John
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Footfall
- By: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 24 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,118
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,591
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,589
They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star. The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and installation on Earth with a hail of asteriods.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle at Their Best
- By Flatlander on 06-24-10
- Footfall
- By: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
Enjoyable, not great
Reviewed: 11-04-10
This book is rather dated, not only in plot content (cold war tension with soviets, etc.) but in the ideas and attitudes - it seems very 80s to me. The aliens were interesting as were many of the subplots with humans but many of the characters were more like caricatures, and some of the political subtext was pretty heavy-handed. The end of the book was abrupt and left quite a few plot threads dangling. The narration was also less than stellar, I agree with many of the other reviewers that the narrator's efforts at alien speech were needlessly difficult to understand.
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Jennifer Government
- By: Max Barry
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 683
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 419
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Story4 out of 5 stars 422
The irreverent author of the cult classic Syrup hits his target in this satire on the wages of big capital. In Max Barry's hilarious vision of the near future, the world is run by giant American corporations, and employees take the last names of the companies they work for; The Police and The NRA are publicly traded security firms, and the U.S. government may only investigate crimes if they can bill a citizen directly.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fun Allegory
- By Steven F Giovanni on 01-11-10
- Jennifer Government
- By: Max Barry
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
Enjoyed it
Reviewed: 05-14-07
I found this book very entertaining. It was fast-paced enough that it wasn't overly marred by being somewhat predictable. I didn't really find the book terribly funny, perhaps for the same reason I don't find Dilbert all that funny: it hits a little too close to home. A number of reviewers have compared the book unfavorably to Stephenson's Snow Crash, but I don't see them as being all that similar. Jennifer Govt is much more focused on the "capitalism gone overboard" concept, which was just one of many ideas touched on in Snow Crash (which, while fun, was not terribly focused). Also, I have to disagree with the reviwers complaining about the narration, which I I thought was good. All in all, I wouldn't classify Jennifer Govt as great art, but it was a fun read that I'd recommend.
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2 people found this helpful