From the off let me say that this isn’t a review – it’s a tribute.
These four books leave me in awe for many reasons. Starting with the prosaic, page counts vary between
700 and 862, so each is a considerable undertaking for sheer thickness alone;
however, when it is taken to account that Zindell’s writing style takes the
piss out of the word, ‘thoughtful,’ with paragraphs often running longer than a
page, then even the word ‘epic’ seems inadequate.
These books are often compared to Dune,
usually to say they are the nearest thing to it in Science Fictional world
creation. Well, I offer to you the
following sacrilege: Neverness and
the three sequels that comprise The
Requiem for Homo Sapiens, are better
than Herbert’s classic. Still here, for
all your incredulous disbelief? The read
on, for the two creations are ripe
for comparison.
At a general level, Herbert mixed science and religion, salting with
an ecological focus. Zindell throws in
all of those and adds mysticism, spiritualism, philosophy, and mathematics. In fact it is mysticism, spiritualism, and philosophy
that Zindell seems most devoted to exploring, especially in the Requiem books. This seems at odds with the fact that this is
SF, but Zindell does manage to credibly pull the combination off and keep a layman
like me interested.
And the planet Icefall, and much more particularly its city of
Neverness, is absolutely hands down the choice I’d make over anywhere on
Arrakis (probably anywhere else in Science Fiction, in fact), were I somehow
able to visit one of them.
For, in Neverness, everything you ever loved in an SF city –and not a
few Fantasy ones- is somewhere in evidence.
There is the sprawl and infinite age of Wolfe’s Thrax, not to mention
its multifarious inhabitants, guilds, and cults; there is the sense of
forgotten and/or forbidden science run wild of Reynold’s Chasm City; and there
is the colour and redolent/extraordinary aromas of virtually anything by Jack
Vance. Zindell builds the reader’s sense
of Neverness’ place and mystery and power into an edifice readily believable as
the centre of his Civilised Worlds. And
yet, for all its obvious far-future setting, for all its strange cultures, its
aliens, the space craft constantly rocketing -yes, there are rockets here- to
and from Neverness’ lightfields - barbarity thankfully remains quite present. Prostitutes and their pimps roam the streets;
the roads are ice runs where everyone skates; assassins known as Warrior Poets
are readily hireable, their mere proximity striking fear into any who behold
them; all live in terror of succumbing to any of an infinite number of
infections; highs and vices of countless variety are available, whether from
street vendors or within the closed doors of specialist establishments.
And, in total antithesis to all this sweating, stinking culture, out beyond Neverness’ city
limits in the snowy wastelands, tribes of Neanderthal men eke a beautifully
simple -though terribly hard- life hunting seal and bear.
And this is only the stepping off point for Zindell’s
masterpiece. For his heroes are pilots
(of the Order of Secret Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable
Flame, no less), and space is their infinite mistress. It is their purpose to explore the galaxy and
bring knowledge of what they find back to Neverness; piercing the fabric of reality in their elegant
one-man spaceships; flitting from star to star through the beautiful, wildly structured, conceit of a
dimension wherein mathematical formulae are made physical - Zindell’s unique
answer to FTL travel. They solve their
theorems and mappings to discover lost civilisations that know nothing of the
Civilised Worlds: star-destroying religious lunatics; peoples on the brink of
transcendence; and, ultimately, those that have achieved such transcendence and
become gods spanning whole star systems, creating worlds at a whim... and
warring amongst themselves.
Yes, Zindell has created a complete universe from shit to stars.
So much for the background – what of characterisation and plot? Nothing to disappoint here, either. His heroes -Mallory wi Soli Ringess in Neverness, Danlo wi Soli Ringess
(Mallory’s son) in the others- are deeper, more tortured, darker, than Paul
Atreides; their accomplishments greater, their tragedies more terrible and –in
Danlo’s case, more heart-rending. With
Mallory we follow enraptured as he seeks for an answer to the destruction of
stars and the deadly radiation fronts thereof that scour the galaxy - looking
both into the far reaches of space amongst the planetary ganglia of the Solid
State Entity god, and into the deep ancestral past of Mankind. We watch enthralled as his experiences, both
wonderful and terrible, combine to set him upon the road to divinity. With Danlo, Mallory’s son by his half sister,
we share his terror and suffering as a child of the Neanderthal Devaki,
watching his tribe succumb to a devastating disease contained within the most
ancient DNA of Man; we follow his coming to Neverness in search of a cure; his
consequent culture shock and eventual rise to pilot. We watch the tragedy of his intimate
love/hate relationship with his best friend/nemesis, Hanuman li Tosh unfold and
fester; come to empathise with his incredibly powerful love of life and the
shattering decisions this love forces him to make... All combining to set him upon the road to
become the ultimate Man is capable of becoming (yes, yes – the Kwisatz Haderach).
There are failings, of course – nothing this big could possibly be without
them. The worst, for me, is the ultimate
revelation of Mallory’s fate – something of a letdown. Also, the sheer density and ponderousness of
the prose may leave you nodding more than once.
But these faults are easily excusable when weighed against the absolute
wonder of everything else on offer here.
My apologies. This is becoming
something of a jumble, isn’t it? It
cannot be helped, I’m afraid – there is
simply too much in these books to properly relate. There is a scene in The Wild wherein it is mentioned –much more succinctly- that a man
cannot know his brain without his brain being twice the size. So it is with properly reviewing Neverness, The Broken God, The Wild, and
War in Heaven. There’s far too much
to cover without resorting to volumes.
Therefore I will wind things
up with this statement: no other SF work has ever managed to leave me choking
back tears at the utter tragedy of what was being portrayed. That’s how involved Zindell is capable of
making you as a reader. If that, coupled
with all of the above, does not pique your interest, then there’s no hope for
you at all.
But John Clute, writing in Interzone,
will have the last word (quoted on the back of Neverness): ‘lingering and lithe and rich.’
-oOo-