Looking for Good SF Audiobook

[Sandi_k]

So - DH and I are road-tripping soon, and he's asked for some audiobooks for the trip. We both like SF - I'm a reader, he's a watcher.

Many of my favorites don't seem to have Audiobooks available for them. I am specifically looking for something I can get via Libby as a borrowed audiobook.

Any recs for good ones? Thanks!

[nereo]

SF…?

At first I thought you meant the city of San Francisco, where maybe you are road tripping to, but then I thought maybe Science Fiction.  Or perhaps you are military buffs and are interested in stories about the Special Forces?

[RWTL]

Assuming you mean Sci-Fi....have you read "We are Legion, We are Bob"?  I like it so much, I've read/listened to it a few times.  I like both the author and the narrator.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Red rising is a solid audio book from a story and narrator perspective.

[Sailor Sam]

The murderbot diaries series, by Martha Wells. The first one is All Systems Red. I let the title and blurb put me off for a long time, but they are excellent. MurderBot isn’t really bent on murder, they just want to be left alone to watch media.

Good integration of gender and sexuality, too, without being heavy handed.

[Sandi_k]

Assuming you mean Sci-Fi....have you read "We are Legion, We are Bob"?  I like it so much, I've read/listened to it a few times.  I like both the author and the narrator.

Yes, SciFi.

I have not - thanks for the rec!

[Sandi_k]

Red rising is a solid audio book from a story and narrator perspective.

I've read it, and wasn't overly impressed. Since this is DH's first ask for something like this, I want to knock it out of the park. ;)

[Sandi_k]

The murderbot diaries series, by Martha Wells. The first one is All Systems Red. I let the title and blurb put me off for a long time, but they are excellent. MurderBot isn’t really bent on murder, they just want to be left alone to watch media.

Good integration of gender and sexuality, too, without being heavy handed.

Ha! This is one of the Audiobooks I put  a HOLD on - it's short enough to be complete in the 12 hour round trip, and I think the humor will be something that appeals to him. (And yes, I've read several books in the series).

Other books I've requested, but maybe won't get by the time we leave: Project Hail Mary; This Time Tomorrow; The Time Traveler's Wife.

[scantee]

The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is a good listen.  It’s something that could get boring in print, but manages a nice balance of plot and character development with more technical descriptions that you can kind of zone out on and not miss much.

The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin are both phenomenal audiobooks.

Iain Banks’ The Culture series has an excellent and fitting narrator, Peter Kenny. Of that series, I like Surface Detail, Use of Weapons, and The Player of Games the best.

[Morning Glory]

PTF.
For whatever reason I gravitate to audio for nonfiction and print for fiction,  but I've been looking for some good sci-fi to read. 

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

Red rising is a solid audio book from a story and narrator perspective.

I've read it, and wasn't overly impressed. Since this is DH's first ask for something like this, I want to knock it out of the park. ;)

That's fair. It's not a series I would typically recommend to read. I think it's a fairly entertaining book, but to me, the audiobook part of it puts it over the top.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

The murderbot diaries series, by Martha Wells. The first one is All Systems Red. I let the title and blurb put me off for a long time, but they are excellent. MurderBot isn’t really bent on murder, they just want to be left alone to watch media.

Good integration of gender and sexuality, too, without being heavy handed.

Ha! This is one of the Audiobooks I put  a HOLD on - it's short enough to be complete in the 12 hour round trip, and I think the humor will be something that appeals to him. (And yes, I've read several books in the series).

Other books I've requested, but maybe won't get by the time we leave: Project Hail Mary; This Time Tomorrow; The Time Traveler's Wife.

I just saw this. Definitely Project Hail Mary if you get it! Great book and wonderful audiobook. The Martian was an extremely enjoyable audiobook as well.

[Archipelago]

Have you read Three Body Problem? It's part of a 3-book series. I'm on the second book at the moment. They also recently did a Netflix show for it.

I'd recommend the book for sure! If you like the book, I would watch the show afterwards!

[Sandi_k]

Have you read Three Body Problem? It's part of a 3-book series. I'm on the second book at the moment. They also recently did a Netflix show for it.

I'd recommend the book for sure! If you like the book, I would watch the show afterwards!

Yes, I read it. We've seen the Netflix show.

[Sanitary Stache]

I have listened to Enders Game and Dune and I liked both as audiobooks. But I had already read them and liked them as books. The expanded Enders game stories might be harder to enjoy.

Others I can think of.
The Expanse series.
Jump 225 series.
Is zombie apocalypse also sci-if? I liked world war a. The movie was stupid, but the book is much better.

[Metalcat]

Not Sci-Fi, but if you like Sci-Fi and are at all into non-fiction, A City on Mars was recommended to me by someone here and it's been my go-to for car trips recently.

Listening to their analysis of the logistics and legalities of settling space, you can't help but mentally compare it to every Sci-Fi space story that has been constructed, seeing which elements writers have included and which they've either not considered or just chosen to ignore.

Listening to that and watching For All Mankind in tandem has been a lot of fun.

[Sandi_k]

Not Sci-Fi, but if you like Sci-Fi and are at all into non-fiction, A City on Mars was recommended to me by someone here and it's been my go-to for car trips recently.

Listening to their analysis of the logistics and legalities of settling space, you can't help but mentally compare it to every Sci-Fi space story that has been constructed, seeing which elements writers have included and which they've either not considered or just chosen to ignore.

Listening to that and watching For All Mankind in tandem has been a lot of fun.

Thanks! We love FAM!

[Sandi_k]

I have listened to Enders Game and Dune and I liked both as audiobooks. But I had already read them and liked them as books. The expanded Enders game stories might be harder to enjoy.

Others I can think of.
The Expanse series.
Jump 225 series.
Is zombie apocalypse also sci-if? I liked world war a. The movie was stupid, but the book is much better.

Thanks! I first read Dune around age 13, and Ender's Game around age 20. Teo of my all-time faves.

We've watched The Expanse, I'm a bit neutral about it. DH really likes it - as well as zombies. So World War A might be a good fit. I'm not a big zombie fan, so I'll put it on the B List. ;)

[GuitarStv]

We used to have a recording of Douglas Adams reading the whole Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series that was pretty awesome family fare for long car trips.

In a more serious vein I'd always recommend fellow Canadian Peter Watts' Starfish as great dark sci-fi.  Flatlanders - A Romance of Many Dimensions is perhaps the only book to ever make geometry fun for me.  Michael Crichton's more sciffy works often seem to get overlooked as he was a popular writer but Sphere and The Andromeda Strain are both worth a look if you've missed them . . . and then of course you've got plenty of classics by Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Niven, and Dick that should be available in audiobook form.

[Sanitary Stache]

I have listened to Enders Game and Dune and I liked both as audiobooks. But I had already read them and liked them as books. The expanded Enders game stories might be harder to enjoy.

Others I can think of.
The Expanse series.
Jump 225 series.
Is zombie apocalypse also sci-if? I liked world war a. The movie was stupid, but the book is much better.

Thanks! I first read Dune around age 13, and Ender's Game around age 20. Teo of my all-time faves.

We've watched The Expanse, I'm a bit neutral about it. DH really likes it - as well as zombies. So World War A might be a good fit. I'm not a big zombie fan, so I'll put it on the B List. ;)

Oops! Typo. The book is called World War Z. And it is much different than the movie.

I enjoyed The Expanse books more than the show.
Similarly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep made more sense to me than Blade Runner.

[Michael in ABQ]

PTF.
For whatever reason I gravitate to audio for nonfiction and print for fiction,  but I've been looking for some good sci-fi to read.

Same. With fiction on audio, I get frustrated as I can read much faster. With nonfiction if I try reading it, I usually get bored, but I find I enjoy it more and can actually finish it as an audiobook.


I read a lot of SF, almost anything published by Baen is good. https://baen.com

Neal Stephenson has several great SF books: Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Seveneves, and Anathem.

[Nadia Edits]

I read a lot of SF, almost anything published by Baen is good. https://baen.com

I prefer ebook rather than audiobook, but I absolutely love Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, published by Baen. She has an incredible range as a writer - action, intrigue, comedy, romance, philosophy. Thoroughly recommend it. The prequels are science fiction romance while the main series is military science fiction, evolving more into politics and investigation over time.

[RWTL]

Oops! Typo. The book is called World War Z. And it is much different than the movie.

I saw a Venn diagram once that had overlaping World War Z the movie and book circles.  The only thing they had in common was the title. 

[Sandi_k]

I read a lot of SF, almost anything published by Baen is good. https://baen.com

I prefer ebook rather than audiobook, but I absolutely love Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, published by Baen. She has an incredible range as a writer - action, intrigue, comedy, romance, philosophy. Thoroughly recommend it. The prequels are science fiction romance while the main series is military science fiction, evolving more into politics and investigation over time.

Bujold is my all-time favorite. I got her to sign Memory for me years ago, at the SF BayCon.

However - Shards of Honor and Barrayar apparently do not have Audiobooks with my library. Big disappointment, as it was the first thing I looked for.

Maybe it's a thought to buy an Audiobooks subscription for the trip....instead of depending on Libby and my library.

[Sandi_k]

I read a lot of SF, almost anything published by Baen is good. https://baen.com

Neal Stephenson has several great SF books: Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Seveneves, and Anathem.

I've read a lot of Baen through the years. I've read Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. Waaaay too long and complicated for a 12 hour RT roadtrip.

[Michael in ABQ]

Oops! Typo. The book is called World War Z. And it is much different than the movie.

I saw a Venn diagram once that had overlaping World War Z the movie and book circles.  The only thing they had in common was the title.

Yes. The book was really good, but the movie had virtually nothing in common since it was slow zombies in the book vs. fast zombies in the movie. I read the book at least a decade ago, but I still remember it describing how huge crowds of zombies existed walking around underwater - or half frozen in colder areas where they would thaw out each year. Definitely some things that other zombie movies/shows never really touch on if zombies are truly undead. That same author, Max Brooks, wrote another book a few years ago that was pretty good - Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre.

[reeshau]

I enjoyed Ready Player One as a book much more than the movie.  The movie is less serious, although I'm not gonna trash it, as I enjoyed the cultural references from my youth.

I actually happened to read it after George Gilder's nonfiction Life After Google, and was getting some scary vibes about real social media from it.  Meaning, Ernest Cline did great research on the story.

[Sandi_k]

Yes, I read RPO as well - we saw the movie together. I'll ask DH if he's interested.

Thanks for the rec!

[kenner]

Assuming you mean Sci-Fi....have you read "We are Legion, We are Bob"?  I like it so much, I've read/listened to it a few times.  I like both the author and the narrator.

Yes, SciFi.

I have not - thanks for the rec!

This is actually the first book in a series, and I can say that I liked the first book and would also recommend it, but just a heads up that if you go further be ready for a sort of return to 50s sci-fi where everyone who matters is a middle-aged white man.  As in even the aliens read that way, down to human gender roles.  The Bobs/Bob copies are interesting and make up most of the cast in the first book so the setup absolutely makes sense there, but in the second it expands to include people who should theoretically have some kind of diversity, and it just...doesn't.  And I say that as someone who reads a lot of military sci-fi which doesn't always do a great job at that sort of thing either.

(For the record I gave up mid book 3 so possibly the author got better, but I didn't find them good enough to keep reading to find out)

[Michael in ABQ]

Assuming you mean Sci-Fi....have you read "We are Legion, We are Bob"?  I like it so much, I've read/listened to it a few times.  I like both the author and the narrator.

Yes, SciFi.

I have not - thanks for the rec!

This is actually the first book in a series, and I can say that I liked the first book and would also recommend it, but just a heads up that if you go further be ready for a sort of return to 50s sci-fi where everyone who matters is a middle-aged white man.  As in even the aliens read that way, down to human gender roles.  The Bobs/Bob copies are interesting and make up most of the cast in the first book so the setup absolutely makes sense there, but in the second it expands to include people who should theoretically have some kind of diversity, and it just...doesn't.  And I say that as someone who reads a lot of military sci-fi which doesn't always do a great job at that sort of thing either.

(For the record I gave up mid book 3 so possibly the author got better, but I didn't find them good enough to keep reading to find out)

I just finished the 4th book a month or so ago, and it did change things around somewhat. Most of the book takes place in an alien artificial environment similar to a ring world and they have a small party including one woman (Bridget) who was featured in the earlier books.

There are also some issues with all the Bob clones starting to be more and more different after 10-20 generations and starting to see some internal conflict.

It's not the best series ever but there are definitely some interesting ideas I hadn't seen before like getting a start to explode by hitting it with two small moons/planets. Not sure if the physics actually checks out but get anything up close to light speed and the energy released is going to be massive.