Got my next batch of audio books loaded in and ready to go. Mostly Scifi as I do like that genre, with a autobiography and an anthropology thrown in the mix.
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks.
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.
Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
The Sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, surviving on the debris of its long-dead progenitors, Shadrapar is a museum, a midden, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity.
Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new, is Stefan Advani, rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts; that transported him east down the river and imprisoned him in verdant hell of the jungle’s darkest heart; that led him deep into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld. He will treat with monsters, madman, mutants. The question is, which one of them will inherit this Earth?
Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.
What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.
The Sandman: Act II by Neil Gaiman, Dirk Maggs
Enter the Dreaming again as the blockbuster audio adaptation of “the greatest epic in the history of comic books” continues in The Sandman: Act II. James McAvoy returns to voice Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, in this sequel to the number-one New York Times audio best seller. Journey into a world of myths, imagination, and terror based on the best-selling DC comic books and graphic novels written by Neil Gaiman (returning as the Narrator), and lose yourself in another groundbreaking, immersive drama adapted and directed by the award-winning audio master Dirk Maggs.
In the absolutely packed Act II, the dark fantasy resumes and the Sandman expands into the French Revolution, ancient Rome, 19th-century San Francisco, eighth-century Baghdad, and beyond. New and familiar characters abound, voiced by a bright mix of performers, including Kat Dennings, Regé-Jean Page, Emma Corrin, Michael Sheen, Kristen Schaal, Brian Cox, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Wright, and so many more, including fan-favorite narrators Simon Vance and Ray Porter.
Just close your eyes and listen again as the greatest epic continues.
Act II of the audio series The Sandman adapts collected volumes four (Season of Mists) and five (A Game of You) of the comics in their entirety, and most of volume six (Fables & Reflections).
The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life.
A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case—until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder…
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing–nothing anywhere in the universe–will ever be the same.
Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds
Many, many millennia ago, the Inhibitors seeded the universe with machines designed to detect intelligent life – and then to suppress it. But after hundreds of millions of years, the machines started to fail and intelligent cultures started to emerge.
Then Dr Dan Sylveste and the crew of Infinity discovered what had happened to the long-vanished Amarantin race … and awakened the Inhibitors.
On Yellowstone, where no one is quite who they appear, the Inquisitor and the planet’s Most Wanted War Criminal are watching as the Inhibitors turn a small group of planets into raw materials. Whatever they are building with those materials is not going to be good for Humanity.
Just Williams: An Autobiography by Kenneth Williams
Published in 1985 Kenneth’s autobiography is funny, outrageous and interesting. He really could have been a superb character actor and it’s a shame how his career path went. But we get some of the best comedy moments from his career so his legacy is assured. A good autobiography.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective by R. Scott Bakker
Experience your favourite fantasy worlds in this 2017 r/fantasy Stabby Award winning anthology, featuring some of the most fearsome, devious, and brutal antagonists in fantasy. Villains take centre stage in nineteen dark and magical stories that will have you cheering for all the wrong heroes as they perform savage deeds towards wicked ends. And why not? They are the champions of their own stories–evil is a matter of perspective.
