David Zindell (born November 28, 1952) is an American science fiction and fantasy epics writer.

Writing career

Zindell's first published story was "The Dreamer's Sleep" in Fantasy Book in 1984. His novelette Shanidar, which shared a background with his first novel Neverness, won the Writers of the Future contest in 1985. He followed Neverness with a sequel trilogy called A Requiem for Homo Sapiens. Zindell's fantasy series The Ea Cycle has as a theme the evolution of consciousness, through the method of fantasy. The plot concerns a prince named Valashu Elahad searching for a relic called the Lightstone to stop the immortal Morjin, Lord of Lies, who seeks to create a world filled with madness. In 2015 he published Splendor, a nonfiction book, and in 2017 he published The Idiot Gods, a novel told from the point of view of intelligent killer whales.

Style and themes

John Clute wrote that Zindell was a "romantic, ambitious, and skilled" writer. Zindell has described his style as an attempt to communicate the connectedness of things, the connection between mysticism and evolution, and the possibilities of life, and his fiction as an attempt to heal false dichotomies such as materialism and spirituality.

Personal life

Zindell was born in Toledo, Ohio, and resides today in Boulder, Colorado, where he works as a test coach; he received a BA in mathematics and minored in anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Publications

Neverness Universe

Ea Cycle

Other novels

Other short stories

Essays