His first novel, Emergence (ISBN 0-553-25519-3), won the Compton Crook Award in 1985. It arose from a novella by the same title featured in the January, 1981, issue of Analog. This was followed by the February, 1983, Analog publication of the Seeking novella, which ultimately became part two of the novel. Thereafter the Emergence novella appeared in an anthology called Children of the Future. Both novellas also won reader's choice awards from Analog. Both were nominated for the Hugo award for best novella in their respective years, and the novel for best novel in 1985.

A sequel to Emergence, Tracking, was serialized in three parts, beginning in the July/August 2008 issue of Analog. Tracking was continued in the September issue and concluded in the October issue of the magazine.

His second novel, Threshold (ISBN 0-553-24878-2), was published as the first book in the To Halt Armageddon trilogy in 1985, to somewhat lesser acclaim. The "About the Author" section of Threshold states that David is "currently working on the sequel to Threshold, also to be published by Bantam", to be called Sp?cial Education, although it has not been published to date. He stated in the afterword to the 1990 edition of Emergence that any future writing would depend upon his finances. Palmer has another completed but unpublished novel, Schrödinger's Frisbee, which is not related to either of his first two novels. Wormhole Press has been indicated as a possible publisher for the new novels and for a reprinting of the Emergence and Threshold.

Novels

• Emergence (1984)
• Threshold (1985)

Short fiction