rachelmanija | The Snows of Jaspre, by Mary Caraker

Another atmospheric anthropological science fiction novel by Mary Caraker.

Morgan, a teacher from the Space Federation, is given a teaching assignment on the icy planet of Jaspre. It's home to two sets of colonists. One set live in the cities, and another, descended from the indigenous people of Finland, live in the snowy outlands in very rough, rural conditions. The latter are called snowgrubbers, a term used with contempt by outsiders but embraced with pride by the snowgrubbers themselves.

Jaspre's sun is very dim, so it has an artificial satellite, Argos, that focuses and concentrates its light. This gives the snow beautiful rainbow colors, and in certain places it's believed to be concentrated enough that anyone who goes there will either get psychic powers or become an insane cannibal. (The usual two options!)

A plan is afoot, spearheaded by the Space Federation, to install a second Argos. This will make a lot more of the icy planet habitable, but will flood out the snowgrubbers and destroy their icy home, and cancel out the rainbow light.

Anders, a snowgrubber man, has attained psychic powers and is running what's either a cult or a planned psychic community - even by the end of the book, which is very much an open question. Definitely some of the people who join act like they're in a cult - a local woman is desperate because her wife (not stated as such but they lived together and shared a bank account) joined, and her wife refuses to leave and seems uninterested in anything but developing her new powers. But the powers are very real and Anders seems largely benign. His main deal seems to be to help people safely develop their powers by not letting them go to the psychic/insane cannibal-making glacier unless they can handle it, and agitating against Argos 2.

Morgan's eighteen-year-old daughter, Dee, arrived in Jaspre depressed and sickly. But the rainbow snow has an energizing effect on her, which leads her into contact with the cult.

I've now read all three SF novels (plus a fixup about Morgan's earlier teaching jobs) by Caraker. Their plots are unconventional. They're not about a single character who changes or learn something, though that may happen in them, nor are they based around conflict, though that may be present. They're about a place and its culture, during a time in which a major change is happening.

This is a completely valid type of novel, in my opinion, and Watersong especially is a fantastic example of it. But it's not a form of novel that's much recognized or respected in Western countries, certainly not at the time these books were written, which is probably partly why they never got to be very well known. They're very atmospheric, and ambitious in a quiet kind of way. I wish she'd written more.