Glossary


There are many new terms unique to Zindell's Shanidar universe, so many in fact that they beg reference. This is a list of some of them -- a list that is by no means complete -- and future updates will see additions here. A few of these terms are not unique creations but do have meanings specific to Zindell's universe. Definitions are taken as direct book quotes whenever possible, and references are given -- also whenever possible -- as to where such definitions may be found, using the following system: ([book][page]) where the book titles are abbreviated as N for Neverness, B for The Broken God, W for The Wild, and H for War in Heaven. For example, N42 means "Neverness page 42". References are from the Bantam Spectra paperback editions. This page excludes proper names of characters.

Please email me if you see terms I have missed, and include a book and page reference if possible.


Terms

AHIMSA - Disdain for violence (B196); never killing or harming another, even in one's thoughts (B207) [See Notes below]

AHIRA - The snowy owl; Danlo's doffel (B29)

AKASHIC - One who maps and reads brains (B100)

ALALOI - A carked race of Neanderthals (B61)

ALAM AL-MITHRAL - What the cetics call their computer-generated reality (H482)

ANGSLAN - Fravashi word for the pain that comes from higher understanding (B69)

ANIMAJII - The wild joy; life's overflowing delight in itself (W92) [see Notes below]

ASARYA - One who can say "yes" to all of creation (B112)

ASSEMBLER/DISASSEMBLER - A robot used for construction or mining operations (H41)

ASTRIER - One who ignores the deeper problems of existence, wholly surrendering himself to the animal activities of life: the getting of food, water, clothing, money, jewelry, and often dreammakers and other devices with which to dull the brain and the soul (B372) The look of a typical astrier includes: the sharp, arrogant face, calculating eyes, the well-tended body covered in a splendid fur of rare white ermine, with matching hat and gloves (H342)

ATTAKEL - A mountain near the city of Neverness

AUTIST - One who holds dreams as the truest reality [see Notes below]

BLINKANS - Supernovas created by the Architects: Nonablinka, Surablinka and Merripen's Star are examples (B126)

BORJA - The first college of the Order of Pilots; it occupies much of the Academy; Borja is like a separate city within the city of Neverness, at its eastern edge (B141)

BUDDHI STICK - A type of pungent incense that cleanses the air of positive ions, dirt, noxious chemicals, or any sort of gaseous pollution (W139) [see Notes below]

CARK - To modify an entity in a way that is considered inappropriate or unnatural; to transfer one's soul into another organism or device (B125) [see Notes below]

CATHEXIS - The cetic word for vastening (H484)

CETIC ARTS - by name: hallning, zazen, meditation, fugue, and the interface with the cybernetic spaces (B204)

DAVIN - A gold coin (H307)

DEEP WINTER - The winter season of Icefall

DEVAKI - The name of one Alaloi tribe, Danlo's tribe

DEVOTIONARY - A little device that the Architects of the Old Church give to one another so that they may view the miracle of Ede the Man becoming Ede the God; a little black box that projects a hologram of the face and form of Ede. Devotionaries are also sanctified personal computers that many individual Architects carried in their hands wherever they went (W195)

DOCTRINE OF HALTING - The doctrine of Edeism that states that the universe will reach its halt state when and only when Ede-as-God has absorbed and become co-extensive with that universe (B270)

DOFFEL - The animal an Alaloi is not permitted to hunt, differs on individual basis; the other self (B161)

EKKANA - A favorite drug of the warrior-poets that renders the body responsive to the faintest of sensa (B285)

ELDER EDDAS - The secret of the universe which some call the Philosopher's Stone, the One Tree, etc. The power to become as one with God which the Ieldra encoded into the human genome; it's thought that certain segments of human DNA code the Elder Eddas as pure memory (B97) Some fifty thousand years ago on Old Earth, the mythical Ieldra had written all their godly wisdom into the human genome. Now, millennia later, trillions of men and women on countless worlds carried these sleeping memories in every cell of their bodies (H25)

EXEMPLAR - A person born from an artificial womb; a product of genetic engineering (B148)

FACIFAH - A holy war (W389)

FALSE WINTER - The summer season of Icefall

FENESTER - To open the crystal-like windows into the manifold, allowing a lightship to fall from star to star (W46) [see also westering] [see Notes below]

GALIA - Devaki word for the World-soul (B8) [see also wilu-galia] [see Notes below]

GLAVERING - Fravashi word for limited conception of ourselves and our surroundings (B67)

GLIDDERY - One type of ice-street in Neverness. Red glidderies connect only with the major orange slidderies, or with each other; the purple glidderies intersect green glissades (B509) [see Notes below]

GLISSADE - One type of ice-street in Neverness (B509) [see also gliddery] [see Notes below]

GOLDEN RING - An extension of the biosphere; a new layer of atmosphere that floats along the currents of space, feeding off of light, exhaling diatomic oxygen, ozone and photoreflective gases; there's hope that this ring will shield Neverness from the radiation and light of the supernovas; above many worlds, all through the galaxy, there are rings of gold which appeared mysteriously after Mallory Ringess became a god (B127)

HAKR - A term used in Edeism to describe the willful embrace of a negative action; to run a program contrary to God's Program for the universe (W432) [see Notes below]

HAKARIAD - A human being whose actions challenge the gods as a bid for godhood (H83)

HAKRA - A potential god (B152) [see Notes below]

HALLA - Alaloi concept of harmony and beauty of life (B3)

HARIJAN - A pilgrim (B153) [see Notes below]

HEAUME - A metal skull used for imprinting and modeling the brain (B98)

HIBAKUSHA - Someone affected by radiation due to war (H441)

HOLISM - The formal study of interconnectedness (B205); the "second science" that defines the Sixth Mentality of man; [it tries] to explain how mind emerges from the material universe, how the consciousness of all things is interconnected (B374) [see Notes below]

HOROLOGUE - A timekeeper

ICEFALL - The planet where Neverness is located; some people simply call this world Neverness because of the importance of the city and its Order of Pilots to interstellar travel

IMAKLANA - Devaki word for the love magic between a man and a woman that is both instantaneous and eternal (H309)

Immanent Carnation, The - The name of Mallory's lightship

IMPRINTING - Changing the metabolic pathways and neural network; redefining the synapses of the brain (B98)

JOOK - A drug used to enhance intelligence; side effects include inflamed eyes, irritability, bleeding gums, pimples, and hallucinations (B207)

JUF - A substance used to keep the blood from freezing (B165)

KASJA FIBER - Called "acid wire" by the warrior-poets, used to bind their victims (B283)

KITHE - To decipher and understand ideoplasts, to read the symbols (B264) [see Notes below]

KWIETKEL - A mountain to the west of Neverness where generations of Devaki ancestors are buried (B7)

LIGHTSHIP - A rocket-like spaceship with a diamond hull, used for interstellar travel in the manifold; a pilot creates a mental interface with the ship's computer to propel the ship

LIGHTSTONE - The name of the new city of the Order, established on Thiells (H3)

LOTSARA - The discipline called "burning of the blood" (B167)

MADE WORLD - A world where the only living things are human beings and the bacteria grown to feed them (B202)

MANIFOLD - The thickspaces of the void used by the Order of Pilots for interstellar travel; using mathematics and mental disciplines, a pilot commands his lightship to fall from one star to another. A day in the manifold, in the superluminal fenestration of a lightship, can carry a pilot six hundred trillion miles through the stars (W190) [see Notes below]

MATRIKAX - A poison which kills instantly (H86)

MIDWINTER SPRING - The spring season of Icefall

MORRASHAR - A huge, black engine that fills an entire deep ship; it generates streams of graviphotons and fires them into a sun (W544)

NAITTARE - A poison used by the warrior-poets (W131); it can reduce a strong man to a quivering wreck within seconds (H340)

NALL - A malleable yet super-hard substance which can be formed into fiber, sheets, etc. Spun nall is harder and stronger than diamond, proof against lasers or knives or exploding projectiles (H32)

NEVERNESS - The Pilot's city on Icefall that was built in a half-ring of three of the planets most beautiful mountains: Attakel, Urkel, and Waaskel. (H117) The city has many nicknames, such as the City of Light and the City of Man. Neverness is also the name given to Icefall, stressing the importance of the city in the galaxy.

NOTATIONIST - One who catalogues ideoplasts (B204)

ORGANIC STONE - A marvelously strong substance flecked with bits of tisander and diamond (H10)

PALLATON - The modern Church Istwan word for "soul", that almost indestructible form of the self that could be preserved in an eternal computer; it is pure program and information, a model of the mind encoded as bits of ones and zeros and stored as perfectly arrayed electrons frozen into diamond discs (W458)

PLEACH - To weave together simplex thoughts in order to reveal complex truths (B267) [see Notes below]

PLEXITY - called also 'plexure'. The Fravashi's four stages of liberation, including: simplex, complex, multiplex and omniplex (B110)

QUICKTIME - When the mind is slowed down so that time seems to pass more quickly (H68) [see also slowtime]

RETURNISTS - A cult of worshippers of Mallory Ringess who preach that he will one day return to Neverness and save the Order from corruption and divisiveness, just as he would save the City from the panic over the coming supernova (B128)

SARSARA - Alaloi word for a winter storm (B158)

SAWEL - called also 'The Star of Neverness'. The sun of Icefall (B27)

SERVAM ASTI - The doctrine that everything exists, past and future, because the mind, at the moment of conceiving all things, could not do so if they didn't exist (B123)

SHAIDA - Alaloi concept of evil (B3)

SHAKUHACHI - A long bamboo flute (B156)

SHE - see 'Solid State Entity'

SHESHAT - A kind of tranquilizer dart powerful enough to immobilize a large animal (W132)

SHIBUI - Alaloi word for a kind of deeper beauty that only time can reveal (H282)

SHIH - Recognizing and making sense of different kinds of knowledge; the ability to gauge the beauties and weaknesses of different worldviews (B107); the cybernetic sense that "tastes", feels, and organizes various concentrations of information (B261); the relationship between wisdom and knowledge (B269)

SLELLING - The act of injecting strange DNA into the human body (B647)

SLEL MIME - A person who, as the victim of a warrior-poet, is infected with bacteria-sized robots that migrate through the blood into the brain. There, these tiny assemblers replace neurons with millions of layers of organic computers, thereby miming the mind and creating a slave unit in place of a man (W432)

SLELNIK - A person created from stolen DNA and born in an artificial womb (B148)

SLIDDERY - One type of ice-street in Neverness; a main avenue (B509) [see also gliddery]

SLOWTIME - That lightning state of the body-mind where the firing of one's nerves accelerates so that time slows down and each event of the exterior universe seems to occur more slowly (B288) [see also quicktime]

Snowy Owl, The - The name of Danlo's lightship

SOLID STATE ENTITY - called also 'She'. A nebula-sized brain composed of moon-sized biocomputers, speculated overall size is six hundred thousand cubic light-years (W396)

SPELAD - A Fravashi learning game of realities where the teacher names some object, idea, personage, historical movement, or phenomenon. The teacher then names a worldview, and the student must enter this worldview and behold and describe the object through this view. Points are scored on knowledge, sense of shih, and mastery of plexity (B122)

SPIKHAXO - A small finger-gun used often by the warrior-poets (W131); it fires tiny darts tipped with naittare (H340)

STAR OF NEVERNESS - see 'Sawel'

TAPAS - One of the cybernetic senses; a mental discipline restraining the simulation of seeing, hearing and smelling (B261) [see Notes below]

THICKSPACE - An infinite density of point-sources where pathways from every star in the galaxy converge (B388)

TOALACHE - A brownish seaweed used for smoking like tobacco (H341)

UNIVERSAL COMPUTER - Hanuman's godlike orbital computer the size of a small moon which the Ringists are constructing above Icefall at the first Lagrange point above Neverness (H41)

UNIVERSAL SYNTAX - An organic language symbolizing and interrelating the knowledge of all the arts, particularly the art of mathematics (B267)

URKEL - A mountain near the city of Neverness

VASTEN - To model the pattern of the brain's synapses as a computer program (W215); this causes the brain to die but allows consciousness to continue in the cybernetic spaces; called cathexis by the cetics (H484)

VILD - A growing region of the galaxy where stars are exploding (B123)

WAASKEL - A mountain near the city of Neverness

WESTERING - The urge, while fenestering through the manifold, to fall ever outward toward the farthest galaxies (W46) [see also fenester]

WHELVE - Fravashi word for learning to regard the world as an objective thing (B118)

WILU-GALIA - Devaki word for "the intention of the World-soul" (B8) [see also: galia]

WORMRUNNER - A common criminal; a poacher (B129)

ZAMBONI - A machine that rolls down the streets of Neverness, melting and smoothing the ice for the skaters (H311)


Notes

AHIMSA - A word from the Hindi language with essentially the same meaning.

ANIMAJII - See Webster's definition of "anima".

AUTIST - See Webster's definition of "autism".

BUDDHI STICKS - See Webster's definition of "buddhi"

CARK - Webster's definition is: n. 1. care or worry. --v.t., v.i. 2. Archaic. to worry.

FENESTER - French for window is "fenêtre" (fen&ecirc;tre) < Latin "fenestra"; see also Webster's definition of "fenestella".

GALIA - Possibly originates from "Gaia".

GLIDDERY - Webster's definition is: adj. Brit. Dial. slippery.

GLISSADE - Webster's definition is: n. 1. a skillful glide over snow or ice in descending a mountain, as on skis or a toboggan.

HAKR - Possibly originates from the word "hack" meaning an attempt to do something to a computer program that would subvert that program's intent.

HAKRA - Possibly originates from the word "hacker" meaning a person who performs hacks.

HARIJAN - See Webster's definition of "Harijan".

HOLISM - See Webster's definition of "holism".

KITHE - See Webster's definition of "kithe".

MANIFOLD - See Webster's definition of "manifold".

PLEACH - See Webster's definition of "pleach".

TAPAS - See Webster's definition of "tapas".


This page is (always) under construction.


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