
Monstrous Futures
A Sci-Fi Horror Anthology (Dark Matter Presents)
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Narrated by:
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Cheryl May
About this listen
29 Brand-New Sci-Fi Horror Stories. The future is now, and it's not what we were promised. The optimistic science fiction of old was wrong. Progress is not linear, technology creates as many problems as it solves, and the concept of a better tomorrow has become an abstraction that is in no way guaranteed. When looking at the future now, we no longer ask what is possible, we wonder how we'll cope. Contained within this anthology are 29 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors. Brace yourself for the all too real horrors of what could very well be our terribly monstrous futures.
Stories by:
M. H. Ayinde, P. A. Cornell, Yelena Crane, Rodrigo Culagovski, Koji A. Dae, Kevin M. Folliard, Lew Furber, Andrea Goyan, Ivy Grimes, Kay Hanifen, D. A. Jobe, Wailana Kalama, Rae Knowles, Catherine Kuo, Rich Larson, Avra Margariti, J. A. W. McCarthy, Christi Nogle, Ashleigh Shears, D. Roe Shocky, Lisa Short, Hugh A. D. Spencer, Simo Srinivas, Kanishk Tantia, M. Elizabeth Ticknor, S. J. Townend, Kaitlin Tremblay, Emily Ruth Verona, Aigner Loren Wilson
Edited by Alex Woodroe. Introduction by Andrew F. Sullivan, author of THE MARIGOLD. Cover art by Olly Jeavons.
©2023 Dark Matter INK (P)2025 Dark Matter INKRelated to this topic
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Annie has always had high hopes for her future. But the reality of her life just isn’t measuring up. She loves her fiancé, Greg–doesn’t she? She’s going to get her degree and open her own business–won’t she? Then, a strange old woman shows up outside her house, and she seems to know a lot about Annie. An awful lot. Annie could tell the old woman to get lost. Yet there’s something about her Annie just can’t shake. And what she learns could change her life forever–but is it the life she envisioned?
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I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?
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Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
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Dragon Day
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Compiled by intrepid journalist Neve Pride, this archive of recordings spans the months after dragons emerged on earth, chronicling the communities that sprang up amid the destruction, the scientists, military leaders, and experts searching for a defense, and those steadfastly seeking the missing. Neve and her young daughter Bex travel among the wreckage speaking to those left behind and surviving, against all odds. Neve records everything for history, and in the hopes of locating a clue as to where the dragons came from and how one might stop them.
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Performance and production
- By Amazon Customer on 03-31-25
By: Bob Proehl
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Project Hail Mary
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
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Bazinga
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Hitchhikers
- By: Ben H. Winters
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Annie has always had high hopes for her future. But the reality of her life just isn’t measuring up. She loves her fiancé, Greg–doesn’t she? She’s going to get her degree and open her own business–won’t she? Then, a strange old woman shows up outside her house, and she seems to know a lot about Annie. An awful lot. Annie could tell the old woman to get lost. Yet there’s something about her Annie just can’t shake. And what she learns could change her life forever–but is it the life she envisioned?
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Pretty good
- By Anne on 03-18-25
By: Ben H. Winters
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The Martian
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.
-
-
I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?
- By L. Newman on 01-11-20
By: Andy Weir
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
When the Moon Hits Your Eye
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and uncertainty. And then there are the billions looking to the sky and wondering how a thing that was always just there is now... something absolutely impossible.
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Buyer's Remorse
- By Amy on 03-31-25
By: John Scalzi
What listeners say about Monstrous Futures
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Kelly johnson
- 02-19-25
👀 these stories are twisted!
If you’re a fan of “The twilight zone” or “squid game” or “ the outer limits” or “cabinet of curiosities” then you’ll love these short stories. So many different authors all with different ways of expressing the mood and peoples motivations.
I can only listen to 1 story a day they’re that good and leave that much an impression on me!
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Overall
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- Zraitor
- 02-12-25
Futures not so far away...
This is a good to great collection of dark fiction stories showing where humanity is headed. All the topics in the stories were spot on, and you can see everything explored is basically already happening around us.
There weren't any outright terrible stories, but a few definitely fizzled out and weren't as strong as the others. That is the nature of these huge collections, though, and I truly enjoyed most of them.
The stories include lots of robots going wrong as you'd expect, some wonderfully uncomfortable racism and genetic themes are explored, and they hit pretty hard, and of course, end-stage capitalism doing its destructive best to ruin our lives. Almost anything you can think of was brought up in the collection's twenty-nine tales.
Finally, the narrator was great and brought the stories to life with a variety of voices and accents. I was really impressed by them.
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- Riley F.
- 02-19-25
I did like a majority of the stories
Sometimes it was a bit difficult to distinguish between two characters and there was no clear transition between a few of the stories
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