David

I would say that stories 1 & 3 were good, 4 was average, and 2 was horrible enough for me to regret this purchase.

The Astronaut from Wyoming is horrible. Long, dragged out, preachy, everything good sci-fi short stories shouldn't be. Listen to the last 15 minutes if you must listen to it at all. Try to ignore the reader's (purposeful?) mispronoucation of NASA as "Nassau".

On the other hand, "Slow Life" and the dinosaur stories were good, and the 9/11 one wasn't bad.

Very fun! Excellent scale/action/sci-fi! Hard science fiction (after the wormhole concept) with a strategic & political focus.

Only real downside is the editing, as is common in audio books. The editing essentially eliminates pauses between scene changes to the point where they are non-existent. I wish an audio book editor would read these reviews or perhaps Audible could point them out to an editor. I know I'm not the only one writing this in these reviews: When you read a physical book or watch a movie, and the viewpoint changes, there is either blank space in a book, or an audio/visual queue in the case of a movie. This is there to indicate to the reader/viewer that there has been a change in scene and allow them a second to mentally adjust to the new scene. In this audio book and many others, a scene change is at least as brief or more so than the pause after a normal sentence end. This tends to cause one to lose track of the story and sometime I have to rewind. Why not just give us a couple of seconds of dead air?

Just to let you folks looking for science fiction or fantasy know. This is truly neither. It does have a good vibe going for historical Scotland, with some decent action episodes. However, its really what I imagine is a lady's romance novel would read like. I've never read one, until this one. Anyway, if you want to hear about how this woman is pleased by her strong Scottish man in bed, in vague romantic terms, please listen. Otherwise, you may want to avoid.

Scott Brick makes this one work. The story is so-so

This book was great. Not as cerebral as other sci fi, but exciting and fun.

Reader was excellent.

Plot and sci-fi concepts were good enough to enjoy the fun storyline.

This book was fair. It had its entertaining parts, but generally those parts were streched to fill it out.

The nanotech concepts were generally good, until the author got into the drummers concept. Didn't really think it was built the right way, but I'm no author.

The vocalist was fairly good, but the pace was sometimes inappropriate to the material.

Anyway, if you haven't read snow crash, take that one first. This one is not nearly as entertaining.

I have enjoyed this type of book (scientific explanation and pondering) in the past, but did not care for this title at all. The author goes into excruciating detail on some of the simpler subjects while breezing through some of the more difficult without answering basic questions. The narrator also leaves something to be desired. Overall, I would recommend skipping this book or at least going for the abridged version.