Vonda McIntyre

Vonda N. McIntyre was a trailblazing science fiction author who captivated the genre with her groundbreaking novel Dreamsnake and her richly imagined Star Trek tie-ins, reshaping the landscape of speculative fiction with her fierce creativity and deep empathy.  

McIntyre earned acclaim early in her career for the novelette Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand (1973), a post-apocalyptic tale of a healer who uses genetically engineered snakes to treat her patients. The story won a Nebula Award and was expanded into the novel Dreamsnake (1979), which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

She worked with equal ease in her own imagined worlds as well as established science fiction franchises, penning five Star Trek novels including the novelizations of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

Departing from the science fiction genre, The Moon and the Sun (1997), a fantasy novel set in an alternate timeline at the court of King Louis XIV of France, won her another Nebula Award. The novel follows the parallel stories of a captured “sea woman” (perhaps a mermaid) and a court lady-in-waiting, comparing how both are overlooked and exploited by the men around them.  

McIntyre also co-founded the influential Clarion West Writers Workshop, an incubator that supports emerging and underrepresented writers.