Book Review — The Idiot Gods, by David Zindell
Reflections on this masterpiece of a novel, which explores the impact of humanity on the world through the eyes and mind of an orca.
I barely know where to start when considering this astonishing book. But I think a good way to encapsulate the impact of reading this has had one me is how much I want to share it with others: Throughout the book, time and again as it touched on different ideas, I thought to myself how one friend or another would find it fascinating, insightful, beautiful, or haunting. How those with a love for philosophy, linguistics, sociology, history, sci-fi, ecology, animal rights, religion, science, and most powerfully anyone with a passion for environmentalism or simply humanity and nature, would all be just mesmerised by this insightful, imaginative, and moving piece of art.
It certainly connected with me on a deep level, reflecting in many ways my own world view, one that appreciates the beauty of humanity, of our ability to innovate and be compassionate loving beings, while also being all too aware of the awful damage we are doing to the world around us, and each other. This balance of how humans have so much good and so much promise, but commit so many ill deeds in wilful ignorance or stupidity, is the core of the book, and what the protagonist, the orca Arjuna, desperately tries to understand.
