The Big Idea: Vonda N. McIntyre

Though the author of The Curve of the World has passed, her story lives on. Her editor, Nisi Shawl, is here to take us through what she believes Vonda N. McIntyre’s Big Idea was. Let’s have a look, and pay our respects in the process. NISI SHAWL (EDITOR): We may never truly know what the Big Idea behind Vonda N. McIntyre’s last novel was. Two weeks after she completed a final draft of that novel, The Curve of the World, Vonda died. We can ask ourselves what she was trying to do as many times as we want, but the file drawers full of notes she left behind are empty of the answer to that question. Vonda wrote change-the-world science fiction. Like her friend, Clarion classmate, and Pacific Northwest neighbor Octavia Butler, she faced life’s challenges head on and with a high-functioning imagination as her tool and weapon, and rigorous research as her resource. Which maybe comes across as a little grim? But apply all that discipline to speculating about the bull-leaping, bare-breasted…