Destination: Void cover art

Destination: Void

The Pandora Sequence

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Destination: Void

By: Frank Herbert
Narrated by: Scott Brick
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About this listen

The starship Earthling, filled with thousands of hibernating colonists en route to a new world at Tau Ceti, is stranded beyond the solar system when the ship's three organic mental cores—disembodied human brains that control the vessel's functions—go insane. The emergency skeleton crew sees only one chance for survival: build an artificial consciousness in the Earthling's primary computer that can guide them to their destination—and hope it doesn't destroy the human race.

Don't miss Frank Herbert's classic novel that begins the epic Pandora Sequence.

©1966 Frank Herbert (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Adventure Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera World Literature Fantasy

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All stars
Most relevant
I really enjoyed this story. I liked the interactions between the characters surrounding the development of the AI.

Good yarn

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Heavy reading but a digestible story... There is much philosophical discussion by characters with personal biases who complicate the reading as academic discussion tends to do...

Consciousness ...

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Its bad. The pseudo philosophy of consciousness and ridiculous retro technology of relays and paper tape output - already becoming obsolete when written. But its brilliant with a riveting story, surprising reveals, intrigue and genuine tense moments. Whether you like the ending or not, the basic premise of the succession of ships to Tau Ceti stands among the greatest ideas of SF.

Brilliant and terrible at the time

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Looking forward to sci-fi but too philosophical for me, couldn’t get into it . Shame.

Too philosophical

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Like most soft sci-fi, there is a level of acceptance in the tech used where it is part of the fantasy. But the amount of mental juggling between old tech that we now know can't do what the story tries to say, and fantasy future tech is way too heavy to maintain over the entire story. I tried to follow it from the beginning twice and found it just too boring to enjoy. A rewrite with current tech and from a less blow by blow monologue would make this a great story.

Story consept is good, but level of tech is old.

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