Favorite Science Fiction Stories, Volume 1

Great selection of stories and nice variety of narration. Looking forward to more volumes!

Great selection of stories from the humorous ( The Wub ) to the profound ( Machine Stops ) and in between. Narrators all good. Was hoping to get Volume 2 next but I guess it's not out yet. Give us more! Can't wait!

Don't really care when these stories were written, as long as they are good...and they are. I liked some of the readers better than others but they were all good.

Yes

Anyone, the main narrator is horrible monotonated and sounds the same in EVERY story!

N/A

The old time stories are great still!

Some of these stories are classics: A Martian Odyssey; The Machine Stops; Gifts of Asti; The Defenders. Others are less well-known: Image of the Gods; 2B R0 2B. A few were just utterly forgettable.

Many of these stories are available individually on Audible; one advantage to this collection is that you can snag a good half-dozen good stories with one credit. But there are also a lot of second- or third-tier stories mixed in. For example, A Martian Odyssey is considered to be one of the best shorter-than-novel sci-fi stories, period (although better renditions are available on Audible). 2B R0 2B is a pretty good story, but it's not Vonnegut's best (even relating to the particular theme); I had never encountered A World Called Crimson before listening to this collection, and I'm not in a hurry to encounter it again.

The most common theme, unfortunately, is fair-to-poor reading. Jim Roberts seems to have read most of them, and his performance is delivered in a quite uninspired monotone. The other narrators are better, but Roberts seems to have done a large fraction of them.

The bottom line: a mixed bag. Some great stories, some so-so stories, some non-good ones. Some good narrations, but many of the stories have a poor narrator.

A few of the stories were good ... and a couple of them were just silly. In retrospect, I do not feel it was a worthy use of a credit. I really should have placed more stock in the reviews which seemed to indicate a similar, blasé experience by other listeners.

FYI this book is a compilation of 'classic' sci-fi. Not necessarily from the golden age of sci-fi but maybe a little after, I am guessing from late 50s to early 70s. The quality of the sound on the narration is poor and the most commonly used narrator has an almost robotic monotone voice. This voice comes in handy when robots are actually talking but not people.

Audible has some overall much higher quality classic sci fi compilations such as 'Best of Science Fiction and fantasy' and 'Minority Report and other stories'. Better yet for some really interesting contemporary stories I highly recommend 'Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine show'

This book may be worth it to have in your list for the few gems found in it but it should not be at the top of your list.

I downloaded this for a 17-hour drive. I was hoping to be mildly entertained, at least enough to stay awake, but all but one or two of these stories pretty much put me to sleep. Maybe sci-fi just doesn't translate well to audiobook, but I can't believe these banal stories actually got published.

This collection sounds like it was recorded in my neighbor's garage and narrated by my neighbors. Or maybe what my high school's electronics club and drama club could put together. Who did the quality control on this project?

Every so often, Audible.com peddles this level of material. Hopefully, potential buyers would read the reviews. I did not because I built up such confidence in other, greater scifi collections offered here. My mistake.

The audio is sub-par -- must be related to the acoustics in my neighbor's garage: sound reflecting off the lawn mower, sacks of fertilizer, and trash cans.

The performances give me the creeps. All of the readers are obviously focused on trying to get it right or just get through it, rather than immersion into the story. Listen to readings by Stefan Rudnicki or Gabrielle de Cuir as contrast.

I guess some of the stories are OK. Unfortunately, even if they were great works, the other distractions of sound and reading prevent a good analysis.

These are real gems of SF. No, they are not the only gems, but gems nonetheless. However, the male narration is HORRIBLE. As another reader said: "The quality of the sound on the narration is poor and the most commonly used narrator has an almost robotic monotone voice." I wish I could specify which male narrator, but cannot. What a waste. Audible, please re-release this book with a competent narrator - please.