Anathem
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Narrated by:
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Oliver Wyman
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Tavia Gilbert
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William Dufris
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Neal Stephenson
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By:
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Neal Stephenson
About this listen
Fraa Erasmus is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the "Saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals.
Over the centuries, cities, and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs, bloody violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet always the avout have managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. Erasmus, however, has no fear of the outside - the Extramuros - for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.
Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fras and suurs prepare to venture outside the concent's gates - opening them wide at the same time to welcome the curious "extras" in.
During his first Apert as a fra, Erasmus eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected". But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the perilous brink of cataclysmic change.
Powerful unforeseen forces threaten the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros - a threat that only an unsteady alliance of Saecular and avout can oppose - as, one by one, Raz's colleagues, teachers, and friends are all called forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster.
Suddenly burdened with a worlds-shattering responsibility, Erasmus finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of everything - as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of an unfamiliar planet...and far beyond.
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Great Early Science Fiction (Not The Best Title)
- By Blake on 11-02-23
By: Clifford Simak
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The Year's Top Short SF Novels 5
- By: Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, John P Murphy, and others
- Narrated by: Tom Dheere, Nancy Linari
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2014 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.
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Narrator sounds like Tony Danza
- By Sean on 03-05-16
By: Cory Doctorow, and others
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METAtropolis
- By: Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, and others
- Narrated by: Michael Hogan, Scott Brick, Kandyse McClure, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Armed camps of eco-survivalists battle purveyors of technology in this exclusive, original production featuring five sci-fi masters and five all-star narrators.
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Not a wasted credit
- By james on 10-27-08
By: Jay Lake, and others
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Lockstep
- By: Karl Schroeder
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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When 17-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, separated from his family, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he' s orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he' s surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still - that he' s been asleep for 14,000 years. Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks.
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A Great Idea, Poorly Served
- By D. M. ROBISON on 04-01-14
By: Karl Schroeder
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Variable Star
- By: Robert A. Heinlein, Spider Robinson
- Narrated by: Spider Robinson
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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At his death in 1988, Robert A. Heinlein left a legacy that almost single-handedly defined modern science fiction. But one of Heinlein's masterpieces was never finished. In 1955, he began work on Variable Star, a powerful and passionate tale of two young lovers driven apart by pride, power, and the vastness of interstellar time and space. Now, the Heinlein estate has authorized award-winning author Spider Robinson to expand his outline into a full-length novel. And the result is vintage Heinlein.
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Spider WHO
- By Randall on 04-25-09
By: Robert A. Heinlein, and others
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Soon I Will Be Invincible
- A Novel
- By: Austin Grossman
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo, Paul Boehmer
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Doctor Impossible, evil genius and diabolical scientist, has tried to take over the world in every way imaginable, but this time is going to be different. He'll have to contend with Fatale, however, a rookie superhero on her first day with the Champions, the world's most famous superteam. She's a patchwork woman of skin and chrome, a gleaming technological marvel built for the next generation of warfare.
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Now that I have you at my mercy. . .
- By Brad W. on 07-02-07
By: Austin Grossman
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A Gift of Time
- By: Jerry Merritt
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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When Micajah Fenton discovers a crater in his front yard with a broken time glider in the bottom and a naked, virtual woman on his lawn, he delays his plans to kill himself. While helping repair the marooned time traveler's glider, Cager realizes it can return him to his past to correct a mistake that had haunted him his entire life. As payment for his help, the virtual creature living in the circuitry of the marooned glider, sends Cager back in time as his 10-year-old self.
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The Gift of Time is a Gift!
- By As happy as a monkey with two bananas in his hands on 12-07-17
By: Jerry Merritt
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InterWorld
- By: Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves
- Narrated by: Christopher Evan Welch
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Joey Harker isn't a hero. In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house. But then one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension. Joey's walk between the worlds makes him prey to two terrible forces: armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions.
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A good listen
- By Gurmukh on 10-31-07
By: Neil Gaiman, and others
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Marsbound
- By: Joe Haldeman
- Narrated by: Liza Kaplan
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Carmen Dula and her family are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime - they're going to Mars. Once on the Red Planet, however, Carmen realizes things are not so different from Earth. There are chores to do, lessons to learn, and oppressive authority figures to rebel against.
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Meh.
- By Wes Parker on 03-19-09
By: Joe Haldeman
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Proxima: Book 1
- By: Stephen Baxter
- Narrated by: Kyle McCarley
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The very far future: The galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, and chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun. How would it be to live on such a world?
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No Sense of Conclusion
- By Lisa Davidson on 04-24-16
By: Stephen Baxter
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A World Out of Time
- By: Larry Niven
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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After more than two hundred years as a corpsicle, Jaybee Corbell awoke in someone else’s body and under threat of instant annihilation if he made a wrong move while they were training him for a one-way mission to the stars. But Corbell bided his time and made his own move. Once he was outbound, where the society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core.
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Do you know how people get old?
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-13-12
By: Larry Niven
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In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. In the present, Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia....
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Two thirds through and quit
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Odd narrator choice
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Not perfect, but worth a listen.
- By ShySusan on 10-01-11
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Quicksilver
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In which Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and courageous Puritan, pursues knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe -- in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.
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Be aware of what you're getting into
- By David on 12-16-11
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Snow Crash
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A solid sci-fi novel
- By Brent on 02-05-03
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The Diamond Age
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Neal Stephenson, "the hottest science fiction writer in America", takes science fiction to dazzling new levels. The Diamond Age is a stunning tale; set in 21st-century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens what a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life, and the entire future of humanity, is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.
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The rock could use a bit more polishing
- By Tango on 05-19-13
By: Neal Stephenson
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Cryptonomicon
- By: Neal Stephenson
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In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. In the present, Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia....
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Two thirds through and quit
- By Joshua on 06-20-16
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Seveneves
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A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
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Odd narrator choice
- By Josh Mitchell on 05-30-15
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Not perfect, but worth a listen.
- By ShySusan on 10-01-11
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Quicksilver
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Be aware of what you're getting into
- By David on 12-16-11
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A solid sci-fi novel
- By Brent on 02-05-03
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The Diamond Age
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The rock could use a bit more polishing
- By Tango on 05-19-13
By: Neal Stephenson
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Zodiac
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Ax Norman
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Sangamon Taylor's a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil - all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long, Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI's most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate.
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kinda meh
- By L P SCHUTT JR on 05-14-20
By: Neal Stephenson
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Termination Shock
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One man—visionary billionaire restaurant chain magnate T. R. Schmidt, Ph.D.—has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as “elemental.” But will it work? Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming.
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The Men Who Shoot at Feral Hogs
- By Kindle Customer on 12-02-21
By: Neal Stephenson
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The Cobweb
- By: Neal Stephenson, J. Frederick George
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
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When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college townall the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what its producing is a very nasty bug.
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Et tu, Neal?
- By Richard on 06-16-11
By: Neal Stephenson, and others
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Interface
- By: Neal Stephenson, J. Frederick George
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
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In this now-classic thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a shocking tale with an all-too plausible premise. There's no way William A. Cozzano can lose the upcoming presidential election. He's a likable midwestern governor with one insidious advantage - an advantage provided by a shadowy group of backers.
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Interface
- By Dianne on 08-14-10
By: Neal Stephenson, and others
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Blindsight
- By: Peter Watts
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.
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Gothic Horror Hard Science Fiction
- By Doug D. Eigsti on 06-24-15
By: Peter Watts
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Ilium
- By: Dan Simmons
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 29 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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From the towering heights of Olympos Mons on Mars, the mighty Zeus and his immortal family of gods, goddesses, and demigods look down upon a momentous battle, observing - and often influencing - the legendary exploits of Paris, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and the clashing armies of Greece and Troy. Thomas Hockenberry, former 21st-century professor and Iliad scholar, watches as well. It is Hockenberry's duty to observe and report on the Trojan War's progress to the so-called deities who saw fit to return him from the dead.
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Achaeans and robots and post-humans, oh my
- By Ryan on 04-11-14
By: Dan Simmons
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Solaris
- The Definitive Edition
- By: Stanislaw Lem, Bill Johnston - translator
- Narrated by: Alessandro Juliani
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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At last, one of the world’s greatest works of science fiction is available - just as author Stanislaw Lem intended it. To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Solaris, Audible, in cooperation with the Lem Estate, has commissioned a brand-new translation - complete for the first time, and the first ever directly from the original Polish to English. Beautifully narrated by Alessandro Juliani ( Battlestar Galactica), Lem’s provocative novel comes alive for a new generation.
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A comment on negative reviews
- By Burns on 09-20-11
By: Stanislaw Lem, and others
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Some Remarks
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most talented and creative authors working today, Neal Stephenson is renowned for his exceptional novels - works colossal in vision and mind-boggling in complexity. Exploring and blending a diversity of topics, including technology, economics, history, science, pop culture, and philosophy, his books are the products of a keen and adventurous intellect. Stephenson ponders a wealth of subjects, from movies and politics to David Foster Wallace and the Midwestern American College Town; and more.
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Worth a revisit
- By Duncan on 08-09-12
By: Neal Stephenson
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A Fire Upon the Deep
- By: Vernor Vinge
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
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What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
- By Noah Smith on 06-20-10
By: Vernor Vinge
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Error
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Detlef Bierstedt
- Length: 45 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Es ist nur ein Spiel. Aber es geht um sehr viel Geld. Und für manche bald um ihr Leben...
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great storry! fantastically narrated!
- By Anonymous User on 06-16-17
By: Neal Stephenson
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Worlds of Exile and Illusion
- Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume—Rocannon's World; Planet of Exile; City of Illusions
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch, Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Three remarkable journeys into the stars: Worlds of Exile and Illusion includes Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions. These three spacefaring adventures mark the beginning of grand master Ursula K. Le Guin’s remarkable career. Set in the same universe as Le Guin’s groundbreaking classics The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, these first three books of the celebrated Hainish series follow travelers of many worlds and civilizations in the depths of space.
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The overarching integrity of three tales into one story.
- By David Parker on 02-02-25
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Children of Time
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Mel Hudson
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.
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A very pleasant surprise
- By Simon on 06-17-17
What listeners say about Anathem
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- jeremiah
- 02-18-20
Hard Audiobook to read
I’ve got over 200 audiobooks and this is one of 3 that I never finished... until now, years later. The story and narration was so bland and hard to get into via the audio format. So, I borrowed a paper copy from a friend after he praised it (and reviews were good) and followed along the audio reading with reading the pages.. and finally the book took on a clarity that was lacking with only audio.. some of the concepts of the book just came out cleaner with visual aid of the words... so enough of that; Excellent book, great world... some vagueness and a rushed ending it seemed a whole additional book could be written of equal length to summarize the outcome of the convex and ————- of Saint Orolo. Maybe 700 years later ;-).
-Good like writing a sequel Neal!!
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18 people found this helpful
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- Evan Jones
- 04-13-20
A little lengthy but really gets moving at the end
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It is, however, quite lengthy. I found myself irritated at the speed (or lack thereof) at which things moved sometimes but it is worth it.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Geoff
- 11-17-16
Good book - avoid the audio version
Would you consider the audio edition of Anathem to be better than the print version?
Even with a great reader, this would be a challenging book to do well in audio format, because it heavily relies on a glossary at the back and a timeline in the front.
Instead, we are given a terrible reading performance. I gave up after 100 pages, and the book became so much better when I switched to reading it myself.
What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?
The primary narrator's natural voice is very nasally - think "The Sicilian" from The Princess Bride. Imagine hearing that voice for 900+ pages. Even worse is when he does cartoonish affected voices - "Dave's not here, man!"
There are other narrators for various dictionary entries, delivered in a painful monotone. I get it, dictionaries are dry - but using zero inflection completely confounds any hope of the listener understanding what you're talking about.
One of these voices is probably Neal Stephenson himself. I'm enjoying his book thoroughly, but wish more care had been taken in his audio adaptation.
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- V. Juric
- 10-17-19
Way too much detail
This audiobook had a decent story but the writer includes way too much information and drags on and on and on only to come back to the actual story once in a while. I have forced myself to listen to the end, but boy it was tough to do so.
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- hogindapotti
- 02-26-16
Life-Changing
Anathem is my favorite story of all time... The narrators are excellent, and really pull you into the story. One of the best things about Anathem is that it really makes you think. My friend and I have both read and listened to it, and we never cease to have interesting conversations about it. The vocabulary takes a little while to get used to, but after you adjust, you'll go on one of the best adventure of your life! Often, when I read/listen to a story, I find that it is a blatant copy of another work. Not with Anathem.... If only more books did copy it.... BUY THIS BOOK you won't regret it. Would most definitely buy again!
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Overall
- Scott
- 07-17-09
A Triumph
As a small corrective to the previous reviewer - the correct title of Stephenson's book before the Baroque Cycle is Cryptonomicon. The Necronomicon is an entirely different book.
This book blew me away, both with its heady ideas, and its rip-roaring story. This may be one of the books best suited to my personality, in that it required extraordinary concentration to keep up with the philosophy, but every time it seemed likely to lose me, Stephenson would throw in a fight, a flight, a disaster, or an emotional scene to keep me invested in the characters. Even the philosophical discussions have their intrigues, their personalities, and their excitements. This books is not for those who have little patience for long digressions into philosophy and the more abstract cul-de-sacs of science, but it is for those who love their ideas and their action in equal measure. This is heady stuff, make no mistake, but the rewards are great.
As a side note, and at the risk of misleading some who don't read carefully, this book reminded me in some places of Dickens, in the writer's obvious love of detail, and of Tolkien, in the way that the author created his world, imagining it as fully and as deeply as any I've ever read. In contrast to Tolkien, however, Stephenson has populated his world with real people, struggling with real emotions and human foibles. In that, this book might be closer than either of these to Herbert's Dune, with a better sense of humor, but no less a love of ideas and politics.
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- Benjamin
- 12-22-18
A masterpiece
While Stephanson can get a little longwinded in his navel gazing and world building, his overall story never ceases to amaze. This is one of those books that stick with you long after you've finished it. I'm a solid fan for life.
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- Kevin
- 04-03-16
Captivated
I love the vastness of realities Stephenson creates. Now that I've finished the book, I almost feel homesick.
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Performance
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Story
- Doug D. Eigsti
- 08-08-14
.....Attention Surplus Disorder.....
Long ago in a galaxy far, far away lived a race of bipedal humanoids that had survived a slightly different history that that of Earth. Here they engaged in lengthily philosophical discussions on the fine points of logic that exactly mirrors the philosophy of Earth. On this far away planet these people even have historical archetypes that have exact parallels to our Newton, Emerson, Locke and Darwin. So, what this really is amounts to an alternate history of our Earth but with different political forces. For me this is less a Science Fiction novel than it is a Mainstream novel that includes some SF elements. I liken this to the many Romance novels that include SF elements but which are correctly categorized as Futuristic Romance pieces and not really Science Fiction.
After listening to the amazing SNOWCRASH I felt that Neal Stephenson deserved a second listen. SNOWCRASH is fast-paced, energetic, fanciful, farcical and fun. ANATHEM is extremely slow-paced, ponderous, mundane and tedious. I am now going on to tackle Stephenson’s CRYPTONOMICON just because SNOWCRASH is so good that I want to give him every opportunity to display the brilliance that he is capable of achieving.
William Dufris is a fine narrator. He has a limited range of character voices, which he recycles on occasion, but these work well for most any conversations. He is easy to understand and always energetic, making a good effort to make this a rewarding listening experience.
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Performance
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- RicT
- 10-17-17
tough start, but gets much better
Stephenson's books seem to take a while to get going. in this one there is a lot of background to build, and you have to struggle to stay with it. however, it is worth the wait. I read/listen to his work to challenge my thoughts and renew my sense of curiosity. This does not disappoint.
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