playing time: more
than 10 Hours/ ISBN: 9781884612190/
Regular price:
$36.99 / 8 CDs
The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 5 is
now available
available as an eBook for $4.99 on the Kindle
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An unabridged audio collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories
published in 2012 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan
Kaster, as narrated by top voice talents. In “Invisible Men,” by Christopher
Barzak, a maid in an inn encounters the Invisible Man who makes her an offer
to be more than she is in this quasi-retelling of H.G. Wells’ famous story. In
this year’s Nebula Award winner for best novelette, “Close Encounters,” by
Andy Duncan, an old man is hounded by reporters about the stories he used to
tell of an alien who took him into space and the dog he brought back with him.
“Bricks, Sticks, Straw,” by Gwyneth Jones, follows virtual scientists
forced to survive within their remotes when a young science team on Earth loses
remote contact with their telepresences on Jupiter’s moons. In “Arbeitskraft,”
by Nick Mamatas, Friedrich Engels strives to spread class revolution as a
labor organizer for factory cyborg matchstick girls. “The Man,” by Paul
McAuley, is a Jackaroo tale about a solitary woman, living in a cabin on the
planet Yanos, whose life is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a naked man
at her door. In “Nahiku West,” by Linda Nagata, set in the author’s
Nanotech Succession sequence, officer Zeke Choy investigates an accident
involving an illegal enhancement which was used to save a life. “Tyche and the
Ants,” by Hannu Rajaniemi, showcases the plight of a young girl hidden on
the moon by her parents, along with grags and Brain, as robotic ants have come
from the Great Wrong Place to take her away. In “Katabasis,” by Robert Reed,
human adventurers on a journey in an inhospitable high-gravity region of the
Great Ship must use porters, evolved for massive worlds, to aid them. “The
Contrary Gardener,” by Christopher Rowe, tells of the tough decisions a
talented gardener in a society which genetically grows some crops for ammunition
must come to when she’s recruited for the war effort. Finally, in “Scout,” by
Bud Sparhawk, a reconstructed marine is deployed to a planet occupied by the
Shardies to reconnoiter by making use of his “turtle” enhancements to avoid
detection.