Diaspora
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Narrated by:
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Adam Epstein
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By:
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Greg Egan
About this listen
Behold the orphan. Born into a world that is not a world. A digital being grown from a mind seed, a genderless cybernetic citizen in a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knitting the Solar System into one scape, from the outer planets to the fiery surface of the Sun. Since the Introdus in the 21st century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software.
Others opted for gleisners: Disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the Solar System forever in fusion drive starships.
And there are the holdouts. The fleshers left behind in the muck and jungle of Earth - some devolved into dream-apes; others cavorting in the seas or the air; while the statics and bridges try to shape out a roughly human destiny.
But the complacency of the citizens is shattered when an unforeseen disaster ravages the fleshers, and reveals the possibility that the polises themselves might be at risk from bizarre astrophysical processes that seem to violate fundamental laws of nature. The Orphan joins a group of citizens and flesher refugees in a search for the knowledge that will guarantee their safety - a search that puts them on the trail of the ancient and elusive Transmuters, who have the power to reshape subatomic particles, and to cross into the macrocosmos, where the universe we know is nothing but a speck in the higher-dimensional vacuum.
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Classic Hard Science Fiction
- By Daniel Cascaddan on 01-12-18
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2001
- A Space Odyssey
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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It has been 40 years since the publication of this classic science-fiction novel that changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man adventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.
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The Movie Makes More Sense Now
- By Douglas on 12-10-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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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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The Complete Cosmicomics
- Translated by Martin McLaughlin, Tim Parks, & William Weaver
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator, Tim Parks - translator, and others
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Italo Calvino's beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of an ageless guide named Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Poignant, fantastical, and wise, these 34 dazzling stories - collected here in one definitive anthology - relate complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world.
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Moments of Greatness = Worth the Read
- By Amazon Customer on 08-06-18
By: Italo Calvino, and others
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Seveneves
- A Novel
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal, Will Damron
- Length: 31 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
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Odd narrator choice
- By Josh Mitchell on 05-30-15
By: Neal Stephenson
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The Enceladus Mission
- Ice Moon 1
- By: Brandon Q. Morris
- Narrated by: Doug Tisdale Jr.
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In the year 2031, a robot probe detects traces of biological activity on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. This sensational discovery shows that there is indeed evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifteen years later, a hurriedly built spacecraft sets out on the long journey to the ringed planet and its moon. The international crew is not just facing a difficult twenty-seven months: if the spacecraft manages to make it to Enceladus without incident it must use a drillship to penetrate the kilometer-thick sheet of ice that entombs the moon.
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Robotic performance, potentially interesting story
- By Opa on 02-21-19
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Proxima: Book 1
- By: Stephen Baxter
- Narrated by: Kyle McCarley
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The very far future: The galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, and chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun. How would it be to live on such a world?
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No Sense of Conclusion
- By Lisa Davidson on 04-24-16
By: Stephen Baxter
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Sync
- How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.
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Engaging, but maybe better suited for non-audio
- By Ryan on 05-26-12
By: Steven Strogatz
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How to Speak Science
- Gravity, Relativity, and Other Ideas That Were Crazy Until Proven Brilliant
- By: Bruce Benamran, Stephanie Delozier Strobel
- Narrated by: Braden Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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As smartphones, supercomputers, supercolliders, and AI propel us into an ever more unfamiliar future, How to Speak Science takes us on a rollicking historical tour of the greatest discoveries and ideas that make today's cutting-edge technologies possible. Wanting everyone to be able to "speak" science, YouTube science guru Bruce Benamran explains - as accessibly and wittily as in his acclaimed videos - the fundamental ideas of the physical world: matter, life, the solar system, light, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, and much more.
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Wowzers!
- By Ralph Temblador on 02-15-21
By: Bruce Benamran, and others
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In the Ocean of Night
- Galactic Center, Book 1
- By: Gregory Benford
- Narrated by: Maxwell Caulfield
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 2019. NASA astronaut Nigel Walmsley is sent on a mission to intercept a rogue asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Ordered to destroy it, he instead discovers that it is actually the shell of a derelict space probe - a wreck with just enough power to emit a single electronic signal….
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Like some Space with your Soaps?
- By Bradley on 05-15-12
By: Gregory Benford
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Hard science fiction - no kiddin'
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Incandescence – Science / fiction
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Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right.
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It's not an easy book
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Starts Confusing, Gets Exciting, Ends Awesome
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Quarantine
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Fantastic Story Let Down by Narration
- By Julia Oberhardt on 12-09-13
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The good news is that you have just awakened into Eternal Life. You are going to live forever. Immortality is a reality. A medical miracle? Not exactly. The bad news is that you are a scrap of electronic code. The world you see around you, the you that is seeing it, has been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. You are a Copy that knows it is a copy. The good news is that there is a way out.
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Amazing book. Amazingly bad narrator.
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Schild's Ladder
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The Age of Death ended countless millennia ago. No longer burdened by limited lifespans, the immortal humans who populate inhabited space now have the luxury to travel vast distances effortlessly and to tinker with the intricate mechanics of space time. But one such experiment in quantum physics has had a catastrophic and unanticipated result, creating an enormous, rapidly expanding vacuum - a region of new physics - with the frightening potential to devour countless inhabited solar systems.
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Hard science fiction - no kiddin'
- By Michael Linehan on 01-06-14
By: Greg Egan
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Incandescence – Science / fiction
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It's not an easy book
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The Quantum Thief
- By: Hannu Rajaniemi
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
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Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he’s confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him.
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Starts Confusing, Gets Exciting, Ends Awesome
- By Matthew on 10-21-11
By: Hannu Rajaniemi
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Quarantine
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The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.
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Hardest of hard SF...
- By DLee on 11-24-14
By: Charles Stross
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Axiomatique
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- Narrated by: Frédéric Kneip
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Dix-huit récits vertigineux... Un monument de la SF moderne... Des drogues qui brouillent la réalité et provoquent la conjonction des possibles. Des perroquets génétiquement améliorés qui jouent "En attendant Godot". Des milliardaires élaborant des chimères, mi-hommes mi-animaux, pour assouvir leurs passions esthétiques. Des femmes qui accueillent dans leur ventre le cerveau de leur mari le temps de reconstruire son corps. Des enlèvements pratiqués sur des répliques mémorielles de personnalités humaines.
By: Greg Egan
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Blindsight
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Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.
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Gothic Horror Hard Science Fiction
- By Doug D. Eigsti on 06-24-15
By: Peter Watts
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The Clockwork Rocket
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In Yalda's universe, light has mass, no universal speed, and its creation generates energy. On Yalda's world, plants make food by emitting light into the dark night sky. And time is different: An astronaut might measure decades passing while visiting another star, only to return and find that just weeks have elapsed for her friends. On the farm where she lives, Yalda sees strange meteors that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed...
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Good Egan Hard SF story near ruined by the narator
- By James on 09-08-16
By: Greg Egan
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Dragon's Egg
- Cheela, Book 1
- By: Robert L. Forward
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In a moving story of sacrifice and triumph, human scientists establish a relationship with intelligent lifeforms - the cheela-living on Dragon's Egg, a neutron star where one Earth hour is equivalent to hundreds of their years. The cheela culturally evolve from savagery to the discovery of science, and for a brief time, men are their diligent teachers.
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Classic Hard Science Fiction
- By Daniel Cascaddan on 01-12-18
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Distress
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Adam Epstein
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Investigative reporter Andrew Worth turns down a documentary on a mysterious new mental illness - "Distress," or acute clinical anxiety syndrome, for another assignment. He's on his way to the artificial island of Stateless, where the world's top physicists are gathering to decide on a new TOE, or Theory of Everything, to replace Einstein's outmoded legacy.
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A good book ruined by a poor (and strange) reading
- By David on 12-06-13
By: Greg Egan
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Tau Zero
- By: Poul Anderson
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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This science fiction novel describes the epic voyage of the spacecraft Leonora Christine. From practically the very first minute, Tau Zero sets scientific realities in dramatic tension with the very real emotional and psychological states of the travelers, exploring the effect of time contraction due to traveling at near-light speed on the human psyche. This tension is a dynamic that Anderson explores with great success over the course of the novel, as 50 crewmembers settle in for the long journey together.
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Not What I Hoped For
- By Audio Audits on 12-22-16
By: Poul Anderson
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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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Revelation Space
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
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Defeated
- By Eoin on 07-15-12
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Eon
- By: Greg Bear
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Perhaps it wasn't from our time, perhaps it wasn't even from our universe, but the arrival of the 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity's desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Inside the deep recesses of the stone lies Thistledown: the remnants of a human society, versed in English, Russian and Chinese. The artifacts of this familiar people foretell a great Death caused by the ravages of war, but the government and scientists are unable to decide how to use this knowledge.
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Am Epic Original SciFi Read Worth Your Time...
- By Michael on 07-01-12
By: Greg Bear
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Teranesia
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Vince Canlas
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to Teranesia, the island of butterflies, where evolution has stopped making sense. Prabir Suresh lives in paradise, a nine-year-old boy with an island all his own to name, to explore, and to populate with imaginary monsters stranger than any tropical wildlife. Teranesia is his kingdom, shared only with his biologist parents and baby sister Madhusree. The unexplained genetic mutation of the island's butterflies that brought his family to the remote South Moluccas barely touches Prabir.
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Good news and bad news...
- By Michael Whittier on 10-19-23
By: Greg Egan
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Axis
- By: Robert Charles Wilson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world will become very alien indeed--as the nature of time is once again twisted, by entities unknown.
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From Hypothertical to Pathetic , let down!
- By Jason on 08-30-08
What listeners say about Diaspora
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John Leonard
- 05-27-16
opens your mind to new areas of exploration
explores post singularity humanity presenting numerous interesting possibilities on ways of existing and the potential for life in other universes
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- kimemeki
- 11-18-23
Analysis
Dust off your astrophysics & analysis text books to fulfill the prerequisites for this adventure. An interesting story but can’t thinking what it could have been if Andy Weir wrote it.
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- levi
- 10-01-22
Guess I'll just read the paper book
The reader's dialogue voice is whiny and grating. Almost ruined one of the best sci fi first chapters ever for me.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Brian
- 07-18-23
Half the story is about made up mathematics
And the narrator was very tough for me to engage with. Don't recommend this one.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Johannes
- 04-10-20
Real SciFi!
If you have a physics background and like SciFi, this is a must read!
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- Gudmundur Hardarson
- 11-07-23
Good deep SciFi
A good deep SciFi that explores themes of artificial intelligence, consciousness, and the nature of existing. The story follows a group of post-human entities known as "polises" who are not bound by traditional physical forms. They navigate the universe, evolving and adapting to new environments.
In a weird way The story reminded me of Piranesi except instead of ancient Greek themes we have math, yes, probably not everyone will be happy with that switch.
So it was unique and compelling in places, however, I didn’t really get invested in the characters or the plot all that much. But still a solid, interesting read.
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- B L
- 08-06-18
One-third Amazing, One-third OK, One-third Poor
"Diaspora" by Greg Egan (1997) is of mixed quality. The novel was written to fit around a short story that Egan published earlier, "Wang's Carpets." That short story appears as Chapter 11.
From the start of the book through the end of Chapter 6 (Parts 1 and 2), Diaspora offers some of the best science fiction I've listened to. It is chock full of fascinating ideas, the plot is engaging and exciting, and you care deeply about the characters.
Chapter 11, "Wang's Carpets," is another bright, high point in the audiobook.
Unfortunately, these high-quality sections only make up about a third of the novel. The remaining chapters are of much lower quality, and that quality gradually diminishes further as the end of the novel approaches. The important characters become less and less relateable, and Egan spends too much time philosophizing over fictional mathematics and physics. The last third of the book is a wild goose chase, whose ultimate conclusion is deeply unsatisfying and more than faintly ridiculous. I was left feeling cheated, as though Egan demonstrated his tremendous ideas and ability, then strung me along, promising more and failing to deliver.
It is difficult to assign a star rating to a book with both excellent and disappointing segments. I ultimately decided to award four stars, which I consider a generous rating for a book that was one-third excellent, one-third mediocre, and one-third poor.
While some reviewers complained about the narrator, I found nothing wrong with Adam Epstein's narration. It seemed perfectly normal and acceptable to me, and I found his use of voices to distinguish different characters helpful (and similar to what other audiobook narrators do).
If you wish to experience the good parts of Diaspora, you are in luck: Parts 1 and 2 (chapters 1 through 6) stand on their own as a self-contained story. You can listen to these chapters and then stop. Or, if you prefer, you can read from chapter 1 through chapter 11, which will cover all of the book's high points while avoiding the worst parts, which come near the end. If you proceed all the way through, you will find that nuggets of value become increasingly scarce, lost in a seemingly five-dimensional scape of bland text.
If you are interested in Diaspora, consider "Blindsight" by Peter Watts, a story that has a similar style but is strong from beginning to end.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Steve Crane
- 11-16-20
Wonderful book, totally ruined by the narrator.
I've read Diaspora multiple times. It's a great very hard sci-fi story that deal with multiple complex sci-fi ideas in a fun and imaginative way. This is all for naught though as the narrator might as well be text to speech from the 90s. I highly recommend reading this one until someone who actually has some understanding of the subject matter and can be bothered to put some effort into the performance can be found. He can't even be bothered to pronounce a number of the names correctly!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Brux
- 10-15-16
Abruptly Ended
I love Greg Egan, but he has a tendency to produce endings that, while logical, are unsatisfying and wondering how it could have been better.
In this case, we follow clones that are on the hunt for the universe hopping Transmuters. Initially the story seemed to be about securing a lasting existence in a universe beset with powerful forces that could lead to extinction. I found the survival story much more interesting than the hunt for the race that helped humanity discover a mind-bending way to survive. C'est la vie.
While I'm giving this three stars, I don't regret the hours I spent listening to this book.
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- L. Larrea
- 05-29-23
Narration Ok, Hard to follow tech speak
Very interesting premise for this book, but the extremely complex technical descriptions was a distraction that almost made me drop the book. Narrator was just ok.
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