
Babel-17
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Narrated by:
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Stefan Rudnicki
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By:
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Samuel R. Delany
About this listen
Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack.
©2015 Samuel R. Delaney (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc., and Skyboat Media, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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McCulley, a young and inexperienced nurse tossed into a stressful and chaotic situation, is having a difficult time reconciling her duty to help and heal with the indifference and overt racism of some of her colleagues and with the horrendously damaged soldiers and Vietnamese civilians whom she encounters during her service at the China Beach medical facilities. She is unexpectedly helped by the mysterious and inexplicable properties of an amulet....
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An importnat book that resonates today
- By plantedbypiggies on 08-06-18
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The Dead Father
- By: Donald Barthelme
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The Dead Father is a gargantuan half-dead, half-alive, part mechanical, wise, vain, powerful being who still has hopes for himself - even while he is being dragged by means of a cable toward a mysterious goal. In this extraordinary novel, marked by the imaginative use of language that influenced a generation of fiction writers, Donald Barthelme offered a glimpse into his fictional universe.
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This story will rock your socks
- By Thomas on 08-06-18
By: Donald Barthelme
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The Fountains of Paradise
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Vannemar Morgan's dream is to link Earth to the stars with the greatest engineering feat of all time: a 24,000-mile-high space elevator. But first he must solve a million technical, political, and economic problems while allaying the wrath of God. For the only possible site on the planet for Morgans Orbital Tower is the monastery atop the Sacred Mountain of Sri Kanda.
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Hard
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-30-11
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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Dreamsnake
- By: Vonda N. McIntyre
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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When the healer Snake was summoned, she traveled the blasted landscape with her three serpents. From the venom of two of them, she distilled her medicines. But most valued of all was the alien dreamsnake, whose bite could ease the fear and pain of death.
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Sets the Mark for Fantasy Excellence
- By 'houla on 03-15-15
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Echopraxia
- By: Peter Watts
- Narrated by: Adam J Rough
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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It's the eve of the 22nd century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence. Daniel Bruks is a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational.
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A Must Read
- By Taylor Lewis on 12-21-15
By: Peter Watts
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Falling Free
- Miles Vorsokigan, Book 4
- By: Lois McMaster Bujold
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong, and move on to the next job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where a group of humanoids had been secretly, commercially bioengineered for working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?
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Don't read this one first
- By Carol on 02-20-13
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Rogue Moon
- By: Algis Budrys
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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A monstrous apparatus has been found on the surface of the moon. It devours and destroys in ways so incomprehensible to humans that a new language must be invented to describe it and a new kind of thinking to understand it. So far, the human guinea pigs sent there in hopes of unraveling the murderous maze have all died terrible deaths - except the last, now on suicide watch. The ideal candidate won't go insane, even as he feels the end approaching. And now they think they've found their man. Al Barker has already stared into the face of death - he can handle it again.
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Desperately needed an editor
- By rsr666 on 05-13-19
By: Algis Budrys
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Anathem
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, Tavia Gilbert, William Dufris, and others
- Length: 32 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Fraa Erasmus is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the "Saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities, and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs, bloody violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community.
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I love Neal, but Good lord... ugh!
- By SpiderGrrl on 10-08-19
By: Neal Stephenson
What listeners say about Babel-17
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- sanug
- 02-07-16
Wonderful performance
Samuel Delany wrote a masterpiece. Lots of things to make you think about language and meaning. Good work on how creating a future society, and what it would look like, and how folks would get along with one another. Normalized being in a threesome sexually.
Performance of both male and female parts was extraordinarily well done.
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2 people found this helpful
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- rownut
- 02-04-22
An incredible story
I was amazed by Delany's creativity and inventiveness, especially in 1966. Any techno-geek will love it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-10-23
Classic from a master
Delany is one of the first sci-fi authors to think deeply about language and culture. He's also one of the first (perhaps the first) to explore alternative notions of sexuality within a sci-fi framework. He's not always easy to follow, but usually that's because he's exploring complicated ideas. I found it helped to listen at 0.85 speed. He's also very good as a prose writer and storyteller. This is one of his first books. It's simpler than what's to come, but it's already packed with interesting thoughts within the framework of a somewhat classic narrative that's told well.
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1 person found this helpful
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- C. Ponder
- 02-14-23
Decent story with mind blowing ideas
Gawdz, I love this book. And I love Samuel Delaney’s brain. I first read this book almost 50 years ago, and revisiting it now as an audiobook, I swooned, and fell in love again, if you love sweeping ideas presented in the midst of a adventure narrative that make you suddenly think in Brand New expanded ways, you will love just about anything Delaney writes.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Gene Hughes
- 05-13-22
Great book!
Enjoyable, listened all the way through. Made a quick road trip fly by for me!
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- A guy who does stuff
- 11-14-20
Just kept getting weirder and more hard to follow.
The final act was such a left turn, I'm still not sure what happened.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-02-22
Great Classic Sci-Fi
This book has breakthrough speculation about the nature of awareness and how language effects perception. It's basically the breakthrough book speculating that the brain has programming like software. It also happens to be very entertaining with good characters. I recommend it.
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- Jerry Richard
- 09-21-20
Fun story and fine production by Rudnicki
I really enjoyed the pacing of this book. Rudnicki did such a great job capturing the spirit of the various characters here.
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- E-rice
- 04-25-22
great book, interesting premise
i liked the story and the while language forming thought concept, but as an audiobook there were some parts that were hard to follow. still, one of the most original readings I've heard this year.
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- Volimance
- 04-11-22
Interesting concepts, but weird characters
So many of the complaints are about the narrator. The man has a deep voice, but I never wondered which character was speaking, so it worked for me.
So I love many of the concepts, but the interpersonal relationships really reduced many of the characters to just functions of the plot, pieces of a puzzle - and sometimes they just weren’t people enough. And that feels about right for the era of science-fiction in which is was written.
I think if this had been written now it would have been a whole trilogy with some more multilayered character development and some more accessible world building.
But!!! All of the things that didn’t work for me are well worth getting to the end, like a good mystery. It needs about two more chapters of ending though…
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