Existence

By: David Brin

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins, Robin Miles, L. J. Ganser

Length: 32 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Best-selling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence.

Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an "alien artifact". Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer - a message in a bottle, an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

©2012 David Brin (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

A great story, but finish a PLOT POINT

Characters: 5*
Plot: 3*
Universe: 5*

I loved the characters in this story and the universe. Where it fell flat was in the plot. It wasn't that the author couldn't write intriguing plots, it was that they couldn't finish any of them in a satisfactory manner.

The author would introduce a plot point and go at it from about 20 points of view. And it would work. It was fascinating. I was drawn in.

And then...

The plot would suddenly jump ahead with no actual resolution. There *might* be a short throwback to hint at what happened, but it seemed to be full steam ahead with the next evolution of the plot. This would also be well done and draw you in.

And then...

Repeat.

At some point I just wanted to holler at the book - PLEASE JUST TELL ME WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENS TO THIS PLOT!!!!!

Asks the best question- What If? - in interesting and entertaining ways

Reconciling Fermi's Paradox in unexpected ways. Great mix of characters sparing with both lasers and ideas. Pace was perfect- fully developing characters and situations without bogging down in minutiae.

Author's mind kept me going to the end.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

No. This was a grueling read. My mind couldn't keep up with who was who and what was happening. I know the author has a brilliant mind and this book was his way of relating what this world would be like in the future.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Existence?

One of the characters had only her mind left after an accident. She was given an artificial body and her mind was somehow made part of this new body.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No.

Did Existence inspire you to do anything?

It made me think about the notion that our world exists solely through the perception of the observer. The book tries to get your mind around this belief about what reality really is.

Any additional comments?

I heard a David Brin interview. He has a genius mind. I wanted to hear more about his ideas, that's why I bought the book. But, it turned out to be a long, grueling read. My mind just isn't equipped to process his information.

Great characters and thought-provoking

Very well read, the stories and characters are deep and fun. They come together nicely with a great underlying thoughtfulness about how the future could unfold. Thought provoking.

Awesome in its scope, great characters!

If you could sum up Existence in three words, what would they be?

Thought-provoking storytelling!

What was one of the most memorable moments of Existence?

The inexorable logic and analysis, as well as sheer human courage, that leads to thwarting a terrorist threat.

Which scene was your favorite?

My favorite scene was the one where Tor Pavlov defeats and intelligent laser with the assistance of her AI "son", then tells him she's proud to have him as her partner. This scene sums up the book's intertwining of large concepts with human minutia.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

What if at first contact, the others say "have I got a deal for you ..."?

Any additional comments?

The narration by the three voices was awesome - it really helped keep the intricate story lines and personalities straight. Great job, all!

Perseverance will be required

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Hmm. The listener hears a lot of internal monologues. A lot. And philosophical speculation and what-ifs. While it is interesting, it chokes up the first 8 hours of the book, requiring perseverance. After that, things start to roll. The "real" story takes shape, characters start becoming real and the plot lines unfold.
However, I don't know if I would have stuck it out, if I had realized that this is apparently not part of a series, but a stand alone novel. At the time, I took the 8 fallow hours as investment. There are also some ideas that the author seems unable to pursue sufficiently, so maybe they should just have been edited out, or in some cases, fleshed out.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Slightly surprising, mildly disappointing

What three words best describe the narrators’s performance?

varied, intense, enthusiastic

Did Existence inspire you to do anything?

In spite of the overall disappointment, I will definitely give David Brin's Uplift books a go. He is clearly an intelligent, deep thinker with story-telling abilities. I just wouldn't choose Existence to showcase his talent

Any additional comments?

For all the work he put into it and all the ground work the listener/reader has to endure, there should be more books building on Existence

An Excellent Future History

What made the experience of listening to Existence the most enjoyable?

The book had excellent insights into what might happen in the near and not so near future.

Who was your favorite character and why?

My favorite characters were the crystals.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

It was too long for that.

Any additional comments?

A most enjoyable future history!

Second try through TEDIOUS book

I desperately wanted to like this book and author. First time I made it three chapters in before I just could not take it anymore. The dialog is staccato and grating to follow. The story is not flowing or eloquent, nor creative, clever or scientifically interesting. The female narration is the quintessential 9th grade science teacher who doesn't care if you are paying attention. I know there was a monkey, a rocket club launch, something about the government buildings, and oh just get to SOME POINT!

Second time I tried to listen to the book, again from the start, I have made it to the sixth chapter. It's SO TEDIOUS and is not getting better. I literally could not care if any of the characters just drop dead (presumably of boredom). I don't remember their names, I have almost zero information about their relationships, sense of self and others. They seem to just bounce in and away again, with no lingering sense of who they are or why I would care at all about them.

If there is a horse of a story somewhere in this pile of manure, I could not find it. I would NEVER buy a David Brin book again, and I am very sorry I bought this one.

My only real question is how the editor of this book was not fired for allowing it to be released. I'm sure with SOME PROFESSIONAL CARE, this could have been crafted into something worth reading/listening to. Opportunity lost.

A rich epic of one possible future after ET contact

A radical departure from his other sci-fi, “Existence” may perhaps best be considered an alien contact opera. The story is told in many voices. The audiobook is narrated by several voices as well. It probably took 2-3 hours for me to get into this story. If I hadn’t noted how long it is, I probably would have given up on the story because it starts out pretty disjointed. As well as being a really good story ultimately, it takes the reader/listener on a wonderful survey of thought concerning possible contact scenarios and the various possible fates that await intelligent races. It touches on psychology, economics, political science, magic, salesmanship, has a spattering of very accessible math throughout as well as TONS of discussions on science and philosophy. Looking up every unfamiliar word resulted in dozens of searches, so my vocabulary has been enlarged. Great book!

Pedantic and Tedious

The production of this audio book is admirable in every way: the readers each brought vivid and interesting characterizations that enlivened long stretches of exasperating sermons, philosophical disputations, and thoughtful musings on the human condition and the nature of "Existence" that nearly had me ripping out my hair with exasperation, time and time again. Indeed, the performances are much better than the material deserves.

It seems like there came a point (avoiding spoilers, where the Havana Artifact and "The Courier of Warning" were about to start talking) when the author realizes that all the plot lines so carefully built up for the last 400 pages WERE GOING NOWHERE. So he turned and sped off in a completely different and even more annoying direction.

So we have two novels which aren't about anything, in which nothing much happens, which have no particular protagonists, or far too many, take your pick. Some of the most interesting threads disappear with no trace, so be careful.

Advice to the author: pick a story and tell it, dammit. Advice to the reader: pick another story.