
Downward to the Earth
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $16.07
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Bronson Pinchot
About this listen
A tale of transcendence, Downward to the Earth is a remarkable novel from one of the most imaginative minds in science fiction.
Edmund Gunderson—former Terran governor of the colony world of Belzagor—returns eight years after the planet has gained independence, drawn back for reasons he can’t quite explain. Things have changed significantly since he left, and he plays his part well—slightly pompous former government official—for the tourists he encounters on the way down.
But this is more than a simple sight-seeing visit. As Gunderson comes face-to-face with the consequences of his former attitudes and actions, he finds himself on a journey—both physical and spiritual—to the legendary mountain of rebirth.
©1969, 1970 Agberg, Ltd. (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Up the Line
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Basil Langdon
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2059 and Jud Elliott—former law clerk and failed Harvard history student—is at loose ends. Having left his previous job out of boredom, he finally takes a position as a Time Courier showing tourists around medieval and ancient Byzantium. Maybe that unfinished Masters degree will come in handy after all … Jud is careful and he (mostly) plays by the rules, not wanting to get on the wrong side of the Time Patrol. But, on one trip up the line, he meets and falls in love with his great-great-multi-great grandmother and suddenly the rules don’t seem as important anymore.
-
-
Excellent Narration
- By Pezzilla on 02-04-25
-
The Book of Skulls
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Samuel Eldritch, Will Watt, Colt Garrett, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four students discover a manuscript, The Book of Skulls, which reveals the existence of a sect, now living in the Arizona desert, whose members can offer immortality to those who can complete its initiation rite. To their surprise, they discover that the sect exists, and is willing to accept them as acolytes. But for each group of four who enter the rite, two must die in order for the others to succeed.
-
The Employees
- A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century
- By: Olga Ravn
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.
-
-
I think this was a story?
- By Jordan on 07-02-23
By: Olga Ravn
-
Gilgamesh the King
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: William Coon
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if we discovered that one of history's greatest heroes had written his life story? That's the premise behind Robert Silverberg's amazing novel Gilgamesh the King. The journey begins when six-year-old Gilgamesh's father dies. As he grows to manhood and eventually ascends to the throne, he faces many challenges along the way: political intrigue, war, the burden of leadership. But none are as difficult as his intense internal struggles against loneliness and his own mortality.
-
-
Terrible narration kept me from getting far
- By Lizzie Askew on 03-15-14
-
The Man in the Maze
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Richard Muller was an honorable diplomat who braved unimaginable dangers to make contact with the first-known race of intelligent aliens. But those aliens left a mark on him: a psychic wound that emanates a telepathic miasma that his fellow humans can neither cure nor endure. Muller is exiled to the remote planet of Lemnos, where he is left, deeply embittered, at the heart of a deadly maze - until a new alien race appears, seemingly intent on exterminating humanity.
-
-
dry
- By Elle L.F. on 12-20-18
-
Roma Eterna
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would happen if Imperial Rome never fell? Roma Eterna, spanning fifteen hundred years of global history, follows the reign of the Roman Empire from its inception to the present day. Empire continues to expand, creeping across the globe and through the annals of history from the conquest of the Mayans to the first circumnavigational voyage, and finally the attempt of the Hebrews to flee Rome’s tyranny by escaping to another planet.
-
-
An Inspiring Alternate History
- By Amadeu Macedo on 06-16-25
-
Up the Line
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Basil Langdon
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2059 and Jud Elliott—former law clerk and failed Harvard history student—is at loose ends. Having left his previous job out of boredom, he finally takes a position as a Time Courier showing tourists around medieval and ancient Byzantium. Maybe that unfinished Masters degree will come in handy after all … Jud is careful and he (mostly) plays by the rules, not wanting to get on the wrong side of the Time Patrol. But, on one trip up the line, he meets and falls in love with his great-great-multi-great grandmother and suddenly the rules don’t seem as important anymore.
-
-
Excellent Narration
- By Pezzilla on 02-04-25
-
The Book of Skulls
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Samuel Eldritch, Will Watt, Colt Garrett, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four students discover a manuscript, The Book of Skulls, which reveals the existence of a sect, now living in the Arizona desert, whose members can offer immortality to those who can complete its initiation rite. To their surprise, they discover that the sect exists, and is willing to accept them as acolytes. But for each group of four who enter the rite, two must die in order for the others to succeed.
-
The Employees
- A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century
- By: Olga Ravn
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.
-
-
I think this was a story?
- By Jordan on 07-02-23
By: Olga Ravn
-
Gilgamesh the King
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: William Coon
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if we discovered that one of history's greatest heroes had written his life story? That's the premise behind Robert Silverberg's amazing novel Gilgamesh the King. The journey begins when six-year-old Gilgamesh's father dies. As he grows to manhood and eventually ascends to the throne, he faces many challenges along the way: political intrigue, war, the burden of leadership. But none are as difficult as his intense internal struggles against loneliness and his own mortality.
-
-
Terrible narration kept me from getting far
- By Lizzie Askew on 03-15-14
-
The Man in the Maze
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Richard Muller was an honorable diplomat who braved unimaginable dangers to make contact with the first-known race of intelligent aliens. But those aliens left a mark on him: a psychic wound that emanates a telepathic miasma that his fellow humans can neither cure nor endure. Muller is exiled to the remote planet of Lemnos, where he is left, deeply embittered, at the heart of a deadly maze - until a new alien race appears, seemingly intent on exterminating humanity.
-
-
dry
- By Elle L.F. on 12-20-18
-
Roma Eterna
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would happen if Imperial Rome never fell? Roma Eterna, spanning fifteen hundred years of global history, follows the reign of the Roman Empire from its inception to the present day. Empire continues to expand, creeping across the globe and through the annals of history from the conquest of the Mayans to the first circumnavigational voyage, and finally the attempt of the Hebrews to flee Rome’s tyranny by escaping to another planet.
-
-
An Inspiring Alternate History
- By Amadeu Macedo on 06-16-25
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Hothouse
- By: Brian W. Aldiss
- Narrated by: Nick Boulton
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Millions of years beyond our time, our Earth has long since stopped spinning—and giant flora have taken over the sunlit half of the motionless world. Here humans are among the very few animal species that still exist, struggling to survive against enormous odds, but they have become small and weak, and their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing. When the aging leader of Gren's tribe decrees it is time for the old ones to go "Up," the younger are left to make their own way below.
-
-
Classic but seems simple
- By DrEHarris on 02-14-25
By: Brian W. Aldiss
-
Beyond Apollo
- By: Barry N. Malzberg
- Narrated by: Thomas Fawley
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beyond Apollo, winner of the John Campbell Award, finds Harry Evans as the lone survivor of the first Venus expedition, a space journey that went disastrously wrong. But no one knows the reason behind the tragedy.
-
-
Bizarre and humorous ravings
- By Robert Lynch on 03-20-25
-
A Case of Conscience
- By: James Blish
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Father Ruiz-Sanchez is a dedicated man - a priest who is also a scientist, and a scientist who is also a human being. He has found no insoluble conflicts in his beliefs or his ethics...until he is sent to Lithia. There he comes upon a race of aliens who are admirable in every way except for their total reliance on cold reason; they are incapable of faith or belief. Confronted with a profound scientific riddle and ethical quandary, Father Ruiz-Sanchez soon finds himself torn.
-
-
Moldy Oldie still gets it done
- By Bob V. on 03-22-09
By: James Blish
-
The World Inside
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 2381. The place is Urban Monad 116 of the constellation Chippitts. The population of this one-thousand storey super-structure is 800,000+ and always growing. After two centuries of ruthless, selective breeding, the essence of life is to be blessworthy and to multiply; to afford one's neighbours any type of sexual fulfilment and, above all, to avoid the evil of frustration. But, within this seemingly blissful vertical world there are individuals who feel such perverse desires as a longing for privacy, a wish to descend from the heights, to walk on earth and bask in the sunshine.
-
Lord Valentine's Castle
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The planet Majipoor is shared by humans and several alien races, including four-armed Skandars, three-eyed Liiman, and the native, shape-shifting Metamorphs. All are watched over by the King of Dreams, the labyrinth-dwelling Pontifex, and the priestess of the Isle of Sleep, while the Coronal officially rules from atop Castle Mount.
-
-
Superb
- By C. Paget on 07-29-08
-
The Book of Skulls
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Samuel Eldritch, Will Watt, Colt Garrett, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four students discover a manuscript, The Book of Skulls, which reveals the existence of a sect, now living in the Arizona desert, whose members can offer immortality to those who can complete its initiation rite. To their surprise, they discover that the sect exists, and is willing to accept them as acolytes. But for each group of four who enter the rite, two must die in order for the others to succeed.
-
Hothouse
- By: Brian W. Aldiss
- Narrated by: Nick Boulton
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Millions of years beyond our time, our Earth has long since stopped spinning—and giant flora have taken over the sunlit half of the motionless world. Here humans are among the very few animal species that still exist, struggling to survive against enormous odds, but they have become small and weak, and their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing. When the aging leader of Gren's tribe decrees it is time for the old ones to go "Up," the younger are left to make their own way below.
-
-
Classic but seems simple
- By DrEHarris on 02-14-25
By: Brian W. Aldiss
-
Beyond Apollo
- By: Barry N. Malzberg
- Narrated by: Thomas Fawley
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beyond Apollo, winner of the John Campbell Award, finds Harry Evans as the lone survivor of the first Venus expedition, a space journey that went disastrously wrong. But no one knows the reason behind the tragedy.
-
-
Bizarre and humorous ravings
- By Robert Lynch on 03-20-25
-
A Case of Conscience
- By: James Blish
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Father Ruiz-Sanchez is a dedicated man - a priest who is also a scientist, and a scientist who is also a human being. He has found no insoluble conflicts in his beliefs or his ethics...until he is sent to Lithia. There he comes upon a race of aliens who are admirable in every way except for their total reliance on cold reason; they are incapable of faith or belief. Confronted with a profound scientific riddle and ethical quandary, Father Ruiz-Sanchez soon finds himself torn.
-
-
Moldy Oldie still gets it done
- By Bob V. on 03-22-09
By: James Blish
-
The World Inside
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 2381. The place is Urban Monad 116 of the constellation Chippitts. The population of this one-thousand storey super-structure is 800,000+ and always growing. After two centuries of ruthless, selective breeding, the essence of life is to be blessworthy and to multiply; to afford one's neighbours any type of sexual fulfilment and, above all, to avoid the evil of frustration. But, within this seemingly blissful vertical world there are individuals who feel such perverse desires as a longing for privacy, a wish to descend from the heights, to walk on earth and bask in the sunshine.
-
Lord Valentine's Castle
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The planet Majipoor is shared by humans and several alien races, including four-armed Skandars, three-eyed Liiman, and the native, shape-shifting Metamorphs. All are watched over by the King of Dreams, the labyrinth-dwelling Pontifex, and the priestess of the Isle of Sleep, while the Coronal officially rules from atop Castle Mount.
-
-
Superb
- By C. Paget on 07-29-08
-
The Book of Skulls
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Samuel Eldritch, Will Watt, Colt Garrett, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four students discover a manuscript, The Book of Skulls, which reveals the existence of a sect, now living in the Arizona desert, whose members can offer immortality to those who can complete its initiation rite. To their surprise, they discover that the sect exists, and is willing to accept them as acolytes. But for each group of four who enter the rite, two must die in order for the others to succeed.
-
The Sea Eternal
- By: Emery Robin
- Narrated by: Kim Reed, Ella Lynch
- Length: 19 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Matheus Ceirran, commander of half the known world, is dead. For the past year, his loyal captain Anita has hunted down his assassins—that is, when she can pull herself from the bed of Altagracia Caviro Patramata, queen and oracle of the client planet of Szayet. But when Anita’s quest for revenge takes her across the borders of an enigmatic neighboring empire, she uncovers a dangerous secret that could upend the fragile balance of the galaxy. Meanwhile, Ceirran’s heir apparent Otávio Julhan grows more and more powerful in the capital that Anita has left behind.
By: Emery Robin
-
Helliconia Spring
- The Helliconia Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Brian W. Aldiss
- Narrated by: Keval Shah
- Length: 19 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Helliconia follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system with a twenty-six-hundred-year cycle of very long seasons. As spring slowly breaks the brutally long winter, humans emerge from hiding and a long sequence of civilization and growth begins to repeat again, unbeknownst to the participants but watched by an orbiting satellite station, Avernus, created by Earth some centuries ago. Humans free themselves from slavery to the aboriginal Phagors, and religion and science flower and expand.
By: Brian W. Aldiss
-
Roma Eterna
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would happen if Imperial Rome never fell? Roma Eterna, spanning fifteen hundred years of global history, follows the reign of the Roman Empire from its inception to the present day. Empire continues to expand, creeping across the globe and through the annals of history from the conquest of the Mayans to the first circumnavigational voyage, and finally the attempt of the Hebrews to flee Rome’s tyranny by escaping to another planet.
-
-
An Inspiring Alternate History
- By Amadeu Macedo on 06-16-25
-
Solaris
- The Definitive Edition
- By: Stanislaw Lem, Bill Johnston - translator
- Narrated by: Alessandro Juliani
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A comment on negative reviews
- By Burns on 09-20-11
By: Stanislaw Lem, and others
-
Lord of Darkness
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 25 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Captured by pirates and brought to the west coast of Africa, young British seaman Andrew Battell longs for his home in seventeenth-century England. His only hope of returning is to work hard and be awarded freedom by his Portuguese captors—a freedom he is consistently denied. As he is moved farther and farther inland, away from the coast and any hope of a boat back to England, Battell’s dreams of freedom begin to dwindle. Finally, taking matters into his own hands, he escapes and takes sanctuary among the Jaqqas, a tribe of cannibalistic warriors lead by the sinister Lord of Darkness.
-
-
Amazing Epic Story from Robert Silverberg
- By Steven on 01-29-25
-
Up the Line
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Basil Langdon
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2059 and Jud Elliott—former law clerk and failed Harvard history student—is at loose ends. Having left his previous job out of boredom, he finally takes a position as a Time Courier showing tourists around medieval and ancient Byzantium. Maybe that unfinished Masters degree will come in handy after all … Jud is careful and he (mostly) plays by the rules, not wanting to get on the wrong side of the Time Patrol. But, on one trip up the line, he meets and falls in love with his great-great-multi-great grandmother and suddenly the rules don’t seem as important anymore.
-
-
Excellent Narration
- By Pezzilla on 02-04-25
-
A Time of Changes
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Pete Bradbury
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Kinnall Darival writes "I" in his journal, he knows this pronoun is forbidden by his people of Manneran because it is too personal. But through the use of a powerful, mind-altering drug, he has learned to understand what people are really feeling and to speak for himself. Now he is compelled to share his message of liberation, regardless of the risk. This science fiction classic is a cult favorite from a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author.
-
-
One of the Better Silverberg Novels
- By Jeff Koeppen on 04-19-25
-
A Fire Upon the Deep
- By: Vernor Vinge
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
-
-
What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
- By Noah Smith on 06-20-10
By: Vernor Vinge
-
After It's Over
- By: Hunter Chadwick
- Narrated by: Arthur Talley
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the world that is left behind after the pandemic and the worldwide collapse that followed, a lone traveler searches for hope and meaning in the aftermath, while dealing with each new day as he and other survivors struggle against the tide of all that was lost. A call for help... When a desperate call for help comes from an old ex-girlfriend, Reece Daniels has a choice to make: step up to fight against the darkness or remain a spectator for the end of the world.
-
-
Hauntingly realistic
- By Dostluke on 05-10-25
By: Hunter Chadwick
-
Past Master
- By: R.A. Lafferty, Andrew Ferguson - introduction
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Plucked from time, Sir Thomas More arrives on the human colony of Astrobe in the year AD 2535, where there is trouble in utopia: Can he and his motley followers save this golden world from the Programmed Persons, and the soulless perfection they have engineered? The survival of faith itself is at stake in this thrilling, uncategorizable, wildly inventive first novel - but the adventure is more than one of ideas. As astonishingly as Philip K. Dick and other visionaries of the 1960s new wave, Lafferty turns the conventions of space-opera science fiction upside down and inside out.
-
-
confusing prose
- By Slothflyer on 02-07-20
By: R.A. Lafferty, and others
-
Luminous
- By: Silvia Park
- Narrated by: Eric Yang
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a reunified Korea of the near future, the sun beats down on a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, broken down for parts. Eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through the scraps, searching for a piece that might support her failing body. There among the piles of trash, something catches her eye: a robot boy—so lifelike and strange, unlike anything she’s ever seen before.
-
-
Brilliant writing, mesmerizing story!
- By jc on 03-14-25
By: Silvia Park
-
Across a Billion Years
- By: Robert Silverberg
- Narrated by: Alex Knox
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Graduate student Tom Rice is thrilled to embark on his first deep-space archeological expedition. He is part of a team from Earth, venturing out in search of artifacts from a civilization that ruled the universe many millennia ago. Called the High Ones, the members of this long-gone society left tantalizing clues about their history and culture scattered throughout space. One such clue, a "message cube" containing footage of the ancient ones, is more interesting than all of the others combined. It seems to indicate that the High Ones aren't extinct after all.
-
-
I was expecting better
- By Beth Storer on 01-20-21