Amazon Customer
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- 28
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The Ministry for the Future
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Jennifer Fitzgerald, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Ramon de Ocampo, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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From legendary science-fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined. Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
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Engrossing
- By Anonymous User on 25-11-2020
superb speculative fiction
Reviewed: 10-01-2021
This is the easiest book to recommend for a possible view of our future, and exemplifies the practice of forecasting by speculative fiction
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Gateway
- By: Frederik Pohl
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, Robert J. Sawyer
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
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They said it was a classic. I agree.
- By Bronson P Gherardi on 19-03-2016
- Gateway
- By: Frederik Pohl
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, Robert J. Sawyer
A great novel in the vein of PKD
Reviewed: 19-11-2020
There's a very clear relationship between the themes and style of this book and Phillip K Dick. This book also attends to the science without belabouring the concepts. Most of all, the character is a typical PKD antihero
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A Gentleman in Moscow
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Soon to be a major TV series starring Kenneth Branagh. On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a life without luxury be the richest of all?
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Spectacular
- By Tim Goodman on 14-12-2018
- A Gentleman in Moscow
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
Saccharine
Reviewed: 15-09-2020
This book is far too interested in the reader liking its protagonists to have much to say beyond an overly long apologia for aristocratic privilege. Despite frequent name dropping of the classics, it refers to them in only the most superficial and banal sense
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Lies, Inc.
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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When catastrophic overpopulation threatens Earth, one company offers to teleport citizens to Whale’s Mouth, an allegedly pristine new home for happy and industrious émigrés. But there is one problem: the teleportation machine works in only one direction. When Rachmael ben Applebaum discovers that some of the footage of happy settlers may have been faked, he sets out on an 18-year journey to see if anyone wants to come back.
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Classic PKD but not his finest
- By Amazon Customer on 21-03-2020
- Lies, Inc.
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
Classic PKD but not his finest
Reviewed: 21-03-2020
Despite its unusual publication history, and the observation by many that the final book is an amalgam of two short stories, this book is a classic PKD story. Firstly, this provenance is not unusual for his novels. Having read the short stories, and most of his novels, this is a familiar pattern. It might even be that the majority are constructed in this way. Secondly, the themes of shared irreality, fanciful weapons, and complex conspiracies are his stock in trade.
However, this is not the best such novel. In particular, the question of the protagonist's experience does not become an emphatic theme of the novel as it does in Ubik, and the reader is free to discard the struggles with multiple realities as a simple delusion.
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The Crack in Space
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Benjamin L. Darcie
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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When a repairman accidentally discovers a parallel universe, everyone sees it as an opportunity, whether as a way to ease Earth’s overcrowding, set up a personal kingdom, or hide an inconvenient mistress. But when a civilization is found already living there, the people on this side of the crack are sent scrambling to discover their motives. Will these parallel humans come in peace? Or are they just as corrupt and ill-intentioned as the people of this world?
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A familiar combination of themes
- By Amazon Customer on 15-03-2020
- The Crack in Space
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Benjamin L. Darcie
A familiar combination of themes
Reviewed: 15-03-2020
for the PKD completionist, such as myself, this book is a pleasant surprise. it revisits much of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, while incorporating at least 2 short stories. however, it never quite leaves the reader troubled by unsquared unreality
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Something Deeply Hidden
- Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.
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This book is bloody brilliant
- By Neety Thorsteinsson on 09-11-2019
- Something Deeply Hidden
- Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
I was the right audience for this book
Reviewed: 28-01-2020
and was well rewarded
Over the years, I had read several popular science books on similar subjects, and in recent years watched PBS Space Time and listened to Sean Carroll's Mindscape. I had been left with questions and despaired for answers. This book anticipated these, and corrected some errors for which I had not even formed questions. Its probably the case that to do better requires actually studying the math.
This book did an exceptional job in clearly explaining the route through the consensus and onto the quantum interpretation that it championed. As history of science, I found it very satisfying. I would have loved the book to have engaged directly with the philosophy of mathematics or of science. Without expertise in either, I nevertheless feel confident they would offer cogent critiques of the interpretation. In particular, I cannot help but be unsettled by the sense in which it seems to settle the interpretation of probability as being a real property of the universe.
1 person found this helpful
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Boy Swallows Universe
- By: Trent Dalton
- Narrated by: Stig Wemyss
- Length: 16 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. But Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.
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Hard to press stop!
- By Fiona_S on 08-10-2018
- Boy Swallows Universe
- By: Trent Dalton
- Narrated by: Stig Wemyss
Remarkably shallow
Reviewed: 20-08-2019
This felt like the script of a second tier Australian movie, out stayed its welcome, and had remarkably little to say. Many others have loved it. If like me you found the first half hour shallow, then abandon your read, it did not improve for me
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The Death of Grass
- By: John Christopher
- Narrated by: William Gaminara
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A viral strain has attacked rice crops in East Asia causing massive famine; soon a mutation appears which infects the staple crops of West Asia and Europe such as wheat and barley, threatening a worldwide famine. Christopher's classic post-apocalyptic novel follows the struggles of architect John Custance and his family as they make their way across an England that is rapidly descending into anarchy.
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superb, but grim
- By Amazon Customer on 06-07-2019
- The Death of Grass
- By: John Christopher
- Narrated by: William Gaminara
superb, but grim
Reviewed: 06-07-2019
This remains a genuinely frightening book. The story is spare and perfectly plotted. A minor weakness that is not of it's own making, is that when written the war was recent history that would be expected to shape the responses of people at large. It is harder to feel confident in how groups would respond today. A closer to this day analogue is The Road, but it really dodges the question of the first day, which this book fearlessly tackles
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The Zap Gun
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In this biting satire, the Cold War may have ended, but the eastern and western governments never told their citizens. Instead they created an elaborate ruse wherein each side comes up with increasingly outlandish doomsday weapons - weapons that don’t work. But when aliens invade, the top designers of both sides have to come together to make a real doomsday device - if they don’t kill each other first. With its combination of romance, espionage, and alien invasion, The Zap Gun skewers the military-industrial complex in a way that’s as relevant today as it was at the height of the Cold War.
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One of the better PKD books
- By Amazon Customer on 01-07-2019
- The Zap Gun
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
One of the better PKD books
Reviewed: 01-07-2019
Thoroughly enjoyable, but not a PKD classic. It contains many themes from his short stories, and some of the structure of other novels, but is not a direct rewrite of any in particular
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The Three-Body Problem
- By: Cixin Liu
- Narrated by: Bruno Roubicek
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilisation on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them or to fight against the invasion.
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Excellent
- By Kai on 29-11-2016
- The Three-Body Problem
- By: Cixin Liu
- Narrated by: Bruno Roubicek
Failed hard sci-fi
Reviewed: 28-06-2019
There are 3 notable aspects to this novel: it's setting, it's sociology, and it's fictionalisation of future physics.
The first is it's most successful, and likely explains its great success in China. However, for most readers, I expect we would be better served reading a novel that deals foremost with the setting of China before and after the cultural revolution.
The sociology is very weak. It is adequately replaced by reading Philip K Dick's short story Null-O.
The fictionalisation of physics fails to suspend disbelief, and is often delivered in uninteresting slabs of exposition. Isaac Arthur does a great job of poking holes in most of the ideas expressed. it may have worked better 10 years ago.
A reader looking for a novel of this type in English would do better reading Neal Stephenson or William Gibson
3 people found this helpful