• The Dispatcher

  • By: John Scalzi
  • Narrated by: Zachary Quinto
  • Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (82,527 ratings)

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The Dispatcher

By: John Scalzi
Narrated by: Zachary Quinto
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Publisher's summary

Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)

Winner, 2017 APA Audie Awards - Original Work

From master storyteller and Hugo Award-winner John Scalzi comes this Audible Original novella, winner of the 2017 Audie Award for Best Original Work. Emmy-nominated actor Zachary Quinto—best known for his roles as the Nimoy-approved Spock in the Star Trek reboot and the menacing, power-stealing serial killer Sylar in Heroes—brings his well-earned sci-fi credentials and simmering intensity to this genre-bending thriller.

One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone—999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don't know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.

Enter Tony Valdez, professional Dispatcher. True to their name, these licensed assassins are tasked with humanely disposing of people in death’s crosshairs to offer them a second chance at avoiding the reaper. When a friend and fellow Dispatcher goes missing, Valdez is plunged into a web of intrigue both professional and personal.

It's a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it's too late...before not even a Dispatcher can save him.

©2016 John Scalzi (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Go Behind the Scenes with Zachary Quinto

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Publisher's summary

Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)

Winner, 2017 APA Audie Awards - Original Work

From master storyteller and Hugo Award-winner John Scalzi comes this Audible Original novella, winner of the 2017 Audie Award for Best Original Work. Emmy-nominated actor Zachary Quinto—best known for his roles as the Nimoy-approved Spock in the Star Trek reboot and the menacing, power-stealing serial killer Sylar in Heroes—brings his well-earned sci-fi credentials and simmering intensity to this genre-bending thriller.

One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone—999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don't know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.

Enter Tony Valdez, professional Dispatcher. True to their name, these licensed assassins are tasked with humanely disposing of people in death’s crosshairs to offer them a second chance at avoiding the reaper. When a friend and fellow Dispatcher goes missing, Valdez is plunged into a web of intrigue both professional and personal.

It's a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it's too late...before not even a Dispatcher can save him.

©2016 John Scalzi (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
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About the Creator

New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi is celebrated for his sharp, whip-smart sci-fi. With novels such as Redshirts, Lock In, The Collapsing Empire, and The Kaiju Preservation Society, Scalzi’s uncanny ability to craft new worlds and technologies has earned him three Hugo Awards, three Locus Awards, a Heinlein Award, and the Audie Award for Original Work. His works have been translated into over 30 languages. Adding to his long-form fiction triumphs, Scalzi acted as a creative consultant on the Stargate Universe television series and as a writer for the Emmy-winning Netflix series Love Death + Robots. From 2010 to 2013, Scalzi served as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and in 2016, he received the Governor’s Award for the Arts in Ohio. He currently resides in Bradford, Ohio with his wife and (several) pets.

About the Performer

Zachary Quinto hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended Carnegie Mellon where he received a BFA in Acting. In 2007 he was cast as Sylar on the hit NBC series Heroes. That same year, he was cast as Spock in the JJ Abrams directed reboot of the Star Trek franchise. He starred in the first season of American Horror Story in 2011, and won a Critic’s Choice Award and Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal on American Horror Story: Asylum. More recently, Zachary hosted the unscripted show In Search Of on the History Channel, and starred in the AMC series NOS4A2.
Quinto appeared in the 2010 Signature revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels In America, for which he won a Theater World Award and a Drama Desk Award nomination. He made his Broadway debut in the 2013 Tony Award winning production of the Glass Menagerie. He was also seen in MCC’s production of Noah Haidle's Smokefall and in the Tony Award winning revival of The Boys in the Band. He stars in the film version of The Boys In The Band, which will be released on Netflix this fall. Quinto began his production company Before the Door Pictures in 2008 and produced such films as Margin Call, All Is Lost, A Most Violent Year, and Aardvark. Before The Door Pictures currently has first-look deals at AMC & Spoke Studios.

What listeners say about The Dispatcher

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IT'S HARD TO GET MYSTICAL ABOUT YOUR JOB

IT'S JUST TAX MONEY
1. Those who love Scalzi's sense of humor, need to know that this has none of that.
2. This is dark and serious
3.This has none of the he said, she said, that seems to upset some people.
4. There is not an iota of science in this.
5. This is more of a paranormal, and seems to be a set up for a series similar to Harry Dresden.
5. Nothing is ever explained as far as the phenomenon that leads to dispatchers. Dispatchers kill people just before they die of other causes. This makes them come back alive 999 times out of 1000.
6. It is entertaining and worth your time.
7. narrator is top notch

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333 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Good Grief This Was Good

Any additional comments?

A phenomenal book, such that I don't believe John Scalzi is the author. I quite like Scalzi's works, but I think of them as highly entertaining mediocrity. First with Lock In and now this, I think he has grown to a new level.

Scalzi's standard humor that he is known for is absent in this book, but do not let that scare you off. It may be short, but there is a solid and strong story here that kept me riveted to the end. Then after I had finished it, I kept thinking about it long after the last words were spoken.

And spoken they were! Zachary Quinto is phenomenal!

Truly this is an easy recommendation to anyone who wants a thriller or a mystery with a clever spin.

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297 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Sounds Like Television.

I am not a snob about clothes (you’d agree if you could see me). I’m not a snob about food. Or wine. Or bourbon. Or cars. But I am…um…particular about the books I read and listen to. The current popular fiction I glimpse on tablets or in paperback editions on the train seems, mostly, like nothing that would do much to elevate my mind or illuminate my inner being.

Does that sound horrible? I don’t mean for it to. It’s just that I’ve got more life behind me than ahead of me, and I want every book to count. Not trying to be dramatic. It’s just the truth.

So, when Audible offered The Dispatcher for free last October, I only snapped it up because I thought I might be wrong. I might be dismissing great stories just because they weren’t time-tested classics. I might be a victim of my own, perhaps too-precious discernment.

Turns out I was wrong. True, the Dispatcher sounds just like those books I sometimes read over peoples’ shoulders on the way to and from work: like television. Not in any way demanding. No need to rewind and savor a sentence or pause to mull over a fresh insight into the human dilemma. But I enjoyed it thoroughly.

This is a great little piece of science fiction. An odd thing is happening to people who get murdered: they come back. Scalzi’s accomplishment here is to make that completely believable, and then to play out some of the possibilities that scenario offers. Granted, there was far more profanity than I’m used to. Some of the social attitudes annoyed me. And I’m not sure I could have stood an entire novel in the same style. But I enjoyed this short, crisp, well-wrought story very much.

I admit to being out of the loop about what our narrator, Zachary Quinto, has done on stage and screen. But his performance, while excellent overall, got a little shaky in the distinguishing-the-voices department, probably the toughest part of audiobook narration.

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166 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

3.69 stars...not bad for a short story

I got this as a Daily Deal for $1, so it was definitely worth that. It was a nice short story, but nothing that would cause me to immediately download more John Scalzi books. The story is a bit above average, and the same goes for the narrator.There's nothing exceptional or terrible here. It's an easy, short listen, and it is somewhat entertaining. If you're not looking to get into anything long or complicated and just want a good performance of a decent story that will hold your attention, then The Dispatcher is for you.

Overall rating: 3.69 stars

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92 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Clever Premise Mostly Unexplored

Several years ago, on the strength of something I started and gave up on almost immediately, I pegged Scalzi as a genre hack. I can’t remember what I read, but I know it reminded me of what I think of as the worst in fantasy: something that took itself too seriously, felt bloated, and depended on trite elements of the form.

Lately, though, I’ve been hearing things that made me think I might have miscast him. Someone somewhere praised his more recent non-fantasy series, and then this book came up on sale and mercifully short. So, I gave it a shot.

In praise of this, I did finish it. What’s more, I admire the root premise: it’s a world where something has changed so that anyone murdered by another returns to life. I grant the intriguing possibilities of that potentially supernatural phenomenon. I further grant that it’s an interesting move to imagine specialists in killing in such a changed world. These dispatchers kill people – usually in hospitals – so they will avoid natural deaths and thereby return to life.

But that’s about where my admiration stops. There’s a mystery in place, but there’s little grace in its exposition or its solution. It’s set in Chicago so, of course, it involves the mob. It also involves hot dogs and the best toppings for them, however briefly. And there’s a cop with whom our protagonist reluctantly partners. None of that material is especially compelling or memorable.

Worse, Scalzi barely mines the implications of his premise. He has his character embrace a too-easy agnosticism. When someone asks if the phenomenon of such resurrections is proof of the divine, he suggests a better proof would be for people to stop wanting to kill each other. That’s a good line, but it suggests a disappointing lack of interest in something so profound.

Since anyone who murders someone provokes this response, it isn’t clear why we need specialists like Valdez. Wouldn’t it make sense for doctors just to kill patients whose operations they’ve botched? Why bring in an outsider when anyone could do it?

In an even more glaring oversight, there’s no real consideration about the change in the value of a life if it’s suddenly so much harder to get killed. Beyond the theological implications, there ought to be existential ones: what does it mean to be alive if, suddenly, we get more chances at life than just the one? I’m not asking for Sartre, but I am asking for something along the lines of the excellent insights of Claire North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

Anyway, I’m willing to bump Scalzi up one notch from the pay-no-mind-at-all level I first assigned him to, but I’m not persuaded to try any more of his work.

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82 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great premise to an engrossing story

Quick book to finish; great narration and entertaining story with an intriguing premise. Highly recommended.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

I want more!

Love the concept.
Scalzi made another masterpiece of a world.
And Zachary Quinto is amazing. Who knew he would be so awesome at narration.
As I said, I want more.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Has a few flaws but still good

It's an interesting short story with an unusual premise and I would definitely recommend it, but it does have a few flaws. First, as much as a I like John Scalzi, not EVERY main character has to be a wise cracking super sarcastic hero whenever he's under the gun, and for this guy in particular it felt out of character. Second, I don't buy that someone who has spent years doing shady, probably illegal deals on the side decides to start hinting about it and late spilling his guts to a police officer he just met. Last, Zachary Quinto is a great actor and he does an awesome just with the voices, BUT there is nothing more irritating than a voice actor breathing into the microphone, which he does when he's doing the old woman voice.

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54 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

ehh

It starts like it's going to have a deep and interesting ending. then it ends without answering anything. very disappointing and the first original I haven't liked

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great short story

This was a great story. I was left wanting more and would definitely go for a sequel if there was one.

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