David Zindell

David Zindell (born 1952) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He holds a degree in mathematics with a minor in anthropology from the University of Colorado Boulder, and his novelette "Shanidar" won the Writers of the Future contest in 1985, launching his career. He is best known for Neverness (1988), a far-future novel following pilots who navigate a mathematically rendered universe in search of transcendence, sometimes compared to Frank Herbert's Dune, and its continuation, the trilogy A Requiem for Homo Sapiens. He later wrote the fantasy series The Ea Cycle, beginning with The Lightstone, and the Xanaya novels, including The Idiot Gods, narrated from the perspective of sapient orcas. Zindell's fiction blends hard science-fictional ideas with mysticism, exploring themes of consciousness and evolution; his work has been translated into at least eight languages.