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Astounding
- John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlen, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's summary
Astounding is the landmark account of the extraordinary partnership between four controversial writers - John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard - who set off a revolution in science fiction and forever changed our world.
This remarkable cultural narrative centers on the figure of John W. Campbell, Jr., whom Asimov called “[T]he most powerful force in science fiction ever.” Campbell, who has never been the subject of a biography until now, was both a visionary author - he wrote the story that was later filmed as The Thing - and the editor of the groundbreaking magazine best known as Astounding Science Fiction, in which he discovered countless legendary writers and published classic works ranging from the I, Robot series to Dune. Over a period of more than 30 years, from the rise of the pulps to the debut of Star Trek, he dominated the genre, and his three closest collaborators reached unimaginable heights. Asimov became the most prolific author in American history; Heinlein emerged as the leading science-fiction writer of his generation with the novels Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land; and Hubbard achieved lasting fame - and infamy - as the founder of the Church of Scientology.
Drawing on unexplored archives, thousands of unpublished letters, and dozens of interviews, Alec Nevala-Lee offers a riveting portrait of this circle of authors, their work, and their tumultuous private lives. With unprecedented scope, drama, and detail, Astounding describes how fan culture was born in the depths of the Great Depression; follows these four friends and rivals through World War II and the dawn of the atomic era; and honors such exceptional women as Doña Campbell and Leslyn Heinlein, whose pivotal roles in the history of the genre have gone largely unacknowledged. For the first time, it reveals the startling extent of Campbell’s influence on the ideas that evolved into Scientology, which prompted Asimov to observe: “I knew Campbell and I knew Hubbard, and no movement can have two Messiahs.” It looks unsparingly at the tragic final act that estranged the others from Campbell, bringing the golden age of science fiction to a close, and it illuminates how their complicated legacy continues to shape the imaginations of millions and our vision of the future itself.
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Critic reviews
“A big biography of John Campbell, the genius magazine editor who created a mass market for science fiction, couldn’t be timelier. Alec Nevala-Lee’s granular portrait of Campbell and the quirky superstars whose careers he launched in the 1940s and 1950s is a gift to science fiction fans everywhere.” (Sylvia Nasar, New York Times best-selling author of A Beautiful Mind)
“[Astounding] is a major work of popular culture scholarship that science fiction fans will devour.” (Publishers Weekly)
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Excellent Kennedy Read
- By James P. Barraza on 04-14-17
By: Scott Farris
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Butterfly in the Typewriter
- The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of a Confederacy of Dunces
- By: Cory MacLauchlin
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The saga of John Kennedy Toole is one of the greatest stories of American literary history. In Butterfly in the Typewriter, Cory MacLauchlin draws on scores of new interviews with friends, family, and colleagues as well as full access to the extensive Toole archive at Tulane University, capturing his upbringing in New Orleans, his years in New York City, his frenzy of writing in Puerto Rico, his return to his beloved city, and his descent into paranoia and depression.
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Worth it! Good biography. Informative.
- By French Quarter on 07-09-13
By: Cory MacLauchlin
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
- By: Gerald Martin
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 22 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In his novels and short stories, Gabriel García Márquez has transformed the particulars of his own life and the lives of his fellow Colombians into wondrous fiction. While telling the story of the sloppily dressed, skinny young man who rose from obscurity as a provincial journalist to international fame as the progenitor of a new literature, Gerald Martin also considers the tensions in García Márquez's life between celebrity and the personal quest for literary quality, between politics and writing, and between the seductions of power, solitude, and love.
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Great content, somewhat disappointing narrator.
- By Paola Herrington on 01-08-13
By: Gerald Martin
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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The Secret History of Wonder Woman
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Jill Lepore
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Like every other superhero, Wonder Woman has a secret identity. Unlike every other superhero, she has also has a secret history. Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator.
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Narration ruined it for me
- By Julia on 11-09-14
By: Jill Lepore
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J. D. Salinger: A Life
- By: Kenneth Slawenski
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 19 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most popular and mysterious figures in American literary history, J. D. Salinger eluded fans and journalists for most of his life. Now comes a new biography that Peter Ackroyd in the Times of London calls "energetic and magnificently researched" - a book from which "a true picture of Salinger emerges". Filled with new information and revelations garnered from countless interviews, letters, and public records, J. D. Salinger: A Life presents an extraordinary life that spanned nearly the entire 20th century.
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Inside Scientology
- The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion
- By: Janet Reitman
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Scientology, created in 1954 by a prolific sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world's fastest-growing religion, with millions of members around the world and huge financial holdings. Its celebrity believers keep its profile high, and its teams of "volunteer ministers" offer aid at disaster sites such as Haiti and the World Trade Center. But Scientology is also a notably closed faith, harassing journalists and others through litigation and intimidation, even infiltrating the highest levels of government to further its goals.
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My cup of tea.
- By MWMcCabe on 08-09-11
By: Janet Reitman
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At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
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Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
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Libertarians on the Prairie
- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books
- By: Christine Woodside
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Generations of children have fallen in love with the pioneer saga of the Ingalls family, of Pa and Ma, Laura and her sisters, and their loyal dog. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books have taught millions of Americans about frontier life, giving inspiration to many and in the process becoming icons of our national identity. Yet few realize that this best-selling series wandered far from the actual history of the Ingalls family and from what Laura herself understood to be central truths about pioneer life.
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Very Interested!!
- By ME00625 on 01-16-17
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Salinger
- By: David Shields, Shane Salerno
- Narrated by: Peter Friedman, January LaVoy, Robert Petkoff, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Shields and Salerno illuminate most brightly the last 56 years of Salinger’s life: a period that, until now, had remained completely dark to biographers. Provided unprecedented access to diaries, letters, legal records, and secret documents, listeners will feel they have, for the first time, gotten beyond Salinger’s meticulously built-up wall. The result is the definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th century.
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Ingenious novel or biography? Hard to tell....
- By Melinda on 09-05-13
By: David Shields, and others
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Ida M. Tarbell
- The Woman Who Challenged Big Business - and Won!
- By: Emily Arnold McCully
- Narrated by: Emily Arnold McCully
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1857 and raised in oil country, Ida M. Tarbell was one of the first investigative journalists and probably the most influential in her time. Her series of articles on the Standard Oil Trust, a complicated business empire run by John D. Rockefeller, revealed to readers the underhanded, even illegal practices that had led to Rockefeller's success.
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Excellent!
- By AKA1 on 03-16-19
What listeners say about Astounding
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- M. B. Weinger
- 05-12-23
Interesting but not always engaging
As a teenager in the late 60s and early 70s who avidly read science fiction I was looking forward to learning more about the early history of these authors and the editor who strongly influenced the field. Much of the book’s most interesting content occurs much earlier, in the 30s to 50s. I found that the most engaging part. I also appreciated learning more about the founding and Dorris history of Scientology. After that, the story is more dry and less engaging until the excellent concluding remarks in the epilogue of which I would have like more.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-18-19
The greatest Authors in sci-fi
I loved learning more about The greatest Authors in sci-fi, though the writing was rushed at times.
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- Blake
- 01-30-19
Fantastic history of an interesting time.
An in depth look at the very direct effect Campbell had on the greats of the Golden age of science fiction.
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- Will
- 10-31-18
Well researched and engaging bio of Campbell
Anyone with a passing knowledge of the Golden Age of science fiction knows of the four men named on the cover, but the amount of details available about each of them varies. Little has been published about John W. Campbell, but this book remedies that, using Campbell as a central figure and telling his story, both alone and through his interactions with the other three. The product is a great biography that is both readily readable and wonderfully satisfying.
In the case of the Asimov, Heinlein, and Hubbard, all of whom have the subject of previous biographies, Nevala-Lee expands their stories by showing their faults along with their virtues. One of my favorite aspects of Astounding is the amount of attention paid to the women. Many of these women wielded vast influence on the four men and on science fiction itself. With the exception of Virginia Heinlein, previous works have, at best, relegated these women to the sidelines, or worse, cast them into the role of villain and hung all of the man’s faults and missteps on them.
Astounding tells the story of these figures instead of just chronologically listing facts about them, resulting in a book that even a casual fan will appreciate.
Rennette previously narrated Heinlein's The Number of the Beast, which is an homage to the Golden Age, making him an excellent match for this book. His reading added an extra element to the story.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Mr. CT
- 11-18-20
Great book
Big science fiction fan and watcher of religions. Nice to know more about where it all started and with who. Very easy to listen to narrator.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-11-20
a perfect read of a remarkable book
A fair and compassionate portrait of the editor and his stable of writers... men with their heads in the stars and feet of clay.
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1 person found this helpful
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- JCL
- 08-22-20
Great history of the birth of Sci-Fi
I greatly enjoyed hearing the way science-fiction was birthed by John W. Campbell and his writers, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and others. Recommended if you enjoy sci-fi.
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- Scott C
- 07-17-19
A Great Read
I really had no idea that the lives of so many classic sci-fi authors intertwined the way that they did. There's so much great background and history here. The other thing that was eye opening to me was how genuinely unhappy several of these men seemed to be. Between the multiple marriages and affairs, or in Azimov's case hiding in his office to escape his family life, I found it eye opening how these men seemed to be always searching for something better and not really finding it. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- monkeyboy
- 12-15-18
amazingly well researched and interesting stories
I particularly enjoyed hearing about the contributions of the women in these influential authors lives.
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- Alexis Gervais
- 05-22-24
Not what you think
The initial, somewhat upbeat, story of Astounding Magazine's rise through Campbell's leadership and his close friendship with Asimov, Heinlein, and Hubbard turns in the last third of the book into what their collective lives reveal themselves to be: smart people who take bad decisions; people who think they're doing science but are biased like you would not believe is possible; people obsessed with leaving a world-changing mark, going down multiple rabbit holes in the process, arguably into some form of insanity. These greats of the Golden Era lived in the crux of massive societal changes and leaps of science, but they missed most of it, instead becoming stuck in pseudoscience, some for the rest of their lives.
These people are revealed as profoundly, if not beautifully, human in the process of this vivid retelling of their lives, with their constructed and embellished legend stripped away. Nevala-Lee does a superb job to keep the sleaze to a minimum, and as for the narrator he's the guy you'd want narrating your flawed life at your funeral.
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