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The Gripping Hand
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
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Publisher's summary
Robert Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read". The San Francisco Chronicle declared that "as science fiction, The Mote in God's Eye is one of the most important novels ever published". Now Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, award-winning authors of such best sellers as Footfall and The Legacy of Heorot, return us to the Mote, and to the universe of Kevin Renner and Horace Bury, of Rod Blaine and Sally Fowler.
There, 25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system. They have spent a quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered - a race divided into distinct biological forms, each serving a different function: Master, Mediator, Engineer, Warrior. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For the Moties must breed - or die. And now the fragile wall separating them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble.
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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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Prominence
- By: A. C. Hadfield
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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They tried to destroy our planets. Our way of life. They tried to send us into extinction. But we, the Coalition, fought them and won. That was a decade ago. They’re known as the Host: a cabal of aliens seeking to dominate our sector of space. And they’re back - with help from a powerful new enemy. We’re outnumbered and unprepared. But there is hope. An ancient race of long-dead but technologically advanced aliens called the Navigators have a ship called the Blackstar that could potentially turn the tide. That is if I, Kai Locke, a humble ship racer, can find it and learn how to harness its power in time.
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Newly found love.
- By L. Rampey on 03-22-19
By: A. C. Hadfield
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On the Imperium's Secret Service
- Imperium Cicernus, Book 1
- By: Christopher G. Nuttall
- Narrated by: Genvieve Bevier
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The Imperium; a million worlds, trillions upon trillions of humans and aliens, an empire that dominates half the galaxy... an empire that is falling into chaos, revolution and civil war. Only a handful of people are struggling to keep the Imperium together, knowing that the brutality of its rule is infinitively preferable to the chaos of its fall. This is their story. Mariko and her sister were independent shippers and ace pilots, until they ran afoul of the law on a minor planet and ended up jailed and enslaved.
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Read Pete's evil overlord list
- By Schuyler Bostedt on 06-11-15
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Passage at Arms
- By: Glen Cook
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Passage at Arms tells the intimate, detailed and harrowing story of a climber crew and its captain during a critical juncture of the war. Cook combines speculative technology with a canny and realistic portrait of men at war and the stresses they face in combat. Passage at Arms is one of the classic novels of military science fiction.
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One Long Running Space Battle ….
- By DocJim on 09-29-14
By: Glen Cook
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The Tar-Aiym Krang
- A Pip & Flinx Adventure
- By: Alan Dean Foster
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
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Moth was a beautiful planet, the only one with wings - two great golden clouds suspended in space around it. Here was a wide-open world for any venture a man might scheme. The planet attracted unwary travelers, hardened space-sailors, and merchant buccaneers - a teeming, constantly shifting horde that provided a comfortable income for certain quick-witted fellows like Flinx and his pet flying snake Pip.
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The First of the Flinx and Pip Novels AT LAST!
- By Chris on 01-20-09
By: Alan Dean Foster
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More Than Honor
- Worlds of Honor #1
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- Narrated by: Victor Bevine, L. J. Ganser, Khristine Hvam
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
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New York Times best-selling author David Weber invites David Drake and S.M. Stirling, two of today's top writers of military science fiction, to join him in an exploration of Honor Harrington's universe.
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Honor Harrington Universe Book 8
- By Professor on 10-17-12
By: David Weber, and others
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Beyond the Aquila Rift
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: Tom Dheere
- Length: 1 hr and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Beyond the Aquila Rift: It's shorthand for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident. The one that will screw up the rest of your life, the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole Bubble. Men and women ripped out of time, cut adrift from families and lovers by an accident of an alien technology we use but rarely comprehend.
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Great story, mediocre audio book.
- By Amazon Customer on 04-17-12
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A.I. Destroyer
- The A.I. Series, Book 1
- By: Vaughn Heppner
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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It came from deep space. It sent the signal. Now our computers are killing us, helping the enemy drive us into extinction. But some of us refuse to die. We fight back. We learn. Jon Hawkins revives from cryogenic sleep in a drifting SLN battleship. The crew is dead and the main computer has been destroyed. Jon is a soldier, the start of the resistance, the one man with the will to beat the alien death machines that have terminated 1000 races. This is our hour as we face the ultimate evil, the galactic destroyer of life.
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Religious
- By Anonymous User on 12-18-18
By: Vaughn Heppner
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The Skylark of Space
- Skylark Series #1
- By: E. E. "Doc" Smith
- Narrated by: Reed McColm
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
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Brilliant government scientist Richard Seaton discovers a remarkable faster-than-light fuel that will power his interstellar spaceship, The Skylark. His ruthless rival, Marc DuQuesne, and the sinister World Steel Corporation will do anything to get their hands on the fuel. They kidnap Seaton's fiancée and friends, unleashing a furious pursuit and igniting a burning desire for revenge that will propel The Skylark across the galaxy and back.
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Space Operas - Good Story telling!
- By Madge on 01-27-10
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After being thrown out of the window of his luxury apartment, science-fiction writer Allen Carpentier wakes to find himself at the gates of Hell. Feeling he's landed in a great opportunity for a book, he attempts to follow Dante's road map. Determined to meet Satan himself, Carpentier treks through the nine circles of Hell, led by Benito Mussolini, and encounters countless mental and physical tortures.
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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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Abridge Version
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Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, Red Mars is the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's best-selling trilogy. Red Mars is praised by scientists for its detailed visions of future technology. It is also hailed by authors and critics for its vivid characters and dramatic conflicts.
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very long
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What listeners say about The Gripping Hand
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Brine
- 06-04-17
RAFO
there is a reason why this is part of the basic cannon of Sci-fi. Good game theory too.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-21-19
Classic portal to another fantasy world.
I've enjoyed reading all three books and equally enjoyed listening (multiple times) to the first two.
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- Petros Maniatis
- 03-10-17
good book, poor production
This is a fascinating, classic book series. I enjoyed the first book, and this was a good follow-up. However, this was a poor audiobook production. It's not that the narrator isn't good; he's been great in other audiobooks. But somehow this book is tough to pull off by a single actor. Transitions between speakers are quick, not well delineated, so having a single voice actor do them all successfully is not easy. It was tough following who was speaking when. What's more, transitions across sections within a chapter were too quick, making it very hard to understand that we've changed setting and characters, resulting in a very confusing audiobook.
It's a pity that this fun book received such a subpar treatment.
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7 people found this helpful
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- robertjm
- 10-23-14
Another good listen from Pournelle and Niven
IF YOU HAVE NOT LISTENED TO THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE FIRST, DON'T GET THE GRIPPING HAND!! YOU WILL BE THOROUGHLY LOST!!
I had some credits to burn and so decided I wanted to listen to one of the classic series from science fiction. With that in mind, I turned to the Mote in God's Eye and then The Gripping Hand.
After listening to the fantastic words and performance of Mote, I wondered how they could top it off in The Gripping Hand.
While being a good effort, it wasn't quite up to the same level as Mote; though still enjoyable.
First off, the first three hours, or so, seemed to drag on forever. And they have very little, if anything, to do with the rest of the book. Were they tacked on for a higher page count? I don't know. All I know is that I kept waiting for a big tie-in, and it took forever before it finally happened.
The ending was abrupt. I would have rather they lopped some of the beginning off and added a Chapter 29 before the Epilogue. The Epilogue all of a sudden appears and ties the end up. However, it left me scratching me head a little.
Once again, LJ Ganser gave a stellar performance. While I haven't listened to a ton of audiobooks, I think I can say he's my favorite reader so far. His ability to switch accents when switching characters at the drop of a hat is uncanny. He even is able to change his delivery of female characters, though it's not as obvious in The Gripping Hand than it was in Mote. Additionally, it's not over the top, like some readers try.
I'm just disappointed it ended. The third book in the trilogy, written by Pournelle's daughter, takes place on the rim of the empire, and its description leads me to believe has very little to do with the Moties, just as King David's Spaceship didn't either.
Hopefully, we'll get another one from Pournelle and Niven, though they're hard at work on the sequel to Lucifer's Comet right now.
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- Jonathan Famous
- 12-08-13
Good follow-on to Mote in God's Eye
Would you listen to The Gripping Hand again? Why?
Simply put, if you read and like The Mote in God's Eye, you'll want to read this. If you haven't read Mote in God's Eye, you need to read that first. This is a fair follow-on to the original story, not as original (it would be difficult to be), but a good what-would-come-next type of story.
Any additional comments?
My only. Complaint. Is that the writing style... is more fragmented, than that of Mote. Clearly one author had a larger part in the first book, and the other this one. I preferred the style of Mote, as this one had a lot of choppy scenes and sentence, enough to become mildly distracting. But the quality of the story is excellent enough and does more than compensate for that weakness.
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- Chuck Baker
- 11-18-13
Great story/ shakey performance
What do you think the narrator could have done better?
Narrator seriously needs to work on emphasis in the phrasing of sentences. Quite obvious mistakes and they change the meaning of the script. Needs to read for understanding of the dialog.
Any additional comments?
Great story, narrator has decent character definition. Wish he understood what was being read.
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- Eric
- 07-08-15
Confusing dialog
Maybe it was the narration, maybe it was the book itself but I found it to be very difficult to follow the dialog at some points. The narrator didn't change his voice or accent very much and at some points there were conversations between characters with no indication of who was talking.
The story overall was very slow until around the halfway point. It improved significantly afterwards. In general when there was action happening, the book really flowed. Otherwise characters would talk about seemingly unrelated things that had no reason to be in the book. Particularly relationships. Sure real people in real life would probably talk like that, but it didn't help keep the story going.
The space battles were interesting but ultimately seemed a little too easy for the humans.
There's an occasional curse word but in general is good for long drives with kids. It'll probably put them to sleep.
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- William Bell
- 09-14-24
confusing
I really enjoy both of these authors, but, this story seemed to break down and lose focus midway through. I did have issues with the playback on this book (a rarity for me, as I have been listening to adiobooks for 30 years) so that may have played a part. I don't remember this discontinuity from my original read of this book, when it was released.
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- Mgw55
- 02-22-13
Maybe its me but I found this difficult to follow.
Any additional comments?
It was ok but I had a hard time following the story line a lot of times. There seemed to be a lot of unimportant nonsense mixed in. Perhaps this was the authors method of building depth to the story/characters but I found it derailed the plot.
The first book was better...however, I found that the author trying to pass creatures that can modify and improve advanced technology as unintelligent animals was more than a stretch.
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- Sue The Shopping Queen
- 02-18-15
A well thought out and well performed sequal
What did you love best about The Gripping Hand?
The logic flowed
Would you be willing to try another book from Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven ? Why or why not?
Yes. Who would not
Which character – as performed by L. J. Ganser – was your favorite?
The Moties were well done.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
No, simply enjoyable.
Any additional comments?
No, it met my expectations.
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