
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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This Book has Magic
- By Kurt Schwoppe on 06-15-18
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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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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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Solaris
- The Definitive Edition
- By: Stanislaw Lem, Bill Johnston - translator
- Narrated by: Alessandro Juliani
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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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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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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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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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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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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Sparrow
- By: L.J. Shen
- Narrated by: Michael Pauley
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Troy Brennan: Every Southie in Boston knows that name. The son of a dead mobster. The heartthrob with steel-blue eyes. "The Fixer" who can make or break you in this city. Oh, and my new husband. Sparrow Raynes: That's me. No one seemed to remember my name up until he barged into my life. But then he caged me. Kidnapped me. And killed every chance I had to run away from the place where we grew up.
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Don't let the innocent cover mislead you...
- By Sofia Talley on 08-25-16
By: L.J. Shen
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The Cyberiad
- Fables for the Cybernetic Age
- By: Stanislaw Lem
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. Over the course of their adventures in The Cyberiad, they travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their unsuspecting employers.
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If Dr. Suess Wrote Science Fiction...
- By Nils J. Rasmussen on 05-27-14
By: Stanislaw Lem
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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