Looking for book named something like Colossus or Leviathan Mid 80s maybe

[bighorton]

This was a full-length novel, in paperback form. Cover was a very large starship, Title in swooping capital letters.

Originally read this as a teenager in the mid-80's; no idea how old it was.

Story of a human male of non-terran decent who grows up badly abused, is found by terran humans and eventually winds up captain of the terran's largest starship during a space war against nonhumanoid aliens (I think). Name of the starship ("Colossus"? "Leviathan"? Something similar) is the name of the book.

Main character is a) part of a centuries-long breeding program on his home planet, but has health issues due to family rejection (a condition called something like "Red Reill, something like epilepsy but extremely painful), and b) proves to be bisexual as part of the story. (This was shocking in mid-80's rural Missouri, and I suspect it's why the book disappeared from the library shortly after I read it.) The bisexuality is treated as an irrelevant detail.

Setting is a couple millennia into the future, in this galaxy.

Book was in English.

I don't think the author was one of the well-known ones.

All my searches keep running into that computer-goes-nuts series.

TIA

Scott

 

[tinkerdan]

This sounds like something that Samuel R. Delany would write.

Samuel R. Delany - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't recall these exact plot circumstances; however I haven't read all of his novels.

 

[PaulMmn]

Miles Naismith Vorkosigan is a protagonist of a series of science fiction novels and short stories, known as the Vorkosigan Saga, written by American author Lois McMaster Bujold.

Miles Vorkosigan is the son of Aral Vorkosigan of the planet Barrayar and his Betan wife Cordelia Naismith. He has several physical impairments due to an assassination attempt directed at his parents. A poison gas grenade was thrown into their bedroom during Cordelia's pregnancy with Miles but the couple's lives were saved by quick administration of the antidote—a violent teratogen that destroys skeletal development in a growing fetus.[3]

The only available treatment for the fetus was experimental at best, and would have been fatal to the mother. Miles was therefore transferred to an artificial uterine replicator in an effort to salvage his bone development. While in the replicator, Miles was kidnapped from the hospital and used as a hostage against his father by Vidal Vordarian, the leader of the Vordarian pretendership, putting a temporary halt to the treatments.[3] He was ultimately born with "chalk-stick bones, friable as talc", and is described as "wizened as an infant homunculus."[4]

 

[Danny McG]

Miles Naismith Vorkosigan is a protagonist of a series of science fiction novels and short stories, known as the Vorkosigan Saga, written by American author Lois McMaster Bujold.

Miles Vorkosigan is the son of Aral Vorkosigan of the planet Barrayar and his Betan wife Cordelia Naismith. He has several physical impairments due to an assassination attempt directed at his parents. A poison gas grenade was thrown into their bedroom during Cordelia's pregnancy with Miles but the couple's lives were saved by quick administration of the antidote—a violent teratogen that destroys skeletal development in a growing fetus.[3]

The only available treatment for the fetus was experimental at best, and would have been fatal to the mother. Miles was therefore transferred to an artificial uterine replicator in an effort to salvage his bone development. While in the replicator, Miles was kidnapped from the hospital and used as a hostage against his father by Vidal Vordarian, the leader of the Vordarian pretendership, putting a temporary halt to the treatments.[3] He was ultimately born with "chalk-stick bones, friable as talc", and is described as "wizened as an infant homunculus."[4]

@PaulMmn Paul, I'm not sure of the relevance here, are you stating that you think one of the Miles books is the answer to this question?