Vonda N. McIntyre, daughter of H. Neel and Vonda B. Keith McIntyre, earned a degree in biology from the University of Washington in 1970. That same year, she attended the Clarion Writers Workshop, founded at the Clarion University of Pennsylvania in 1968. McIntyre went on to do graduate work in genetics.

In 1971, McIntyre founded the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, WA with the support of Clarion founder Robin Scott Wilson. She contributed to the workshop until 1973.

By 1973, McIntyre had won her first Nebula Award, for the novelette "Of Mist, and Grass and Sand"; this later became part of the novel Dreamsnake (1978), which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The novelette and novel both concern a female healer in a desolate, primitivized venue.

McIntyre's debut novel, The Exile Waiting, was published in 1975. She has also written a number of Star Trek and Star Wars novels, including The First Adventure and The Entropy Effect. She wrote the novelizations of the films The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, and The Voyage Home.

It was McIntyre who came up with Hikaru as the first name of the Star Trek character Mr. Sulu, which became canon after Peter David, author of the comic book adaptation, visited the set of The Undiscovered Country and convinced director Nicholas Meyer to insert the name into the film's script.

Two story elements which McIntyre uses in many of her stories (regardless of their very different settings) are divers and biocontrol. Divers are humans who have been genetically modified to live underwater, although they retain their ability to breathe air as well. Their traits include gills, insulating fur, webbing on the fingers and toes to aid swimming, the ability to produce and hear sounds in the range used by cetaceans for communication, and retractable penises for males. Superluminal has a diver protagonist and extensive discussion of that novel's Earth diver culture; they are also featured in the Starfarers series, and a reference to divers is made in the Star Trek IV novelization.

Biocontrol is a learned ability to control aspects of one's own physiology that are normally autonomic. Its most important use is for birth control; practitioners apparently change the body temperature around their testes or ovaries so as to render their genetic material unviable. A character's experiences learning biocontrol are a plot thread in Dreamsnake; it is also mentioned in the Starfarers series (where it is also used to retard male beard growth) and the Star Trek III novelization (where characters mention taking formal biocontrol exams).

In the Star Trek II novelization, one of the characters discusses a computer game he has written, named "Boojum Hunt." In Barbary, a character refers to a computer game named "Snarks and Boojums." Both are references to Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark.

• Dreamsnake ... 1978 Hugo Award, 1979 Nebula Award, both for Best Novel
• The Moon and the Sun ... 1997 Nebula Award

Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday "to ...Vonda, ...".

Non-series novels

• The Exile Waiting (1975)
• Dreamsnake (1978)
• Superluminal (1983)
• The Bride (1985)
• Barbary (1986)
• The Moon and the Sun (1997)

Starfarers

• Starfarers (1989)
• Transition (1991)
• Metaphase (1992)
• Nautilus (1994)

Star Trek - The Original Series

• The Entropy Effect (1981), (Book 2)
• Enterprise: The First Adventure (1986)

Star Trek - Movies

• Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), (Book 7)
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), (Book 17)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
• Duty, Honor, Redemption (2004) (collection of the above three novelizations)

Star Wars

• The Crystal Star (1994)

Collection of Short Stories

• Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

Short Stories

• Cages

Quark/4 (1971)

• Only at Night

Clarion (1971)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

• The Galactic Clock

Generation (1972)

• The Genius Freaks

Orbit 12 (1973)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

• Spectra

Orbit 11 (1973)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

• Wings

The Alien Condition (1973)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

• Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand

Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact (October 1973)

Best SF of the Year 3 (1974)

Nebula Award Stories 9 (1974)

Women of Wonder (1975)

Looking Ahead (1975)

The Infinite Web (1977)

The Best of Analog (1978)

Dreamsnake (1978)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

Arbor House Treasury of Modern SF (1980)

Constellations (1980)

The Analog Anthology #1 (1980)

The Road to Science Fiction #4 (1982)

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IV (1986)

6 Decades: The Best of Analog (1986)

Great Science Fiction of the 20th Century (1987)

The Best of the Nebulas (1989)

• Recourse, Inc.

Alternities (1974)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

• The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (February 1974)

Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (1975)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

Norton Book of SF (1993)

• Screwtop (Novella)

The Crystal Ship (1976)

The New Women of Wonder (1978)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

Screwtop / The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1989)

• Thanatos

Future Power (1976)

• The End's Beginning

Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact (September 1976)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

• Aztecs

2076: The American Tricentennial (1977)

Best SF of the Year 7 (1978)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

Nebula Winners 13 (1980)

• The Serpent's Death

Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact (February 1978)

Dreamsnake (1978)

• The Broken Dome

Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact (March 1978)

Dreamsnake (1978)

• Fireflood

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (November 1979)

Fireflood and Other Stories (1979)

Best SF of the Year 9 (1980)

• Shadows, Moving

Interfaces (1980)

• Elfleda

New Dimensions 12 (1981)

Unicorns! (1982)

• Looking for Satan

Shadows of Sanctuary (1981)

Lythande (1986)

• The Straining Your Eyes Through the Viewscreen Blues

Nebula Winners 15 (1981)

• Transit

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (October 1983)

• Malheur Maar

Full Spectrum 2 (1989)

• Steelcollar Worker

Analog Science Fiction and Fact (November 1992)

• The Adventure of the Field Theorems

Sherlock Holmes in Orbit (1995)

• The Sea Monster's Song

Odyssey, Issue 1 (November/December 1997)

• Little Faces

The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006)