The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 2
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Narrated by:
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Tom Dheere
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Nancy Linari
About this listen
An unabridged audio collection spotlighting the “best of the best” hard science-fiction stories published in 2017 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster, as narrated by Tom Dheere and Nancy Linari.
In “Shadows of Eternity” by Gregory Benford, a student investigates enigmatic SETI recordings from probes sent to nearby stars despite her teachers’ admonishments to stick to the curriculum.
As war and pollution ravage the last survivors on Earth, an alien robot descends to help save the planet in “The Chatter of Monkeys” by Bond Elam.
In “Acadie” by Dave Hutchinson, the first humans still, even after 500 years, hunt across the stars for their augmented children who have left Earth in search of paradise.
The crew of an exploratory starship finds an icy moon that might harbor life in “Canoe” by Nancy Kress.
In “The Use of Things” by Ramez Naam, an astronaut struggles to survive after being jolted free from an asteroid while on a solitary prospecting mission.
A problem with the local birds threatens the rebuilding of Bikini Island as sea-levels rise due to global warming in “The Proving Ground” by Alec Nevala-Lee.
In “Holdfast” by Alastair Reynolds, a genmod human soldier faces off with an alien warrior in the inhospitable terrain of a superjovian planet.
A Russian astronaut, gathering debris in near-Earth space, must make tough moral choices when asked to carry out a special mission in “Vanguard 2.0” by Carter Scholz.
And finally, after a terrorist attack, a technically dead fish farmer gets a new body and second chance at life as an experimental super soldier, in “ZeroS” by Peter Watts.
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Performance
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The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars some 400 light-years in diameter, contains more than 600 worlds, interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: Over 1,000 light-years away, a star...vanishes. It does not go supernova. It does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears.
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Great Epic Scifi
- By Devin on 10-17-09
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Tantalus Depths
- By: Evan Graham
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Tantalus 13 survey expedition went off the rails as soon as Mary Ketch and the crew of the Diamelen learned that the thing beneath their feet wasn’t a planet. An impossibly vast and ancient artificial structure lies below, hidden from the universe under a façade of cratered stone. SCARAB arrived on Tantalus 13 two years ago. An artificially intelligent, self-constructing factory, it was supposed to aid the crew in their mission, to meet their every need.
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Good primer for Young Adults new to sci-fi!
- By Philip Maddox on 10-09-22
By: Evan Graham
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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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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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In the Ocean of Night
- Galactic Center, Book 1
- By: Gregory Benford
- Narrated by: Maxwell Caulfield
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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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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The Wrong Stars
- By: Tim Pratt
- Narrated by: John Glouchevitch
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.
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Save yourself a credit, read something else
- By Ian Thomas Healy on 09-19-18
By: Tim Pratt
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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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Starfire
- By: B.V. Larson
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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On June 30, 1908, an object fell from the sky, releasing more energy than a thousand Hiroshima bombs. A Siberian forest was flattened, but the strike left no significant crater. The anomaly came to be known as the Tunguska Event, and scientists have never agreed whether it was the largest meteor strike in recorded history - or something else. Alien artifacts have been uncovered since the 1908 event, and a new star drive is discovered.
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Het
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-09-17
By: B.V. Larson
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Altered Carbon
- By: Richard K. Morgan
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
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Altered Carbon
- By Jake Williams on 09-22-07
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The Engines of God
- By: Jack McDevitt
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Humans call them Monument-Makers. An unknown race, they left stunning alien statues scattered on distant planets throughout the galaxy, encoded with strange inscriptions that defy translation. Searching for clues about the Monument-Makers, teams of 23rd century linguists, historians, engineers and archaeologists have been excavating the enigmatic alien ruins on a number of planets, uncovering strange, massive false cities made of solid rock. But their time is running out.
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Conceptually intriguing, but uneven writing style
- By Michael G Kurilla on 05-12-11
By: Jack McDevitt
What listeners say about The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 2
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Charlie G.
- 01-06-19
Interesting stories but bad audio quality.
Overall, I enjoyed most, though not all, of the stories. One or two weren’t necessarily what I would consider “Hard” science fiction, but weren’t bad nonetheless.
My only major complaint is that the audio for all the stories narrated by Nancy Linari sounds like it was compressed too much. Her voice was distorted and barely understandable. There were numerous times I had to rewind and crank up the volume just to understand some words or phrases she was saying.
It was especially jarring when it switched back to Tom Dheere. His audio was very clear. It was as if they were from two different audio books entirely.
I probably wouldn’t recommend this purchase simply because the quality of the stories doesn’t make up for the frustrating sound issues.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Robert D. Akins
- 05-06-24
Medium quality in every way
There was some sound distortion in the first recording. Some misspoken words make me wonder if it was read by AI.
But what stood out most was the story The Proving Grounds. Fiction has no business being in a science fiction compilation.
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- davidco
- 07-11-19
Terrible overly compressed and distorted audiot
The audio quality of this is way below expectations.
The audio is overly compressed with annoying compression artifacts and low fidelity, making it very hard to listen to.
Also, the readers’ performances come across as stilted and wooden.
I would love to have a high fidelity and lively reading of these stories. Forced to rate the stories, even though i haven’t listened to them all due to terrible audio quality.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Reidar Loseth
- 02-08-21
Terrible sounding.
I find it impossible to listen to this book. It sounds like it is read in a tin can with recording in low bitrate. Terrible!
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3 people found this helpful