Vonda N. McIntyre - Recurring Story Elements

Recurring Story Elements

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.