David Zindell
(1952- )
David Zindell was born in Toledo, Ohio, and resides today in Boulder, Colorado; he received a BA in mathematics and minored in anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His first published story was “The Dreamer’s Sleep” in
Fantasy Book in 1984; his novelette ‘Shanidar’ , which formed the core of his first novel
Neverness, won the Writers of the Future Contest in 1985. He was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1986.
Learn more at
David Zindell’s website.
Neverness
Neverness — (1988-1998) Publisher: The universe of Neverness is and filled with extraordinary beings, such as the neanderthal-like Alaloi and the Order of Pilots. Against this backdrop stands Mallory Ringer, who penetrates the Solid State Entity. There he makes a discovery. One that could unlock the secret of immortality.
Readers’ average rating:
Neverness by David Zindell
Nevernessis a really enjoyable “big idea” science fiction novel that takes place millennia in our future on the planet Icefall, also called Neverness. It's kind of Frank Herbert’s Dune meets Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur with high-level mathematics, posthumanism, and trippy metaphysics thrown in.
The story follows the life of Mallory Ringess, a trainee enrolled at "the Academy," which was founded by a pseudo-monastic order of truth-seekers called “the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame,” hoping to become a pilot. Now in this day and age a pilot combines the aspects of a theoretical mathematician with those of a questing knight. Using advanced mathematics, the pilot... Read More
Readers’ average rating:
War in Heaven by David Zindell
David Zindell’s space opera books, that started with the stand-alone Neverness and continued with his REQUIEM FOR HOMO SAPIENS trilogy (of which this volume is the conclusion), always scratch that itch I have for DUNE-like space opera. You’ve got the baroque world-building of a far, far future of humanity in an interstellar diaspora that combines elements of medieval and pre-industrial societies with ‘magical’ technology and gleaming ships that fold space; you’ve got bizarre human enclaves (sometimes almost reminiscent of Jack Vance, though with less obvious caustic humour) so that societies of warrior-poets, pilot-mathematicians, scientist-philosophers, autist-savants, and priest-kings all rub shoulders in a... Read More
