Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Science Fiction

This true modern masterpiece is built around the two fateful words that make up the title and herald the end - “Alas, Babylon.” When a nuclear holocaust ravages the United States, a thousand years of civilization are stripped away overnight, and tens of millions of people are killed instantly. But for one small town in Florida, miraculously spared, the struggle is just beginning, as men and women of all backgrounds join together to confront the darkness....

Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever, and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps", robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real, and the crowds love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

As Michael Talbot and crew hit the last stretch before the US border, they are struck by the most devastating losses thus far on their journey. After trekking some of the harshest environment on the continent, surviving the shipwreck of their floating home, an escape from a brutal military that still pursues them, and attacks from every ilk of undead monster, the finish line is finally just up ahead. Making better time on the road than they ever have, the crew are menaced by the most ironic of enemies, led by an evil presence that has yet to reveal its motives.

Years after the appearance in the solar system of the immense, deserted spaceship, Rama, a second craft arrived, destined to become home for a group of human colonists. But now the colony has become a brutal dictatorship, terrorizing its own inhabitants Nicole Wakefield, condemned to death for treason, has escaped to New York. There she is reunited with her husband, but pursuit is not far behind and they are forced to flee to the subterranean corridors of New York inhabited by the menacing octospiders.

In the futuristic city of Tabula Ra$a, Zoey Ashe is like a fish so far out of water that it has achieved orbit. After inheriting a criminal empire, the 23-year-old finds herself under threat from all sides as a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life enemies think they smell weakness. On the eve of the world's most ridiculous Halloween celebration, a steamer trunk-sized box arrives at Zoey's door, and she is shocked to find that it contains a disemboweled corpse. She's even more shocked when that corpse, controlled by an unknown party, rises and goes on a rampage through the house.

Accepting the responsibilities as ruler to the world of Amber, Corwin finds himself the target of sibling treachery, and must seek guidance in a land of visions, where a sinister prediction foretells his doom.

In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor to the very brink of madness. How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship, scientific hubris and horror.

Kyle Riggs has been away from Earth for a long time.... What’s happening back home? In Empire, the sixth book of the Star Force Series, the story moves in a new direction. Earth falls quiet, and the few reports coming out of the homeworld are increasingly strange. Isolated in the Eden system, Riggs realizes his enemies are forming an alliance against him. Crushed between two monstrous fleets, the last defenders of Star Force must forge their own alliance with the biotic aliens. But which alien race can Riggs truly trust?

The human-eating Posleen have invaded Earth, decimating all but two North American territories. Heavily outnumbered, humans cluster close together, the possibilities of habitable space shrinking by the day. An epic battle from September 11-27, 2009, will decide the fate of humankind, and the apocalyptic decision to use nuclear weapons - heretofore banned - will alter the fate of alien and human forever.

Each member of Omega Force carries his own baggage. Most of them are running from their pasts or simply trying to forget them. One member of the small mercenary crew is not who he claims to be, however. When his former life collides with his current one, the team is drawn into a conflict that could have profound consequences for the future of an entire species. Captain Jason Burke struggles to find answers as the tight cohesion of his crew seems to dissolve.

The Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume in the four-volume epic, the tale of a young Severian, an apprentice to the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession - showing mercy towards his victim.

Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun" is one of speculative fiction's most-honored series. In a 1998 poll, Locus Magazine rated the series behind only "The Lord of the Rings" and The Hobbit as the greatest fantasy work of all time.

A mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilization has vanished during his absence. Eventually, in San Francisco, he encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children a small community develops, but rebuilding civilization is beyond their resources, and gradually they return to a simpler way of life.

At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence.

When Dan McCarthy stumbles upon a folder containing evidence of the conspiracy to end all conspiracies - a top-level alien cover-up - he leaks the files without a second thought. The incredible truth revealed by Dan's leak immediately captures the public's imagination, but Dan's relentless commitment to exposing the cover-up and forcing disclosure quickly earns him some enemies in high places.

Day one: The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the Earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. Week Two: Civilization has crumbled. Year Twenty: A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild.

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.

Pell's Station, orbiting the alien world simply called Downbelow, had always managed to remain neutral in the ever escalating conflict between The Company, whose fleets from Earth had colonized space, and its increasingly independent and rebellious colony worlds. But Pell's location - - on the outer edge of Earth's defensive perimeter - makes her the focal point in the titanic battle of colony worlds fighting for independence.

Boarding a transport ship after the Battle of Gettysburg, Colonel Andrew Keane and his 35th Maine regiment are swept into an alternate world. The first human civilization they encounter on this planet resembles medieval Russia, with boyars and priests ruling over the peasants and townspeople. Soon Keane and his regiment learn this world's terrible secret: that cannibalistic hordes of large, fierce Tugars circle the planet and demand tribute - including humans to be devoured.

The thrilling conclusion to The Extinction Files is finally here! In 2003, the first human genome was sequenced. But the secrets it held were never revealed. The truth was discovered 30 years ago, almost by accident. Dr. Paul Kraus had spent his entire career searching for what he called humanity's lost tribes - human ancestors who had gone extinct. When Kraus compared the DNA samples of the lost tribes with our own, he found a pattern of changes: a code. At the time, the technology didn't exist to unravel what it meant. Kraus hid his work and disappeared.