Notes on 'Neverness' (1988) by David Zindell (b. 1952)
Together with Bruce Sterling, Iain M. Banks and Dan Simmons, David Zindell belongs to the generation of critically acclaimed sf writers who from the mid-1980s onwards brought space opera back on the map. Neverness is the first work in Zindell’s Neverness Universe series (1988-98), an epic space opera that engages in profound metaphysical meditation on what it means to be human, envisioning a galaxy teeming with different lifeforms, from engineered primitivist tribes to planet-size machine intelligences.