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Ball Lightning
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
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Am Epic Original SciFi Read Worth Your Time...
- By Michael on 07-01-12
By: Greg Bear
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Footfall
- By: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 24 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star. The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and installation on Earth with a hail of asteriods.
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Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle at Their Best
- By Flatlander on 06-24-10
By: Larry Niven, and others
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Event
- By: David L. Golemon
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1947, an unidentified object crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. There were no survivors. Now it's happened again. But this time, two creatures have emerged from the wreckage alive.
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A Great Series.
- By Frank on 07-29-13
By: David L. Golemon
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Rise of the Rocket Girls
- The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
- By: Nathalia Holt
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1940s and '50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible.
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Struggles In Space Exploration
- By Sara on 06-11-16
By: Nathalia Holt
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The Atlantis Gene
- The Origin Mystery, Book 1
- By: A.G. Riddle
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventy thousand years ago, the human race almost went extinct. We survived, but no one knows how.
Until now. The countdown to the next stage of human evolution is about to begin, and humanity might not survive this time. The Immari are good at keeping secrets. For 2,000 years, they've hidden the truth about human evolution. They've also searched for an ancient enemy - a threat that could wipe out the human race. Now the search is over.
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Pretty bad, but not the worst I've ever read
- By january on 03-20-14
By: A.G. Riddle
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The Medusa Chronicles
- By: Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Howard Falcon almost lost his life in an accident as the first human astronaut to explore the atmosphere of Jupiter - and a combination of human ingenuity and technical expertise brought him back. But he is no longer himself. Instead he has been changed into an augmented human: part man, part machine, and exceptionally capable.
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Almost stopped listening. Glad I didn't.
- By cek on 08-21-16
By: Stephen Baxter, and others
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Semper Mars
- Book One of the Heritage Trilogy
- By: Ian Douglas
- Narrated by: Ray Chase
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The Year is 2040. The Marines have landed on Mars to guard the unearthed secrets of an ancient and dangerous alien race: Ourselves. Scientists have discovered something astonishing in the subterranean ruins of a sprawling Martian city: startling evidence of an alternative history that threatens to split humanity into opposing factions and plunge the Earth into chaos and war.
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GOT SH@T UP HIS CHAMBER
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-15-17
By: Ian Douglas
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2001
- A Space Odyssey
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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It has been 40 years since the publication of this classic science-fiction novel that changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man adventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.
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The Movie Makes More Sense Now
- By Douglas on 12-10-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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Homeworld
- By: Harry Harrison
- Narrated by: Charles Carr
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Jan Kulozik was one of Earth's privileged elite. A brilliant young electronics engineer, he enjoyed all the blessings of a twenty-third-century civilization that survived global collapse and conquered the starts, unaware of the millions who slaved or starved to maintain his way of life. Then Jan met Sara, a beautiful agent of the rebel underground dedicated to smashing Earth's rigid caste system. Through her he discovered the truth behind the lies he'd been taught.
By: Harry Harrison
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Superlatives all around!
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A little torn by this one
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Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.
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A very pleasant surprise
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Superlatives all around!
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These 11 stories, including five Chinese Galaxy Award winners, are a blazingly original ode to planet Earth, its pasts, and its futures. Liu's fiction takes the listener to the edge of the universe and the end of time, to meet stranger fates than we could have ever imagined. With a melancholic and keen understanding of human nature, Liu's stories show humanity's attempts to reason, navigate, and above all, survive in a desolate cosmos.
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Extraordinary book!
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Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of 13 will die. And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge needed to keep the world running. But when the world is theirs, the last generation may not want to continue the legacy left to them. And in shaping the future however they want, will the children usher in an era of bright beginnings or final mistakes?
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A little torn by this one
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A very pleasant surprise
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Simple pero interesante
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I just wish all four stories were one book...
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A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
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Odd narrator choice
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A lost soul from Earth transmigrates into a world of cultivation and finds himself in the body of a playboy noble who is wasting his life. Except Chen Haoran doesn't have any memories, can't let anyone know he's not the same person, and is immediately involved in a conspiracy with another powerful noble family involving the downfall of a prominent young genius. Luckily, he came to this world with a power: Whatever he gives to someone as a gift he'll get it back 100 times better.
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The MC is a Simp
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The Arrival
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On New Year's eve 2022, unknown flying objects appear over Europe and ignite an inferno of violence among themselves. Debris from one of the spacecraft falls on Athens, turning the city center into a smoking crater. The destroyed remnant of the former metropolis is declared a restricted zone by NATO forces and sealed off. Amid the few survivors struggling for food, medicine, and clean water, Nikos takes care of his girlfriend, Maria, only to soon find out that to avert a creeping death, there is only one way out of the hell of Athens—the wreckage of the alien ship.
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monotone narrator
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Ruins of the Earth
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A secret buried in the Antarctic. A puzzle unsolved for thousands of years. And a Brooklyn-born master gunnery sergeant who's royally pissed that he has to babysit the researchers sent to figure it all out. But when Patrick "Wic" Finnegan finally sees what the team has uncovered, he can't believe his eyes, nor is he prepared for the violence to come. Soon, the portal opens and unleashes a storm of unbridled fury upon humanity.
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I really wanted to like this.
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What listeners say about Ball Lightning
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Boaz
- 10-19-18
if you loved the three body problem . a must
even though this is a prequel for the three body problem I suggest reading it as a number four book. As a super enthusiastic fan of the three body problem series this one is an excellent 4th listen
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33 people found this helpful
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- Carter Hooper
- 08-22-18
Ate it Up With a Spoon...
I don't know how Cixin Liu does it, but he writes some phenomenal, eye-opening and mind-expanding technical stuff that goes down smooth and leaves you wanting more. What an imagination, I swear this could be real. Not since Frank Herbert has a sci-fi author come up with rich, detailed characterizations, plots and ideas. We need more of his stuff translated and I mean RIGHT NOW! Hungry for more....
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30 people found this helpful
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- tosbanzai
- 08-25-18
Silly title, great book
This is a great book from the same author as “The Three Body Problem” and it’s series. It takes place in the same “universe” before the Three Body Problem, but isn’t really related to it. There’s just some characters you may find recognizable, is all. Other than that, this is a great stand-alone that takes place before any of the events of The Three Body Problem.
I almost didn’t even click on the link for this book. I didn’t know “ball lightning” was a thing, and I actually LOLd IRL when I read the title, and muttered something along the lines of, “what genius picked that title?”
Then I checked the author’s name and went, “wait a second.”
Worth it. Get it. Enjoy it. And if you haven’t read the The Three Body Problem, you should, but do it after this book.
Btw, this book was written before The Three Body Problem, and it shows. It’s not as good obviously, but it’s still pretty good, and I still recommend it.
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28 people found this helpful
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- Silicon Valley Software Veteran
- 06-13-20
This book is actually very short...
It might seem like an average length audio book, but that's only because of the hours taken up by the words "ball lightning," which appear hundreds of not thousands of times. I'm not kidding. OK, It might be a cool term in Chinese, but "ball lightning" in English... It's just awkward to use "ball" as an adjective to describe anything. It's hard to take the story seriously when every few sentences you hear "the BALL LIGHTNING phenomenon was not taken seriously outside the community of BALL LIGHTNING enthusiasts and the first BALL LIGHTNING researcher." (not a real quote - it's just to illustrate.). It's also the dorkiest title of a serious sci-fi book I've ever encountered. Beyond that, the story is OK...ish.. How hard would it have been to come up with something like Persistent Anomalous Lightning... So you can refer to it as PAL: "Since the dawn of PAL research, only a scant few have taken the notion of PAL phenomena seriously-- most of whom would have dismissed it as pseudoscience, had they not witnessed a PAL event first-hand." (again made up, to make the point.) NOTE: there is one amazing unforeseen benefit in my life from encountering the goofy term BALL LIGHTNIG! To this day, if my wife is feeling down or upset in any way, all I have to do is sprinkle in a few references to ball lightning and she can't resist laughing herself into a better mood. "what's the matter, beautiful? Oh, no. No no no... Don't tell me it's that damn ball lightning again! Freakin' BALLLL LIGHTNING!" 👍 😎
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21 people found this helpful
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- Steven
- 08-16-18
Great cover....
It was a dark and stormy night, during which something interesting happened, then nothing interesting happen for a very very very long time. By the time I thought I was going to have no pulse, like the narrative arc, a few interesting things were starting to happen. But, by then I found myself playing the audio at 1.5x speed just to get through the book so I could listen to something else.
The narrator was too singsong for me. He was not dry, but in my opinion did not convey the emotions the book was trying to evoke.
Overall, the book was not bad, but it was not good. It was average and mundane. The only aspect that stood out was the Mainland China centric people and places.
The cover is great.
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21 people found this helpful
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- Lana Lee Plum
- 10-31-18
The infinite state of matter.
The characters in this book come from the mind of the author of the book. It stretches your brain to believe and accept science fiction at its best. The geeks of this world and beyond will laugh and cry with the characters and the story that is told.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Samantha
- 09-12-18
Thought provoking, with compelling narration
If you've heard Feodor Chin as Zenyatta in the game Overwatch, it's strangely appropriate to feel like you're being read a book about the moral quandaries of technological innovation by his character in that game (an extremely philosophical robot, for those unfamiliar). He's got a great voice, and I enjoyed his performance of this book as well.
The story is unsettling and sometimes nightmarish, especially when exploring human motivations for scientific discovery, but there's still a hint of optimism. Recommended if you like hard science fiction or just want more from Cixin Liu!
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11 people found this helpful
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- SRS
- 08-23-18
Excellent read.
Great sci-fi story with insight into modern day China. When I was listening to it I thought it was non-fiction. The story seemed very believable.
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- prograft
- 08-21-18
A romantic explanation to BL
This might not be the most accurate scientific explanation to the ball lightning, but it's definitely the most romantic one. A pseudo-presequal to the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy (starting with The Three Body Problem)
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Story
- Andrea McCain
- 10-21-18
Just wow.
First, allow me to say how much I have enjoyed this author. I have now completed each book he has published and each time I am left stunned by the author's command over imagery and his ability to blend believable characters with fantastical science. To call the author imaginative is, I feel, an understatement. Liu is a visionary blessed with the ability to depict a believable alternate reality. The concepts he introduces in his books have affected the way I look at my own reality. The performance of the audio book was an excellent contribution to an incredible story. Liu's name will be placed among the greatest sci fi writers in history.
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