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Schild's Ladder
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
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.
Tchicaya abandoned his home world four thousand years ago to travel the universe, freely choosing, as have others of his bent, to endure the hardships of distance and loneliness for the sake of knowledge and experience. Aboard the Rindler, a starship trawling the border of the all consuming novo-vacuum, he feels his endless life has new purpose. For the Rindler is the center for the scientific study the phenomenon - a common ground for Preservationists and Yielders alike, those working to halt and destroy the encroaching worlds-eater…and those determined to investigate its marvels while allowing its growth to continue unchecked. Tchicaya has allied himself firmly with the latter camp.
The passing decades - and inevitable expansion of the void - widen the great rift between the two factions, intensifying what was once simply ideological differences into something more angry, explosive, and dangerous. And the arrival of Tchicaya's fiery first love, Mariama, and her immediate embracing of the Preservationist cause, intensifies an inner turmoil he has been struggling with since his distant childhood. But everything onboard the Rindler - and, ultimately, in the inhabited universe itself - is on the cusp of further cataclysmic change, as the Yielders' explorations threaten to transform discord into violent action and potential xenocide.
For new evidence suggests that something unthinkable is developing at an astounding rate deep within the mysterious, 600-light-years-wide void - something neither Tchicaya and his compatriots nor Mariama and hers could ever have imagined possible: life.
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Hard
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-30-11
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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Altered Starscape
- Andromedan Dark, Book 1
- By: Ian Douglas
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 2162. Thirty-eight years after first contact, Lord Commander Grayson St. Clair leads the Tellus Ad Astra on an unprecedented expedition to the Galactic Core, carrying more than a million scientists, diplomats, soldiers, and AIs. Despite his reservations about their alien hosts, St. Clair is deeply committed to his people - especially after they're sucked into a black hole and spat out four billion years in the future. Civilizations have risen and fallen. The Andromeda Galaxy is drifting into the Milky Way. And Earth is most certainly a distant memory.
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painful
- By AndyVee on 02-04-17
By: Ian Douglas
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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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Intrinsic
- By: Philip C. Quaintrell
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Kalian Gaines has a secret; he just doesn't know it yet. He looks like us, he lives like us...but he is not one of us. Kalian knows nothing outside of his mundane life teaching history on 30th-century Earth, until a day like any other triggers a series of events that will tie his fate to that of humanity. A human handprint, embedded into a rock with alien script, is discovered on a moon that mankind has never set foot on. This discovery holds a secret, which will sweep Kalian into the heart of a conspiracy that has corrupted the galaxy for 200,000 years.
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Unexpectedly Brilliant
- By Fraser on 04-22-18
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The Post-Human Omnibus
- Books 1-4
- By: David Simpson
- Narrated by: Ray Chase
- Length: 24 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Before he was Oldtimer, he was Craig Emilson, a young doctor,sucked into military service at the outbreak of World War III. Enlisting to become a Special Forces suborbital paratrooper, Craig is selected to take part in the most important mission in American military history, a sortie into enemy territory to eliminate the world's first strong artificial intelligence.
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Man, I really wanted to like this book
- By Consumer on 04-29-15
By: David Simpson
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Expendable
- League of Peoples, Book 1
- By: James Alan Gardner
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Peoples, there is no war, little crime, and life is sacred...unless you're an Explorer. The ugly, the flawed, the misfit, the deformed, they are the unwanted, flung to the farthest corners of the galaxy to investigate hostile planets and strange, vicious creatures. Out there, there are a thousand different - and terrible - ways to die.
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FU@@ING EXPLORERS
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 03-06-15
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Invasion
- Alien Invasion, Book 1
- By: Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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They are coming. The countdown has begun. First visible only as blips on a telescope image, the discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter's orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with Internet) has already shown the populace what is coming.
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"terrible, absolutely terrible"
- By Andre M. Nel on 08-02-18
By: Sean Platt, and others
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Starplex
- By: Robert J. Sawyer
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett, Robert J. Sawyer
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Twenty years after the discovery of artificial wormholes launches Earth space exploration to unforeseeable heights, Starplex Director Keith Lansing investigates a mysterious vessel that soon threatens the station with intergalactic war.
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Tribute to Arthur C. Clarke
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 06-23-12
By: Robert J. Sawyer
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Conquest
- The Chronicles of the Invaders: Book 1
- By: John Connolly, Jennifer Ridyard
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Earth has been invaded by the Illyri, a beautiful, civilized, yet ruthless alien race. Humanity has been conquered, but still it fights the invaders. The Resistance grows stronger, for it is the young people of Earth who battle the Illyri.
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Spoiled Teenager or Sci-fi?
- By Bob H. on 04-24-16
By: John Connolly, 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
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Overall
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Performance
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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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Incandescence – Science / fiction
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Gothic Horror Hard Science Fiction
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Great world building, but....
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A classic.
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Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.
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A very pleasant surprise
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What listeners say about Schild's Ladder
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- pondo
- 07-31-20
for star trek NG fans who wished for more tech
The title is me, I wish Star trek Ng would have been WAY more tech and WAY less social commentary. Thats exactly what Schilds Ladder is. It is not the worlds best written novel. but the concepts Egan conceived and brought forth are well worth the credit to me. The book ended with I'd like to go home, which might as well have said I'm tired of writing (since the driving force of the plot had yet to be rectified). So all faults weighed, I feel that anyone who likes to open their mind and dream of what is yet to be, how far can humanity travel, what are the boundaries of space and physics then this book is for you and you will feel your credit well spent.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Professor Von Prime
- 09-21-22
AI generated performance?
if I didn't know any better, I would swear that the narrator was an AI reading the book. Paul boehmer voice is so flat and robotic. It felt like it was a very advanced AI reading a narration of a book that actually human
The story was interesting. I felt like I lost a plot multiple times during the book, but over all I liked story
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- Dirk Gently
- 02-27-21
Worthwhile
Physics pedants may pull apart some of the finer points, but overall it’s an enjoyable read. If you can follow contextual clues and cues and have a mild understanding of the broader concepts in physics you don’t need any specialized knowledge to understand the intent of the authors use of physics to explore the universe.
I read this book almost by accident after a Reddit thread mentioned the premise and knowing nothing else going in. The book takes a different direction and different allegorical mission than the end of our universe from a “new vacuum” but I still enjoyed the book immensely with all the unexpected additions of thought provoking issues in a post mortality society.
Performance is a little dry, this having been my first book with this narrator but totally acceptable.
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- Shawn
- 08-20-15
Interesting and Difficult SF
Enjoyable hard science fiction. It goes off on long descriptions of made up physics that many people say they've found intimidating. Being fluent in theoretical physics certainly makes this book easier to read. A science experiment creates a void that starts destroying the galaxy. Everyone tries to find out how to stop it.
(Before this I read Diaspora. That book is best read with a computer science degree if you want to get it fully. And I found the plot structure to be generally similar. Despite that, they are very different novels with very different settings.)
I think hard science fiction is a bit of a misnomer. It's hard as in difficult, but not hard as in taking fewer liberties with physics.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Nathan Burnham
- 01-24-21
Excellent
This book assumes you have some basic knowledge of quantum physics.
Like most of Greg Egan's books it has mind blowing concepts and a great story. This is my new favorite book of his behind permutation city and the orthogonal series.
If you enjoyed any of his other books don't skip this one.
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- Giovany M Addun
- 09-05-18
Good stuff
There is a lot of technical and fabricated science fiction jargon. If you don't mind that, this is a great book. Greg Egan really knows how to layer his more "out there" ideas into the events in the story
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-08-23
High Concept with Rich Narration
Science fiction meets mathematic rigor to tell a first person discovery epic of a real life flatland, or rather, a flatlander discovering 3D space. Wide variety of environments, concepts, and interactions to experience. Narrator is consistent, confident, and fancy.
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- Michael
- 01-01-14
Prerequisite: PHYS 201
If you can say the phrase "That's just elementary quantum mechanics" with a straight face, you will probably find this book to be a fun (if somewhat predictable) romp through some amusing "big-think" physics concepts, with an admirable level of rigor. (There's no faster-than-light travel, for example.) If you enjoy playing "what-if" with systems of fundamental laws of physics, you'll probably enjoy the twist that Egan comes up with.
However, if you are a little overwhelmed by phrases like "tetravalent graph", "complex spatial dimension", or "superposition state", you may find this pretty heavy going, with less reward in characterization or plot development. The "hook" of this book is the speculation on its universe, while the characters primarily serve as a vehicle to deliver the reader a tour of the author's vision.
As usual, Paul Boehmer's narration is fine, and he serves up the weighty dish of quantum terminology without breaking a sweat.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Danny Metzcalf
- 11-05-21
Love me some tensor math
Egan is the only science fiction writer who is best complemented with a tall hot coffee or tea and library access to a suite of mathematics journals. His books are not the easy jaunt of the Bobiverse, or the sex saturated worlds of Robert Heinlein. An Egan book is something you can walk away from feeling invigorated, having your understandings of physics and mathematics broadened. If you love the intellect and changing how you think, throw yourself at Egan's work and walk away a better person for the engagement.
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- Michael Linehan
- 01-06-14
Hard science fiction - no kiddin'
Greg Eagan is a programmer, but he sure could fool me into thinking he's a theoretical physicist. Really enjoyed the science.
Was looking forward to listening to more of his books. The ones I'm especially interested in are narrated by Adam Epstein. Mr. Epstein has received some very negative reviews. But I REALLY wanted to listed to those books. I thought, "Well he may not be great, but it can't be so bad that I'd not enjoy the book." Listened to samples. He was WORSE than the reviews. (Sorry, Mr. Epstein.) I couldn't even get through the sample, never mind a book! Terrible. I simply cannot buy those other books. I strongly suggest you don't, either.
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15 people found this helpful