The Broken God

Written by David Zindell

Every now and then I start to feel like a bit of a philistine for reading so much geeky SF and fantasy, when I could be reading Joyce or Nietzsche or some huge fat non-fiction book in the interests of making myself more literate. 'But Jon', I reason to myself, 'science fiction has just as much potential to be deep and thought provoking as any other genre, you shouldn't feel like you're wasting your time when most people are reading the Da Vinci Code or John Grisham's latest turd.'

Well you've got a point there with the Da Vinci Code, alternate aspect of my psyche, but I'm afraid I can't take that argument very seriously with my normal literary diet of George "Then they all had kinky sex by the pile of corpses" Martin and Steven "Then this dude who could really fuck shit up appears" Erickson. But fortunately every now and then I read something that completely affirms my genre of choice as being worthwhile.

I read Zindell's first novel 'Neverness' many years back. I remember thinking it was very well written, but I found his characters strange and off putting, and the themes just generally disagreeable. 'The Broken God' is a sequel to 'Neverness', and also the first in the three part series 'A Requiem for Homo Sapiens'. I bought it about a year and half ago, and it's languished in the 'to read' pile for a long time since I was reluctant to tackle it after my dissatisfaction with the previous book.

The setting is the very very far future, when humanity has populated the entire galaxy. Our protagonist is the son of the protagonist in the first book, a man called Danlo Ringess who is raised by Neanderthals (or rather people who's ancestors genetically engineered themselves to be like Neanderthals) and begins with no knowledge of modern civilisation or science. He eventually comes to the city of Neverness, learns all about his fathers exploits and the threats facing humanity and of course meets a whole bunch of characters with 'future enemy' written all over them. As you can tell it's just a whole lot of setup for the rest of the series, but Zindell's world is unique and unusual enough so that just having it revealed is enough to entertain for 800 pages.

Once again Zindell's characters are weird and off putting, but I didn't let that bother me this time. At first I assumed that he was just doing a very good job of portraying a human society so far removed from our own that it may as well be alien. Later on I began to suspect that it might just be that Zindell has a weird and off putting mind (and towards the end I began to suspect that he might have done a fair amount of hallucinogenics). Whichever it is he's done a great job of coming up with unusual and challenging ideas, and putting them in his characters heads in a natural way.

There are lots of really cool science-fictional ideas here too. Interstellar space travel relies on the pilot's ability to manipulate mathematical equations while interfacing with the ships computer. Gods are real but are usually inscrutable AIs or huge aliens native to empty space.

The characters themselves are well drawn and consistent despite their eccentricities. Danlo's best friend Hanuman is probably the most interesting of the lot. Even though his ultimate role in the story is more or less spelled out in the sentence he is introduced, it is still fascinating to see how he gets there.

Like with Neverness I was put off by Zindell's apparent anti-rationality agenda in the book, but as I read on I put my prejudices to the side and recognised that what he's saying isn't quite that simple. Firstly it's obvious he has a solid scientific background, and secondly it's not clear at all where the line is drawn between what the characters are saying and what the author is saying. I will have to read the next two books to find out exactly where it's all going to go, but I'm pretty sure that even if I don't completely agree with it, it will be well worth reading.

Zindell's got the Big Questions in mind here. What is the meaning of life? What is the nature of consciousness? Spirituality or rationality? And it's all presented in a thought provoking way with grandiose and evocative science-fictional trappings, and some plain old great writing. I just started on Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good & Evil' and I recognise a few of his ideas in 'The Broken God'.

So this is one science fiction series that's deep and philosophical enough to not feel guilty for reading. Now I can go back to purely entertaining epic fantasy for a while.