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When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
The Boy Who Would Live Forever has a sense of wonder and excitement that will satisfy those who loved Gateway and will delight new listeners as well. In Gateway, long after the alien Heechee abandoned their space-station, Gateway (as humans dubbed it) allowed humans to explore new worlds. The Heechee, alarmed by the alien Kugel whose goal was to destroy all organic lifeforms, had already retreated to the galactic core, where they now lived in peace.
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.
So, the thing is, I come from the world we were supposed to have. That means nothing to you, obviously, because you live here, in the crappy world we do have. But it never should've turned out like this. And it's all my fault - well, me and, to a lesser extent, my father. And, yeah, I guess a little bit Penelope. In both worlds she's the love of my life. But only a single version of her can exist. I have one impossible chance to fix history's greatest mistake and save this broken world.
Gil 'The Arm' Hamilton was one of the top operatives of ARM, the elite UN police force. His intuition was unfailingly accurate, his detective skills second to none, and his psychic powers - esper sense and telekinesis - were awesome.
Now you can hear all the classic stories of the legendary ARM operative, collected in one volume for the first time - plus, an all-new, never-before-published Gil Hamilton adventure!
From the towering heights of Olympos Mons on Mars, the mighty Zeus and his immortal family of gods, goddesses, and demigods look down upon a momentous battle, observing - and often influencing - the legendary exploits of Paris, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and the clashing armies of Greece and Troy.
When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
The Boy Who Would Live Forever has a sense of wonder and excitement that will satisfy those who loved Gateway and will delight new listeners as well. In Gateway, long after the alien Heechee abandoned their space-station, Gateway (as humans dubbed it) allowed humans to explore new worlds. The Heechee, alarmed by the alien Kugel whose goal was to destroy all organic lifeforms, had already retreated to the galactic core, where they now lived in peace.
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.
So, the thing is, I come from the world we were supposed to have. That means nothing to you, obviously, because you live here, in the crappy world we do have. But it never should've turned out like this. And it's all my fault - well, me and, to a lesser extent, my father. And, yeah, I guess a little bit Penelope. In both worlds she's the love of my life. But only a single version of her can exist. I have one impossible chance to fix history's greatest mistake and save this broken world.
Gil 'The Arm' Hamilton was one of the top operatives of ARM, the elite UN police force. His intuition was unfailingly accurate, his detective skills second to none, and his psychic powers - esper sense and telekinesis - were awesome.
Now you can hear all the classic stories of the legendary ARM operative, collected in one volume for the first time - plus, an all-new, never-before-published Gil Hamilton adventure!
From the towering heights of Olympos Mons on Mars, the mighty Zeus and his immortal family of gods, goddesses, and demigods look down upon a momentous battle, observing - and often influencing - the legendary exploits of Paris, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and the clashing armies of Greece and Troy.
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.
Four hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.
Far EastHumanity has colonized the planets - interstellar travel is still beyond our reach, but the solar system has become a dense network of colonies. But there are tensions - the mineral-rich outer planets resent their dependence on Earth and Mars and the political and military clout they wield over the Belt and beyond. Now, when Captain Jim Holden's ice miner stumbles across a derelict, abandoned ship, he uncovers a secret that threatens to throw the entire system into war.
Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility - in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.
In 2061 a young scientist invents a time machine to fix a tragedy in his past. But his good intentions turn catastrophic when an early test reveals something unexpected: the end of the world. A desperate plan is formed: recruit three heroes, ordinary humans capable of extraordinary things, and change the future.
Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Half Bad by Sally Green, a breathtaking debut novel about one boy's struggle for survival in a hidden society of witches. Read by the actor Carl Prekopp. You can't read, can't write, but you heal fast, even for a witch.You get sick if you stay indoors after dark. You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one.You've been kept in a cage since you were fourteen. All you've got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys.
At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence.
Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.
At 75 years old, John Perry is after a fresh start - so, naturally, he joins the army. Earth's military machine can transform elderly recruits, restoring their lost youth. But in return, its Colonial Defence Force demands two years of hazardous service in space. This is how Perry finds himself in a new body crafted from his original DNA. A genetically enhanced and upgraded new body, ready for battle. But upgrades alone won't keep Perry safe. He'll be fighting for his life on the front line as he defends humanity's colonies.
When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect. When the Overlords finally showed themselves it was a shock but one that humankind could now cope with, and an era of peace, prosperity and endless leisure began. But the children of this utopia dream strange dreams of distant suns and alien planets, and soon they will be ready to join the Overmind...and, in a grand and thrilling metaphysical climax, leave Earth behind.
The Argus Space Station looks down on a nightmarish Earth. And from this safe distance, the Committee enforces its despotic rule. There are too many people and too few resources, and they need 12 billion to die before Earth can be stabilized. So corruption is rife, people starve, and the poor are policed by mechanized overseers and identity-reader guns. Citizens already fear the brutal Inspectorate with its pain inducers. But to reach its goals, the Committee will unleash satellite laser weaponry, taking carnage to a new level.
At last - the ultimate book in the renowned Heechee Saga!
Advanced Heechee technology had enabled Robinette Broadhead to live after death as a machine-stored personality, enjoying his life by flitting along the wires from party to party with a host of other machine-people. But suddenly his decadent existence ends when an all-powerful alien race intent on the utter destruction of all intelligent life reappears after eons of silence, and threatens the lives of all heechee and humans. Even Robin, virtually immortal and with unlimited access to millennia of accumulated data, cannot discover how to stop these aliens. It began to seem that only a face to face meeting could determine the future of the entire universe....
What did you like best about The Annals of the Heechee? What did you like least?
I liked the end the best. This was a very disappointing ending to an otherwise excellent saga.
Would you be willing to try another book from Frederik Pohl? Why or why not?
I would definitely try another Pohl book as I enjoyed most of the Gateway/Heechee books very much.
What does Oliver Wyman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?
Oliver Wyman did an excellent job of making lightweight material entertaining.
Do you think The Annals of the Heechee needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
I think it needs a story.
Any additional comments?
If you have been following this saga then you will need to get this book just to find out what becomes of the characters. However, it is without doubt the weakest link in the Gateway/Hechee chain.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you try another book from Frederik Pohl and/or Oliver Wyman?
Yes, I definitely would, one bad book from Pohl won't turn me off yet.
What was most disappointing about Frederik Pohl’s story?
Spoilers for previous book:
We are constantly reminded that the virtual people are living in a virtual world. "I could see space through the viewscreen, but off course I wasn't really seeing it because I don't actually have eyes nor was the viewscreen real either..." Over and over and over, I get it has some point in the story but my goodness I felt beaten over the head with it.
What does Oliver Wyman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Nothing, his voice acting was superb.
Was The Annals of the Heechee worth the listening time?
I'm iffy on that, I wanted another book because I felt the last one ended abruptly but part of me feels like I should have stopped there.
I liked getting some closure (sort of) on Robin.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
If you like scifi, the heeche series are a good bet. This is the 4th book in the series, and i enjoyed all of the book, i only wish 5th and 6th were available as audio books...
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
The problem with Frederick Pohl's writing is that it is pretty dense. And he is pretty insistent on teaching us something.
Which can get a little long winded.
He is very much Albert Einstein, and I am Robinette Broadhead.
But he does write a heck of a good story.
The author best describes his own book: "And time passed, and time passed, and the endless voyage went on" I couldn't wait until it was over.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
I struggled to finish this book. just boring and lame. I got so sick of the computer land folks and the writer refuses to bring the book back around to reality. I just couldn't take it anymore. I quit.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
I remember reading the first Gateway books back in high School. I revisited them again as an adult and loved the first few books. The psycho analytical babble surround Robin did get somewhat tedious even with the early books but the science fiction was fun. It seems like some science fiction stories that drag on have a tendency to kill off the main character
and have him evolve into a non-corporeal being. THis happened in the previous book to this one so I am not spoiling the story. It sometimes works I suppose, I actually find it to be a clunky literally device, in this case it is just tedious and frankly boring. The only upside is I still wanted to find out what happened at the end, so I guess I was somewhat hooked, but this was not a good story. Especially with the first few books being so fine.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful