury: an enforced stillness, a reckoning of our own fragility amid the blank face of the universe. Ice rattles against the window panes and turns the slate walk into sheer treachery.
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