Resisting Everything but Temptation

Vonda N. McIntyre was the third woman to receive a Hugo award (in 1978, for her novel Dreamsnake.) She passed away on April 1st of this year at age 70, after a short battle with pancreatic cancer.

Back then, I didn't have much access to television. My hippie mom didn't approve of it, so I was allowed only half an hour of TV a week. (She did make exceptions for Wide World of Disney.) Though my dad took me to the premiere of Star Wars, and we'd watched the very short-lived series Quark together, I didn't know Star Trek existed. (Hilariously, my best friend's dad was actually an actor on the original Trek, but it was a couple more years before I figured that out.)

That same year, I volunteered at our local public library in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section, and in the course of reading every paperback on the shelf there (not a huge undertaking), I discovered a few Alan Dean Foster and James Blish novelizations of Star Trek—but I didn't realize they were based on a TV show. Toward the middle of that year, I found a new Star Trek book at my local Waldenbooks: The Entropy Effect. I bought it with my allowance and read it while on a family road trip to New England—and in some subtle way, I think it rewrote my DNA.

In the space of a couple of hundred pages, it introduced me to polyamory, quantum physics, and Kirk/Spock—three arguably critical keystones to my personality, life choices, and world view. Her OFC Mandala Flynn spoke to proto-lesbian me in a big way. It also centered Sulu as a character, which made a huge impression on me—at the time, I had never seen an Asian character centered in any narrative. I remember that when I read the scene at the end, where Spock awakens in Sickbay to realize he's successfully saved his captain's life (after multiple timelines where he failed), I broke down sobbing, and went to go find my mom, trying to explain to her why I was crying. This skinny little book, this TV tie-in novel, still affects me profoundly. (Her novelization of Star Trek III was also a considerable contributor to why Kirk/Spock was my first fandom.)

When I read that Ms. McIntyre was ill, I wrote her a letter trying to express all this—almost forty years overdue. I hope that she was able to read it. I cried the whole time I was writing it, which for me, is...unusual. Crying is not a thing I do.

I haven't re-read The Entropy Effect since I was about 15, but there's an audiobook version recorded by George Takei and Leonard Nimoy, and I think I'm overdue to give it a listen.

Rest in peace, bright star.