
The Sparrow
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Narrated by:
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David Colacci
About this listen
A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: To make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. The mission begins in faith, hope, and beauty, but a series of small misunderstandings brings it to a catastrophic end.
©2008 Mary Doria Russell (P)2008 Brilliance AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A startling, engrossing, and moral work of fiction.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“Important novels leave deep cracks in our beliefs, our prejudices, and our blinders. The Sparrow is one of them.” (Entertainment Weekly)
“Powerful...The Sparrow tackles a difficult subject with grace and intelligence.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
Featured Article: The best audiobooks about aliens for curious humans
Throughout the history of storytelling, we humans have been curious about the possibility of worlds beyond Earth and its inhabitants. Thanks to our endless fascination with extraterrestrial life, there is a mountain of literature, from novels to memoirs, exploring the potential outcomes of interacting with creatures from other planets. Without further ado, here are 20 of our favorite listens about alien life.
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Performance
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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.
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A comment on negative reviews
- By Burns on 09-20-11
By: Stanislaw Lem, and others
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Downbelow Station
- By: C. J. Cherryh
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Pell's Station, orbiting the alien world simply called Downbelow, had always managed to remain neutral in the ever escalating conflict between The Company, whose fleets from Earth had colonized space, and its increasingly independent and rebellious colony worlds. But Pell's location - - on the outer edge of Earth's defensive perimeter - makes her the focal point in the titanic battle of colony worlds fighting for independence.
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Narrator kills that book
- By K. Krieger on 07-11-12
By: C. J. Cherryh
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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
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Blindsight
- By: Peter Watts
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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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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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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The Mote in God's Eye
- By: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
- Narrated by: L J Ganser
- Length: 20 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The Mote In God's Eye is their acknowledged masterpiece, an epic novel of mankind's first encounter with alien life that transcends the genre. No lesser an authority than Robert A. Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read".
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A great read!
- By J. Rhoderick on 02-12-10
By: Larry Niven, and others
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Sea of Rust
- A Novel
- By: C. Robert Cargill
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It's been 30 years since the apocalypse and 15 years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI - One World Intelligence, the shared consciousness of millions of robots uploaded into one huge mainframe brain.
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This Book has Magic
- By Kurt Schwoppe on 06-15-18
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Semiosis
- A Novel
- By: Sue Burke
- Narrated by: Caitlin Davies, Daniel Thomas May
- Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that mammals are more than tools. Forced to land on a planet they aren't prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape—trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.
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Weird. But good. But weird.
- By Lilyn G. on 03-20-18
By: Sue Burke
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Contact
- By: Carl Sagan
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The future is here...in an adventure of cosmic dimension. In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who - or what - is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future - and our own.
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Technical problems with this recording - skips...
- By Matt on 11-28-12
By: Carl Sagan
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The Forge of God
- By: Greg Bear
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 28th, a geologist working in Death Valley finds a mysterious new cinder cone in very well-mapped area. On October 1, the government of Australia announces the discovery of an enormous granite mountain. Like the cinder cone, it wasn't there six months ago.
Something is happening to planet Earth, and the truth is too terrifying to contemplate
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Great Story, Wonderful Listening, But the Editor?
- By George Knight on 07-14-13
By: Greg Bear
An interesting take on higher powers.
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Her eye for detail & her ear for speech both alien & human made her book rich indeed
The narrator added color while not inserting himself...a truly humble blessing
I didn't want it to end...
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Who knew sci-fi and religion could come together so well without feeling forced?!
I'm glad someone told me about this book. It has become one of my favorite pieces.
Haunting
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Struggled a long time, but finished
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Where does The Sparrow rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
One of the better written stories so far, very thought-provoking. A lot of unpredictable moments.Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No, it started very slow I was actually thinking about dropping it. But then it picked up and kept looking for chores to do and places to go just so that I can listened to it more.Any additional comments?
I would recommend it to a friend that has patience to sit through the first 1/3 to get to the gem it is.Left me thinking
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What did you like best about this story?
I liked how this tale of first contact went incredibly wrong due to human nature, our inability to understand something truly alien to our perspective. Too often in SF, alien species end up being anthropomorphic projections of human expectation. The worldbuilding is complex and believable. The characters are real people whose suffering has meaning, and boy do they suffer. It is tragedy porn, to a certain extent, like Connie Willis' novels, but the best literature often falls in this category. The author is unafraid of moral complexity, something usually lacking in genre fiction where the villains are usually clearly evil and the heroes' virtue outshines all the darkness. This novel shows the folly of the arrogance of even the most benevolent of our species.What does David Colacci bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He accentuates the tension of the protagonist exquisitely.If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
AMC is thinking of making a TV show out of this."Most depressingly brilliant SF show ever."
"It's like John Carter of Mars, but with interspecial rape."
A modern SF classic with moral complexity
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Intelligent Author
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Good read
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Deeply Layered Magic
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Great Read
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