
Gnomon
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Narrated by:
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Ben Onwukwe
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By:
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Nick Harkaway
About this listen
A Best Science Fiction Book of 2017 - The Guardian
From the widely acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World and Tigerman, comes a virtuosic new novel set in a near-future, high-tech surveillance state that is equal parts dark comedy, gripping detective story, and mind-bending philosophical puzzle.
In the world of Gnomon, citizens are constantly observed and democracy has reached a pinnacle of "transparency". Every action is seen, every word is recorded, and the System has access to its citizens' thoughts and memories - all in the name of providing the safest society in history.
When suspected dissident Diana Hunter dies in government custody, it marks the first time a citizen has been killed during an interrogation. The System doesn't make mistakes, but something isn't right about the circumstances surrounding Hunter's death. Mielikki Neith, a trusted state inspector and a true believer in the System, is assigned to find out what went wrong.
Immersing herself in neural recordings of the interrogation, what she finds isn't Hunter but rather a panorama of characters within Hunter's psyche: a lovelorn financier in Athens who has a mystical experience with a shark; a brilliant alchemist in ancient Carthage confronting the unexpected outcome of her invention; an expat Ethiopian painter in London designing a controversial new video game, and a sociopathic disembodied intelligence from the distant future. Embedded in the memories of these impossible lives lies a code which Neith must decipher to find out what Hunter is hiding. In the static between these stories, Neith begins to catch glimpses of the real Diana Hunter - and, alarmingly, of herself. The staggering consequences of what she finds will reverberate throughout the world.
A dazzling, panoramic achievement, and Nick Harkaway's most brilliant work to date, Gnomon is peerless and profound, captivating and irreverent, as it pierces through strata of reality and consciousness and illuminates how to set a mind free. It is a truly accomplished novel from a mind possessing a matchless wit infused with a deep humanity.
©2018 Nick Harkaway (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Gnomon is an extraordinary novel, and one I can’t stop thinking about some weeks after I read it. It is deeply troubling, magnificently strange, and an exhilarating read.” (Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven)
“Opening a novel by Nick Harkaway feels like stepping into a theme park for the mind - every page you turn brings new delights for the mind and the senses. Gnomon is brilliant and terrifying, full of pleasures big and small. Basically, everything I want in a book.” (Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)
“Beguiling, multilayered, sprawling novel that blends elements of Philip K. Dick-tinged sci-fi, mystery, politics, and literary fiction in a most satisfying brew.... Fans of Pynchon and William Gibson alike will devour this smart, expertly written bit of literary subversion.” (Kirkus, starred review)
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Story
Lin “The Silent One” Vu is a gangster and sometime private investigator living in Chinese-occupied Hanoi, in the steaming, paranoid alleyways of the 36 Streets. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, everywhere she is an outsider. Through grit and courage Lin has carved a place for herself in the Vietnamese underworld where Hanoi’s crime boss, Bao Nguyen, is training her to fight and lead. Bao drives her hard; on the streets there are no second chances. Meanwhile the people of Hanoi are succumbing to Fat Victory - a dangerously addictive immersive simulation.
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It takes a bit to get into
- By Shane on 02-10-22
By: T. R. Napper
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Karla's Choice
- A John le Carré Novel
- By: Nick Harkaway
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale, Nick Harkaway
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West’s spy war against the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only for a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumor that George Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Szusanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead.
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More Smiley
- By Robert F. on 10-31-24
By: Nick Harkaway
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Diaspora
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Adam Epstein
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Fabulous Story, Disappointing Performance
- By Ben on 12-08-13
By: Greg Egan
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A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
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Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
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A Tough Read
- By KP on 05-07-16
By: Marlon James
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The Windup Girl
- By: Paolo Bacigalupi
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman.
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Good and also Frustrating
- By txkimmers on 11-16-09
By: Paolo Bacigalupi
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A Fire Upon the Deep
- By: Vernor Vinge
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
- By Noah Smith on 06-20-10
By: Vernor Vinge
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Aurora
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A major new novel from one of science fiction's most powerful voices, Aurora tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system. Brilliantly imagined and beautifully told, it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers.
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The Future is Limited, Get Used to It
- By Martin Lesser on 08-20-15
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The Mountain in the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Ray Nayler
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them. The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android.
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Enjoyable and interesting
- By AudioReader on 10-10-22
By: Ray Nayler
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Pushing Ice
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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2057. Humanity has raised exploiting the solar system to an art form. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclear-powered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. And they're good at it. The Rockhopper is nearing the end of its current mission cycle, and everyone is desperate for some much-needed R & R, when startling news arrives from Saturn: Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, has inexplicably left its natural orbit and is now heading out of the solar system at high speed.
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Proof that a good story doesn't require a trilogy
- By Jesse on 01-14-12
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Quicksilver
- Book One of The Baroque Cycle
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Neal Stephenson (introduction), Kevin Pariseau, Simon Prebble
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In which Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and courageous Puritan, pursues knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe -- in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.
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Be aware of what you're getting into
- By David on 12-16-11
By: Neal Stephenson
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The City & The City
- By: China Mieville
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borl ú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined. Borl must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own.
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Reviews, Dishonesty and The Emperor's New Clothes
- By Robert on 01-27-13
By: China Mieville
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How High We Go in the Dark
- A Novel
- By: Sequoia Nagamatsu
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Brian Nishii, Keisuke Hoashi, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy.
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Should come with a sadness warning
- By KJH on 03-16-22
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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
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Seven Demons
- By: Aidan Truhen
- Narrated by: Christian Coulson
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Jack Price and the Seven Demons: Doc, the evil mad scientist presently using Jack for sex; Rex, an explosives expert who doesn’t ask too many questions so long as something goes boom; Volodya, a Ukrainian assassin who may or may not be a cannibal; Charlie, a comic book artist with computer skills and an anarchist bent; Lucille, whose specialty is razor-edged hugs; and Jack’s predecessor, Fred, who doesn’t contribute a whole lot owing to being a severed head on a stick. Finally there’s Jack himself, former coffee magnate turned cocaine dealer turned First Demon.
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The story was written for the narrator.
- By roptics on 07-21-23
By: Aidan Truhen
I’m starting another of Nick Harkaway’s books in 5 minutes.
P.S. the narrator is fantastic.
It’s excellent.
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I can't say enough good things about this book
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Dizzyingly Complex
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A lot to swallow
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Complex story, if the narrator doesn’t lull you into sleep
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In any case, after a while you can recognize these side trips as the literary sounding equivalent of the chicken fight scenes in Family Guy, fun for a bit and then just tedious. But, as with Family Guy, you soon enough get back to the good stuff.
It's challenging to get through these novels and the writing at times borders on pretentious, but it's worth it for the ideas that are presented. I do wish he would dial back the chicken fights...
Chicken Fight as Ersatz Intellectualism
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Confusing and impressive
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Hang On
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Headline
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Delightfully Deep Well
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