Where's My Jetpack?
A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived
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Narrated by:
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Stefan Rudnicki
About this listen
In Where's My Jetpack? roboticist Daniel H. Wilson takes a hilarious look at the future we imagined for ourselves. You will learn which technologies are already available - and if the technology is not public, you will learn how to build, buy, or steal it. Where's My Jetpack? is an entertaining look at the world that we always wanted.
©2007 Daniel H. Wilson (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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In the year 2031, a robot probe detects traces of biological activity on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. This sensational discovery shows that there is indeed evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifteen years later, a hurriedly built spacecraft sets out on the long journey to the ringed planet and its moon. The international crew is not just facing a difficult twenty-seven months: if the spacecraft manages to make it to Enceladus without incident it must use a drillship to penetrate the kilometer-thick sheet of ice that entombs the moon.
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Robotic performance, potentially interesting story
- By Opa on 02-21-19
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Confessions of an Alien Hunter
- A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
- By: Seth Shostak
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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This engaging memoir reveals the true story of the Search for ExtraterrestrialIntelligence (SETI), and discloses what we may very soon discover. Chronicling the program’s history with insight and humor, SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak assures us that if there is sentient life in the universe, we are within decades of picking up its signal.
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Somewhat Disappointed...
- By Tim on 11-12-10
By: Seth Shostak
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Proxima Rising
- Proxima, Book 1
- By: Brandon Q. Morris
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Late in the 21st century, Earth receives what looks like an urgent plea for help from planet Proxima Centauri b in the closest star system to the Sun. Astrophysicists suspect a massive solar flare is about to destroy this heretofore-unknown civilization. Earth's space programs are unequipped to help, but an unscrupulous Russian billionaire launches a secret and highly-specialized spaceship to Proxima b, over four light-years away.
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Story is great, format is not
- By Mike on 04-26-20
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In the Shadow of the Moon
- A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969
- By: Francis French, Colin Burgess
- Narrated by: Gary L. Willprecht
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a remarkable story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a rollicking global adventure.
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Interesting book for space afficionados
- By Leslie F. on 04-21-16
By: Francis French, and others
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In the Waves
- My Quest to Solve the Mystery of a Civil War Submarine
- By: Rachel Lance
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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On the night of February 17, 1864, the tiny Confederate submarine HL Hunley made its way toward the USS Housatonic just outside Charleston harbor. Within a matter of hours, the Union ship’s stern was blown open in a spray of wood planks. The explosion sank the ship, killing many of its crew. And the submarine, the first ever to be successful in combat, disappeared without a trace. For 131 years the eight-man crew of the HL Hunley lay in their watery graves, undiscovered.
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A wonderful scientific dive!
- By Stephen on 05-01-20
By: Rachel Lance
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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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Ingenious
- A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
- By: Jason Fagone
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars entirely from scratch, rejecting decades of thinking about what a car should look like.
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Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
- By Shamu from New York on 12-07-13
By: Jason Fagone
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Five Billion Years of Solitude
- The Search for Life Among the Stars
- By: Lee Billings
- Narrated by: Lee Billings
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its formation nearly five billion years ago, our planet has been the sole living world in a vast and silent universe. Now, Earth's isolation is coming to an end. Over the past two decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of "exoplanets" orbiting other stars, including some that could be similar to our own world. Studying those distant planets for signs of life will be crucial to understanding life's intricate mysteries right here on Earth. In a firsthand account of this unfolding revolution, Lee Billings draws on interviews with top researchers.
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Bloated
- By Dr A on 01-09-14
By: Lee Billings
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You Are Here
- From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves
- By: Hiawatha Bray
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the rise of modern navigation technology, from radio location to GPS—and the consequent decline of privacy. What does it mean to never get lost? You Are Here examines the rise of our technologically aided era of navigational omniscience—or how we came to know exactly where we are at all times. Filled with tales of scientists and astronauts, inventors and entrepreneurs, You Are Here tells the story of how humankind ingeniously solved one of its oldest and toughest problems—only to herald a new era in which it’s impossible to hide.
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I'm here - do you care
- By Nicholas E. Ertz on 04-13-14
By: Hiawatha Bray
What listeners say about Where's My Jetpack?
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- R&L Blocher
- 05-08-12
Starting to Date Itself
I first heard about this book on Boing Boing and podcasts a couple years back. It sounded awesome to me. Dammit, where IS my jetpack? If you've been hiding for the last ten years perhaps there's a lot here still to find fresh. But much of these trails have been well mapped.
Worse, there's still futurism here disconnected from the cultural and social world that propels the subject. The zest for the Reasons Why at the beginning break down and pretty soon we're being regaled with stories of the absurd fantastic. So we're building houses on artificial islands in the Gulf? How's the market for that going? What's the environmental impact? Underwater hotels? The rooms exist but they're not doing brisk business.
In the meantime, James Cameron shoots to the bottom of the ocean in a torpedo sub.
Hopefully Wilson is working on a follow-up--rather than a new forward--that cuts a little deeper than this light compendium.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Your Old Pal Sisco
- 03-08-15
slightly dated, but very funny
Book about future tech from 2007 so there's that... But was a great listen otherwise!
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Overall
- Charles
- 01-11-10
Serious Fun!
Listened while on a roadtrip from Wisconsin to Florida... This is big time fun, with info to boot! You will love it, I guarantee!
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- Suzanne
- 04-01-08
Delightful
The humor used in this look at our "somewhat disappointing future" really helps to put things into perspective. The outline is easily followed while listening and the reader has a wonderful low and lilting voice. "Fun Facts" are just that - fun. Anyone who has ever wondered about that stuff science fiction is made of should find comfort in this book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Richard S. Swol
- 03-27-24
Pulp science fiction as reviewed by your science teacher
This is an interesting book looking at the future as it was presented in the old pulp science fiction stories through the lens of what we know today. I was not quite sure what to expect here. What I found was like a paging through of a copy of Amazing Stories by your high school science teacher, all the while throwing in remarks on why none of this was going to happen. Along the way you get a smattering of dad joke level humor making light of all of it. The book itself was written in 2007, so a fair amount of the data presented is already out of date. Is it interesting? Yes. Is it informative? Not particularly if you pay any attention at all to science. Is it worth your time and money? Maybe... but I lean a bit towards "probably not". The author's heart was in the right place I think, but his delivery was a bit too condescending for me. If you are interested in the subject, but have not followed much science, I think you might like it better than I did.
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- Horace
- 10-06-08
Just Lots of Fun
This book is not a deep contemplation of the way in which predictions of the future simultaneously over-estimate and under-estimate future capability. This tendency is because predictions of the future tend to overestimate progress in better understood dimensions, while egregiously underestimating progress along new dimensions. The jetpack is a great example of this tendency. It's an almost boringly simple technology compared to all the advances in computing that have happened, yet we don't have jetpacks for largely economic reasons. This phenomenon is an important topic for entrepreneurs and technology leaders and for some reason when I bought the book I was expecting an explanation of this issue.
Instead the book is a rather systematic exploration of the real science behind the top 40 childhood tech. fanatics of the baby boomers. It's meant to be a light fun read; a summer book for the balding or graying geek. It succeeds.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Carl
- 08-20-12
Informative and funny
If you ever wondered where the future went this book will tell you where and help you laugh it off.
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- Gotta Tellya
- 03-27-14
I always wanted my own jetpack!
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes, I would recommend it as an entertaining and enlightening read/listening experience. Some of my lifelong questions were answered. Now I known why we are not commuting by jetpack. (Sigh.) Other glowing promises that teased us over the years and never came to be were also explained and laid to rest.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Not a book about characters per se.
Which scene was your favorite?
Again, not arranged around scenes.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Not really. This isn't an emotion-based book. But it was far from dull or dry. I liked it a lot.
Any additional comments?
This is a book worth reading or listening to. As a baby boomer, I can remember many of these concepts and products being announced on the news decades ago. I enjoyed hearing what became of them. This was a great idea for a book.
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