The Visitor cover art

The Visitor

First Contact Hard Science Fiction

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The Visitor

By: Tony Harmsworth
Narrated by: Marni Penning
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About this listen

The Visitor - hard, near-future science fiction for the listener who likes realism.

Specialist astronaut Evelyn Slater encounters a small, badly damaged, ancient alien artifact on the first ever space junk elimination mission.

Where was it from? Who sent it?

International governments impose a security clampdown. Evelyn leads a team of handpicked scientists who make amazing discoveries within the alien device. Secrecy becomes impossible to maintain. When the news is finally released, she becomes embroiled in international politics, worldwide xenophobic hatred, and violence.

This is the first book in the Tony Harmsworth’s First Contact series of novels. If you like realistic near-future stories which compel you to imagine yourself as the protagonist, The Visitor is the book for you. The Visitor is a science fiction for the "thinking" listener and with a wicked twist. Buy it now and be transported into orbit.

©2017 Tony Harmsworth (P)2019 Tony Harmsworth First Contact Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Fiction
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Similar to Jerry Pournell. A great first contact story, a lot of tropes avoided.The main character has a bit of juvenile arrogance, but overall it is worth persevering. The narrator has a peculiar accent and intonation which also comes across as juvenile.

Pretty good

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Excellent story. Good blend of science fiction, philosophy and psychology. Well performed. Some poor accents.

Excellent premise

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Totally enjoyed this read .. our humanity is in question .. Hopefully us humans can do a better job

A fictional story to believe .. very enjoyable

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I began my listening by mostly enjoying this story. There weren't too many slow points, and the character could be irritating at times, but I did feel pleasantly invested in the outcome.
Sections of the plot which skipped to e.g. 3 days or 6 months later were sometimes jarring but were done well, and better than padding out a book with unnecessary filler, in my opinion.
I later revised this opinion as I felt there was not enough plot to fill the holes sometimes. The ideas were there, the scene was set, we skipped ahead to different points and then it sorta raced to the ending.
I feel like the latter portion of the story was mostly this skipping from point to point in time as a vehicle for a whole bunch of anti-religious diatribe. The plot got less and less, while the rather sanctimonious and supercilious main characters bewailed how backwards the human race was, and blamed every human failing on religion.
It got tedious.
It didn't actually make sense sometimes, but that's just me being picky because I was sick of overlooking flaws and being preached at instead of being told a story.
Would I read it a second time? No.
Do I feel like I wasted all that listening time? Not quite. It was enjoyable when it was, it was just very unsatisfying to finish. It had a definite enough ending, just the road there was a bit more fender bender.

Bit unsatisfying. Reasons.

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