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The State of the Art
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
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Publisher's summary
From New York Times bestselling and modern master of science fiction, Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art is the acclaimed collection of Banks's short fiction.
“Banks is a phenomenon...writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance.”–William Gibson
This is a striking addition to the body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent.
“Few of us have been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary breadth.”–New York Review of Science Fiction
“[Banks] can summon up sense-of-wonder Big Concepts you've never seen before and display them with narration as deft as a conjuror's fingers."–scifi.com
The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
Critic reviews
“Banks writes with a sophistication that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with modern science fiction.”—The New York Times
“Banks never lets up in a dizzying array of characters, mind-bending ideas, and dazzling action.”—Booklist
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Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America and winner of countless awards—including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker—Harlan Ellison proved once more that he was both unpredictable and irrepressible in this second collection of innovative science fiction. Again, Dangerous Visions—the middle installment in a planned three anthology series—includes award-winning stories from incomparable writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Piers Anthony, Dean Koontz, and James Tiptree, among many others.
By: Harlan Ellison
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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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Ogres
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Emma Newman
- Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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It's always idyllic in the village until the landlord comes to call. Because the landlord is an Ogre. And Ogres rule the world, with their size and strength and appetites. It's always been that way. It's the natural order of the world. And they only eat people sometimes. But when the headman's son, Torquell, dares lift his hand against the landlord's son, he sets himself on a path to learn the terrible truth about the Ogres, and about the dark sciences that ensured their rule.
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Beautiful
- By Joseph Krump on 03-22-24
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Needle in a Timestack
- And Other Stories
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 24 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Needle in a Timestack is Robert Silverberg at his very best - intelligent, inventive, and visionary. This collection showcases his talent for thought-provoking science fiction, ranging in themes from time travel to space travel, the media to mortality. In the titular story - under development as a feature film by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley - a jealous ex-husband warps time in a vindictive attempt to destroy his former wife's new marriage. Thirty-one identical sons have a shocking surprise for their mother in "There Was an Old Woman".
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Meh
- By JonDC70 on 07-19-20
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The Prefect
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multifaceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus.
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Best yet of the Revelation Space series
- By Michael G Kurilla on 04-03-11
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Unexpected Stories
- Two Novellas
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 2 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This exciting collection presents two previously unpublished stories by SF legend Octavia E. Butler. A Necessary Being precedes the events of Survivor, Butler's third (famously disowned) installment in her Patternist series, and includes characters from it, focusing exclusively on the Kohn, aliens who build their social hierarchies on the blueness of their fur. In Childfinder, a black woman with the gift of identifying children with latent psychic ability refuses to share her skill with an organization of white telepaths.
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Octavia B. is the John Coltrane of Scifi fantasy
- By Adé Ngeno on 06-30-19
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Terminal World
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different---and rigidly enforced---level of technology. Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue.
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This ain't your fathers Alastair Reynolds
- By DAVID on 09-10-10
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rob
- 04-29-24
not the best of the culture novels.
read the other ones over this this entry in b the series. ok, but eh.
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- Scott
- 04-19-24
Great(but missing final chapter)
Great reading of a fantastic collection of short stories.. BUT the final chapter of the book is left out - which is a huge oversight as the final chapter is probably the most important offering in the whole book... it is in fact the whole reason I had pre ordered this when they announced it on Audible, so that is really unfortunate.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mule
- 04-06-24
Great read by a great narrator
I’ve always enjoyed this book and can’t thank Peter Kenny enough for the spot on narration - the Drone
ps. can’t wait to hear The Algebraist all over again!!
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- Aaron Hill
- 04-13-24
Audio is too quiet
For some reason this book seems like it’s half as loud as normal. Even with my volume up all the way it’s hard to hear sometimes and sounds like the reader is practically whispering
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1 person found this helpful
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- Will
- 04-19-24
Finally
Can we get the rest of the Culture series now? The work itself is great, a short story collection.
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- paris1230
- 05-24-24
Brilliant
What can’t the imagination of Mr Banks encompass and expose? Superb narration as always by Mr Kenny.
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- Deane Morris
- 04-29-24
Worst banks book ever.
Tedious. Absolutely awful. Full of redundant, endless babble and religious Christian BS. Take this book and shove it.
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