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Voyagers
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Ben Bova
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
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Publisher's summary
Aided by a brilliant Soviet linguist and a lovely young student, Stoner planned a desperate mission, a wild, heart-stopping gamble to preserve the legacy of the star voyager for all mankind.
Critic reviews
- Audie Award Finalist, Science Fiction, 2007
"The most plausible and convincing account I have ever read of how the human race might really react to first contact." (Analog)
"Voyagers marks the return of one of SF's pros to his favorite subject: first contact. The bureaucratic politics of space is classic Bova...and the sense of awe when Stoner finally gazes upon an alien is pure art." (Chicago Tribune)
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Excellent and intense
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By: Greg Iles
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Singularity Sky
- By: Charles Stross
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 21st century, the perfection of faster-than-light travel and the rise of a prodigious artificial intelligence known as the Eschaton altered the course of humankind. New civilizations were founded across the vastness of space. Now, the technology-eschewing world known as the New Republic is besieged by an alien information plague. Earth quickly sends a battle fleet - but is it coming to the rescue, or is a sinister plot in motion?
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Gonzo giggleworthy geekitude
- By Noah Smith on 11-11-10
By: Charles Stross
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How Like a God
- By: Brenda W. Clough
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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What would it be like, to get absolute power? Would you wear a cape and fight crime? Rule the planet? Or perhaps you would be like Rob Lewis, and watch your world collapse around you. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Rob is going to find out.
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At one point the main character rapes at 13 year old girl
- By Richard Davis on 05-29-21
By: Brenda W. Clough
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Blood Music
- By: Greg Bear
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Vergil's innovative experiment restructuring the cells of a common virus becomes a nightmare when, in order to save his research, Vergil injects the entire culture into his bloodstream.
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THOUGHT UNIVERSE
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 08-01-15
By: Greg Bear
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Perchance to Dream
- Selected Stories
- By: Charles Beaumont
- Narrated by: J. Paul Boehmer, Gabrielle de Cuir, Harlan Ellison, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer. It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone - for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.
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Contents
- By Ralph Freaster on 06-22-16
By: Charles Beaumont
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The Curiosity
- A Novel
- By: Stephen Kiernan
- Narrated by: Kate Udall, Erik Bergmann, George Guidall
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Kate Philo makes a breathtaking discovery in the Arctic: the body of a man buried deep in the ice. Heedless of the potential consequences, Kate's boss orders that the frozen man be reanimated. As the man begins to regain his memories, the team learns that he was - is - a judge, Jeremiah Rice. Thrown together by fate, Kate and Jeremiah grow closer. But the clock is ticking and Jeremiah's new life is slipping away. Kate must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the man she has come to love.
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Almost perfect
- By ellegreenland on 04-14-14
By: Stephen Kiernan
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The Adjustment Team
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Al Kessel
- Length: 1 hr
- Unabridged
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Ed Fletcher is a real estate agent with a normal life, until one day he leaves the house for work a few minutes later than he should have. He arrives at a terrifying, grey, ash world. Ed rushes home and tells his wife, Ruth, who goes back to the office with him. When they return, everything is normal. But he soon realizes people and objects have subtly changed.
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Unknown Gem of a Story
- By Jackie Houser on 11-20-14
By: Philip K. Dick
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Starfire
- By: B.V. Larson
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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On June 30, 1908, an object fell from the sky, releasing more energy than a thousand Hiroshima bombs. A Siberian forest was flattened, but the strike left no significant crater. The anomaly came to be known as the Tunguska Event, and scientists have never agreed whether it was the largest meteor strike in recorded history - or something else. Alien artifacts have been uncovered since the 1908 event, and a new star drive is discovered.
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Het
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-09-17
By: B.V. Larson
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Private Scandals
- By: Nora Roberts
- Narrated by: Julie Finneran
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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This deliciously scandalous novel tells us the secrets of the reigning queens of television talk shows, Deanna Reynolds and Angela Perkins. Their high-staked rivalry, fought with public smiles and private betrayals, is more than a ratings competition. It becomes an off-screen war when Deanna replaces Angela both on the air and behind the scenes with Angela's former lover after Angela moves to the big time in New York.
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Poor Narration
- By Adrienne J. on 06-10-14
By: Nora Roberts
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complete let down don't waste a credit! !
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Space Opera Fun ( not for Kids)
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complete let down don't waste a credit! !
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Earth has become a library planet over the last several thousand years, a bastion of both useful and useless knowledge - esoterica of all types: History, science, politics - gathered by teams of "pack rats" who scour the galaxy for any scrap of information. Knowledge is power, knowledge is wealth, and knowledge can be a weapon. As powerful dictators come and go over the course of history, the cadre of dedicated librarians is sworn to obey the lawful government - and use their wits to protect the treasure trove of knowledge they have collected over the millennia.
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Asimov Did It Better
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The Quantum Series, Books 1 - 3
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Daniel Rice is a government science investigator whose specialty is solving seemingly intractable problems through scientific inquiry. But Daniel's intellectual strength is sorely tested by the bizarre realities he finds in the quantum world. Extra dimensions of space trap the unwary, probability replaces cause and effect, and time isn't what anyone imagined. The other side of the mirror is a place full of dangers, but it's also somewhere a dedicated scientist can uncover secrets that connect humans with something greater.
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Yes, there was a reason why this was on sale.
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By: Douglas Phillips
What listeners say about Voyagers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Noe
- 02-26-09
Not Quite "Rendezvous With Rama"
As someone who views Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendezvous With Rama" as the ultimate novel about man's first contact with extraterrestrials, I tackled this novel by Ben Bova eagerly. A strange object approaches the Earth from somewhere "out there," and the powers of Earth scurry about to find out what it is and what it means. It is Bova's vision of what the political, social, and theological ramifications of such an event might have been in the early 1980s. Very little of this book is about the alien itself; rather it focuses on how the U.S. and Soviet Union jostle to be the first to make actual contact with the visitor. Written seemingly with a movie screenplay in mind, the novel really never met my expectations, and it falls well short of Rama.
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13 people found this helpful
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Overall
- David
- 08-21-06
davjonz
Although I have heard Ben Bova's name mentioned for years and years as a great sci-fi writer, I never made the time for one of his books until this one. I chose Voyagers because I wanted a Bova book and because it was featured on the front page of Audible.
I thought this story was terrific. The listener must bear in mind that it was written in the early 80s (probably late 70s), so the technology is laughable, but it seemed very realistic to me. I advise you just to read it as a period book and it will make perfect sense. I loved it and I recommend it to anyone that likes hard SF.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 05-13-08
Future Past 4 Bova Fans Only
This is one of those books (or series of books) that you have to put yourself into the mind set of "alternate reality" when you read it as it is about a future with a Soviet Union and giant pre-hubble telescopes (in space) and mainframe computers in the future and CRT monitors in the future... You have to read it with the same mindset as you would if you were watching old TV shows like Space 1999 or early Star Trek or if you were reading 1984... I went through all three of the Voyager novels as the characters were likeable and the plot was interesting, but I wasn't overall impressed. This was my first Ben Bova novel and I found some of the character's philisophical waxings were on subjects that are quite tired these days - where they may have been cutting edge 20 years ago. If I were looking for a Good Sci Fi novel, I'd look elsewhere. This book is probably for long term Ben Bova fans.
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10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Fred
- 05-21-08
Not Sci-fi
WARNING THIS BOOK IS NOT SCI-FI.
I struggled through all three books looking for a great Sci-fi thriller and all you get is "World Peace", Let's get along with nature", and "Let's redistribute the world wealth". What you get out of 3 books and 34 hours is 2 hours of Sci-fi and 32 hours of pure tripe. These three books were an insult to myself and any other Sci-fi fan. Bova was selling a Sci-fi book to finance his soapbox and I am insulted. Bova is off my list for ever, and and unless your into being insulted, Bova should be off your list to. The first volume rates two stars for the two hours of Sci-fi. Book II and III need to be rated -10.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Irfon-Kim
- 08-10-07
A painful experience
While this book purports to be a realistic analysis of human reaction to a first-contact situation, the first-contact aspect occupies a remarkably small portion of the overall text. The bulk of the book is dedicated to the sexual (and occasionally romantic, but mostly as seen through the eye of out-of-control sexuality) exploits of various deplorable characters. This might itself be interesting enough except that the book is wildly sexist and the models of human sexuality and romance drawn here are disturbing at best, with the majority of the sexual interactions bordering on rape. Throw in a little bit of completely stock, stereotyped cold-war paranoia and a Russia taken directly from the cheesiest of 80s thrillers, and excise the bulk of anything even approaching a plot and you have little to commend this book. I did continue through to the end so that I could feel as if I was reviewing it from a complete perspective, and it did get a little better toward the end. For one, the distance from the worst of the sexual exploitation, which primarily happens in the first half to two-thirds of the book, helps suspend the distaste in the romantic relationships that eventually come out. For another, the book does, toward the end, begin to garner some semblance of a plot, ultimately presenting what feels like the first third or so of an interesting story. I would almost have been compelled to continue with the second and third book had I had even the slightest interest in any of the characters.
The reading by Stefan Rudnicki is reasonably decent, with accents provided where necessary and characters easily distinguishable. However, toward the end of the book especially, a second (uncredited on Audible) narrator comes in who made me cringe each time she read due to her wildly inappropriate emotional presentation, all characters coming out as whiny children, mad, venom-spitting, seething men or dreamy new-agers.
Definitely two thumbs down from me.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Ronald
- 08-23-06
Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence
This is probably the most plausible first contact story. If you know what SETI stands for, you will enjoy it. Could this strange object be natural? Could intelligent beings travel across interstellar space? Would they be friendly? Would they want to contact us? Would the government try to keep it a secret? Would there be panic in the streets? All of these questions are considered in this novel with plenty of political intrigue and a love story thrown in. The narration by Stefan Rudnicki is excellent. Listeners should realize that while this is a new audiobook production, the original novel was written before the fall of the Soviet Union.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Cynthia L. Walker
- 10-07-08
Decent story but sexist.
I used to read Bova when I was younger, but I certainly didn't remember his sexist bent. The story was decent, but all of his portrayals of female characters were what I would consider very sexist. The younger ones were all either sex objects or used their bodies as currency. The older ones were sterotypical obnoxious old crones. Very few showed much intelligence. Maybe a sign of the times, but pretty disappointing and one dimensional.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Tamara
- 10-04-07
Bad example of Ben Bova
I usually really like Ben Bova books, so I was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, like many of the reviewers say, this is waaayyyy out-of-date. One of the things that really got to me was the simplicity of the characters and the stereotyping. The worst for me was the lead female character who is the sex toy/love interest for nearly all of the leading male characters in the book. Who cares that she's about 21 and they're all 40+ --- nothing unusual with that, is there? Don't all young students secretly desire to sleep with their professors? And the leading male character was entirely unsympathetic. An old disgruntled astronaut who is the only one (in the whole wide world!) who could possibly fly the mission to meet the alien spacecraft. I was more convinced that the world would end if it was him than if it wasn't. I didn't even make it to the end of the audiobook --- I quit 9 hours through when the female protagonist was threatening to seduce yet another old man...
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Overall
- Brett
- 08-17-06
Mostly Okay
This book caught my attention because I am a science fiction fan. I was hoping that the story line would be more about the space craft and what they found out about it.
This story is only a tiny bit about the UFO and mostly about what would happen on earth if we discovered a UFO. The author dives into the politics, world vision and discerning opinions of nations and individuals.
At times the story wandered and lost me but overall I enjoyed it.
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Overall
- Philip
- 08-29-07
Fascinating and engrossing
This book was excellent in many respects. The reality on how our governments would react was quite convincing. The paranoia, top secret classifications, the fear, all was quite convincing. I loved the main characters as well, I felt as if I knew each one of them personally. The book was well read and once it was finish, it left me wanting more. If I had to rate this particular book I would have to give it a ten plus.
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