In The Cendovian, Richard Nelson is a tech billionaire who teaches computer science at Stanford on the side. He is looking for talented, young programmers to help him with his secret mission to save humanity from itself. Along the way, he tries to save his wife Virginia.
Richard is highly analytical with a dry sense of humor. This sometimes makes him appear to be callous. But his heart is always in the right place, even if he appears to be insensitve or cold-hearted. A very private man with some eccentricities, it can take others a long time to get to truly know him well. And few know the deep secrets he harbors.
A brilliant man, Richard is adept at connecting seemingly disparate fields in ways many do not usually see. In his lectures, he connects fields such as astronomy, biology, economics, and philosophy to computer science. For Richard, all roads lead back to programming. It is his belief that the fate of humanity depends on the code we write.
Richard calls on all programmers to become superheroes making the world we live in a better place. If that fails, he contends that our only escape will be digital transcendence, escaping from the physical world into a new digital one of our own making. To prepare for this contingency, he strives to build such a world, which he calls Cendovia.