More of the Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy

By: Orson Scott Card, Arthur C. Clarke, Karen Joy Fowler, Roger Zelazny, John Varley, Joe Haldeman, Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lawrence Watt-Evans

Narrated by: Roddy McDowall, Terry Farrell, Wil Wheaton, other stars of

Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Who better to narrate today's best science-fiction stories than today's favorite science-fiction stars? This exciting collection features Roger Zelazny's "Permafrost" read by Siddig El Fadil ( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Orson Scott Card's "Fat Farm" read by Roddy McDowall ( Planet of the Apes), and John Varley's "Options" read by Claudia Christian ( Babylon 5). Robin Curtis ( Star Trek III and Star Trek IV), Terry Farrell ( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Nana Visitor ( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), and Wil Wheaton ( Star Trek: The Next Generation) also perform, reading works by Karen Joy Fowler, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Robert Silverberg, Arthur C. Clarke, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Joe Haldeman.

©1980 by Omni Publications International Ltd.; 1951 by Arthur C. Clarke; 1993 by Joe Haldeman; 1980 by Agberg, Ltd.; 1979 by John Varley; 1988 by Omni Publications International Ltd.; 1985 Karen Joy Fowler; 1987 by Davis Publications; 1987 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (P)1995 by Dove Audio, Inc.

Truly some of the best

Don't let the poor audio quality (and a few duds) stop you from listening to this collection--there is something here for everyone. My favs: The Sentinel, Fat Farm, Why I left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers, The Poplar Street Study, and Feedback.

Great stories. Distracting audio. No titles.

The audio quality is absolutely horrible to the point of distraction, but what really bothered me most was the complete lack of title and author names. They just chained everything together with one story ending and the other starting right after it as if it was just another chapter in the same book.

Some of the stories are really great, but I see no reason why they didn't take the time to mention the titles and authors by name, if nothing else, to give the listener a way to look up the authors they like and look for their other stories.

The only story I knew the name of was the Arthur C. Clarke's The Sentinel, because I've read it before and recognized it as the seed of the story that would eventually become his most famous works, the 2001 series.

Great Stories

Great Stories. All the Narrator's were wonderful. They were very entertaining. It was neat they all had different stories.

Thank you Doug D Eigsti!

Thank you for the titles and authors for all the stories.

I gave an overall 3 because of the lack of breaks between stories and the lack of titles and authors for each story. D.D. Eigsti gave me the information in his review.

Needs a pdf download to track book titles/authors/

I agree with another reviewer in that there is no way to know the title and author of the short story, or for that matter who is narrating. A break between stories and an introduction to identify the narrator would be a welcome enhancement. Most books on tape have this feature, and this shortfall is somewhat frustrating when trying to identify selections from a collection.

If nothing else, to have a pdf document posted to the site with this information would be tremendously helpful.

Other than that shortcomming, the stories met my expectations of these well known authors. The stories spark imagination and easily transend the decades since they were created and are every bit as entertaining today.

The writing is great, the naration is entertaining; but the lack of knowing exactly what you are listening to detracts from the entertainment value.

serious production issues

How could the performance have been better?

They really should have at least put pauses between stories, and having the narrator state the title and author of each story before reading it would have been really lovely. They did none of this. I could not figure out which stories were which, and more importantly, which author wrote each. Only a couple of them were clear from the title, and even those I had to find out by looking up the paper edition of the book online, separately.

Table of Contents (Listed by Audible Chapter)

1 “This is Audible” Introduction.

2 "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke, read by Siddig El Fadil.

3 "Fat Farm" by Orson Scott Card, read by Roddy McDowall.

4 "Our Lady of the Sauropods" by Robert Silverberg.

5 "Options" by John Varley, read by Claudia Christian.

6 "Why I Left Harry's All Night Hamburgers" by Lawrence Watt-Evans, read by Wil Wheaton.

7 "The Poplar Street Study" by Karen Joy Fowler, read by Terry Farrell

8 "Skin Deep" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, read by Robin Curtis.

9 "Permafrost" by Roger Zelazny, read by Siddig El Fadil.

10 "Feedback" by Joe Haldeman, read by Nana Visitor.


Review of “Options” by John Varley

I wanted to listen to this collection because of one story: “Options” by John Varley. “Options” is one of Varley’s 8-Worlds stories and fits early in the overall chronology, circa 100 O.E., Occupation Earth. Varley handles the subject of what would happen to society if easy, safe and completely reversible sex-changing were to become a reality. When this was written in 1979 is was far more shocking and fantastic that is may seem today. The wonder of the story is that Varley manages to take the reader, or listener in this case, from the initial reaction of shock and disgust to the point of empathy for the sex-changing character. Varley is one of the science fiction greats. Listen to this story and you will hear why.

format is disorganized

Would you try another book from the authors and/or the narrators?

poorly presented, there was no mention of the titles or author during the reading , therefore it is impossible to judge the authors or stories.

Would you recommend More of the Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy to your friends? Why or why not?

not well presented version.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

could not tell which story I was listening, the breaks in between were non existant and there were no word of whose story was.

Do you think More of the Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

yes, but recorded in a better organized way.

Just one complaint

This is a fine collection. The narration is also good. The one REALLY annoying characteristic is that there is no break between stories. No announcement of author, title, date etc. The next story just starts in with even less pause than between sentences within a story. If it were not for the fact that the narrator changes, you would not even be able to tell only by listening when one ends and the next one starts.

Great Stories, great performances, terrible production values.

Excellent selection of stories, great narraters. Should’ve been a five star review. But the entire production was horrible. Sounds like it was recorded over a phone. No introductions, not even title (I recognize most of the stories and they are fantastic - Especially Clarke’s Sentinel, and Varley’s Options.). Still, I highly recommend this audiobook for its content, if not it’s quality.