Vonda N. McIntyre

Vonda N. McIntyre (1948–2019) was an American science fiction writer and trained biologist whose work combined rigorous scientific ideas with social and feminist themes. She founded the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle in 1971 and became the third woman to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, for Dreamsnake (1978), a story of a healer who uses a genetically engineered serpent to treat illness; the novel also won the Nebula Award. McIntyre wrote extensively in the Star Trek universe, including The Entropy Effect, the first original Star Trek novel published by Pocket Books, and novelizations of Star Trek II, III, and IV. Her other major work, The Moon and the Sun (1997), an alternate-history fantasy set at the court of Louis XIV, won a second Nebula Award. She died of pancreatic cancer in 2019.