Listen free for 30 days
-
The Difference Engine
- Narrated by: Andrew Cullum
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £21.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Pattern Recognition
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Bronwen Price
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cayce Pollard owes her living to her pathological sensitivity to logos. In London to consult for the world's coolest ad agency, she finds herself catapulted, via her addiction to a mysterious body of fragmentary film footage, uploaded to the web by a shadowy auteur, into a global quest for this unknown 'garage Kubrick'. Cayce becomes involved with an eccentric hacker, a vengeful ad executive, a defrocked mathematician, a Tokyo Otaku-coven known as Eye of the Dragon and, eventually, the elusive 'Kubrick' himself.
-
-
Compelling story, mixed performance
- By Amazon Customer on 10-10-21
-
Steam, Smoke & Mirrors
- Steam, Smoke and Mirrors, Book 1
- By: Colin Edmonds
- Narrated by: Karl Jenkinson
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a Music Hall hypnotist escapes from the London County Asylum she leaves a single word on the wall of her cell - scrawled in blood: Magister. Terror then stalks the capital’s streets as the killing spree begins. But why does Superintendent William Melville of the Special Branch call upon the skills of brilliant stage magician Michael Magister and his glamorous assistant Phoebe Le Breton to help capture the murderer? Especially as Michael is one of those named on the death list.
-
-
Good story, great concept
- By Kerry Bark on 11-05-21
-
Neuromancer
- Sprawl Trilogy, Book 1
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Jason Flemyng
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel. William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the cyberpunk movement.
-
-
Of its time
- By G. B on 18-10-21
-
Agency
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In William Gibson's first novel since 2014's New York Times best-selling The Peripheral, a gifted "app-whisperer", hired to beta test a mysterious new product, finds her life endangered by her relationship with her surprisingly street-smart and combat-savvy "digital assistant".
-
-
A long time coming
- By Mr D Alford on 06-02-20
-
Termination Shock
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Neal Stephenson’s sweeping, prescient new novel transports listeners to a near-future world where the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves and virulent, deadly pandemics. One man has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as 'elemental'. But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?
-
-
Ye cannae dae a Scootish aeccent, Keptin
- By Kali Blitzer on 22-12-21
-
Archangel
- By: William Gibson, Michael St. John Smith
- Narrated by: Josh Hurley, Victor Bevine, Elizabeth Jasicki, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 2016. Not our 2016. Theirs. Earth is dying, the result of a worldwide nuclear holocaust caused by America’s dictatorial President-for-Life Lewis Henderson, a man who will use any means necessary to maintain power and survive. Enter: The Splitter. A machine capable of splitting off an exact replica of Henderson’s world. A world where the cataclysmic events causing its destruction have yet to occur. That world is ours.
-
-
Substandard radio play
- By Liz on 23-08-18
-
Pattern Recognition
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Bronwen Price
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cayce Pollard owes her living to her pathological sensitivity to logos. In London to consult for the world's coolest ad agency, she finds herself catapulted, via her addiction to a mysterious body of fragmentary film footage, uploaded to the web by a shadowy auteur, into a global quest for this unknown 'garage Kubrick'. Cayce becomes involved with an eccentric hacker, a vengeful ad executive, a defrocked mathematician, a Tokyo Otaku-coven known as Eye of the Dragon and, eventually, the elusive 'Kubrick' himself.
-
-
Compelling story, mixed performance
- By Amazon Customer on 10-10-21
-
Steam, Smoke & Mirrors
- Steam, Smoke and Mirrors, Book 1
- By: Colin Edmonds
- Narrated by: Karl Jenkinson
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a Music Hall hypnotist escapes from the London County Asylum she leaves a single word on the wall of her cell - scrawled in blood: Magister. Terror then stalks the capital’s streets as the killing spree begins. But why does Superintendent William Melville of the Special Branch call upon the skills of brilliant stage magician Michael Magister and his glamorous assistant Phoebe Le Breton to help capture the murderer? Especially as Michael is one of those named on the death list.
-
-
Good story, great concept
- By Kerry Bark on 11-05-21
-
Neuromancer
- Sprawl Trilogy, Book 1
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Jason Flemyng
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel. William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the cyberpunk movement.
-
-
Of its time
- By G. B on 18-10-21
-
Agency
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In William Gibson's first novel since 2014's New York Times best-selling The Peripheral, a gifted "app-whisperer", hired to beta test a mysterious new product, finds her life endangered by her relationship with her surprisingly street-smart and combat-savvy "digital assistant".
-
-
A long time coming
- By Mr D Alford on 06-02-20
-
Termination Shock
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Neal Stephenson’s sweeping, prescient new novel transports listeners to a near-future world where the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves and virulent, deadly pandemics. One man has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as 'elemental'. But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?
-
-
Ye cannae dae a Scootish aeccent, Keptin
- By Kali Blitzer on 22-12-21
-
Archangel
- By: William Gibson, Michael St. John Smith
- Narrated by: Josh Hurley, Victor Bevine, Elizabeth Jasicki, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 2016. Not our 2016. Theirs. Earth is dying, the result of a worldwide nuclear holocaust caused by America’s dictatorial President-for-Life Lewis Henderson, a man who will use any means necessary to maintain power and survive. Enter: The Splitter. A machine capable of splitting off an exact replica of Henderson’s world. A world where the cataclysmic events causing its destruction have yet to occur. That world is ours.
-
-
Substandard radio play
- By Liz on 23-08-18
-
The Peripheral
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Peripheral by William Gibson is a thrilling new novel about two intertwined futures, from the bestselling author of Neuromancer. Flynne Fisher lives down a country road, in a rural near-future America where jobs are scarce, unless you count illegal drug manufacture, which she's keen to avoid. Her brother Burton lives, or tries to, on money from the Veterans Association, in compensation for neurological damage suffered in a Marines elite unit.
-
-
Somewhat disappointed
- By Doug on 01-08-16
-
The Passion of the Ripper
- By: Nicholas Nicastro
- Narrated by: Melanie Crawley
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A brutal series of murders of London’s most vulnerable women casts the city into a frenzy of fear and suspicion, pushing it to a state of panic not seen in centuries. Jack the Ripper has arrived. When Scotland Yard begins to find traces of Jack’s handiwork in a string of seemingly unrelated killings, will the world’s most notorious serial killer be caught at last?
-
-
Good Perspective to the Ripper
- By Carol B on 20-02-21
-
Snow Crash
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Lose yourself in another world
- By Lily the Pink on 26-09-15
-
The Diamond Age
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Jennifer Wiltsie
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Neal Stephenson - "the hottest science fiction writer in America" - takes science fiction to dazzling new levels. The Diamond Age is a stunning tale; set in 21st-century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens what a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life - and the entire future of humanity - is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.
-
-
Worth the time - if you can deal with the quality
- By Ian on 08-07-13
-
The Collected Stories
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe, Mike Grady, Nick Boulton, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Arthur C Clarke is without question the world's best-known and most celebrated science-fiction writer. His career, spanning more than 60 years, is one of unequalled success. Clarke has always been celebrated for his clear prophetic vision, which is fully on display in this audiobook, but there are also many stories that show his imagination in full flight, to the distant future and to far-flung star systems.
-
-
Inventive Early Work
- By Jeremy on 08-05-11
-
Anathem
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, Tavia Gilbert, William Dufris, and others
- Length: 32 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fraa Erasmus is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the "Saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities, and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs, bloody violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community.
-
-
The best of the lot (not just Neal, books!)
- By George Newman on 29-05-20
-
Ubik
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business - deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time.
-
-
Very enjoyable
- By Mr. J. Forsyth on 19-12-16
-
Blade Runner
- Originally published as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment: find them and then..."retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found!
-
-
Why the title?
- By Mr. G. J. Walker on 10-11-09
-
Eversion
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: Harry Myers
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Doctor Silas Coade wakes from disturbing dreams, on the steamship Demeter, in pursuit of an extraordinary find almost too incredible and too strange to believe, secreted within a lagoon in the icy inlets of Patagonia. But as they come in sight of their prize, he and the crew see they are not the first to come so far: there is a wreck ahead, and whatever ruined it may threaten them as well. Shaking off his nightmares, Doctor Silas Coade joins his fellow exploders on the deck of the Demeter and realises something has already gone dangerously wrong with their mission.
-
-
A marvellous story
- By Dr. A. P. Glanvill on 10-06-22
-
Doomsday Book
- By: Connie Willis
- Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Oxford student Kivrin, traveling back to the 14th century is more than the culmination of her studies - it's the chance for a wonderful adventure. For Dunworthy, her mentor, it is cause for intense worry about the thousands of things that could go wrong.
-
-
A Smashing Book
- By artemis99 on 21-01-11
-
A Master of Djinn
- By: P. Djèlí Clark
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar
- Length: 15 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cairo, 1912: though Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she's certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, Al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case.
-
-
Fabulous!
- By R. Maines on 25-09-21
-
Magic Words
- The Tale of a Jewish Boy-Interpreter, the World's Most Estimable Magician, a Murderous Harlot, and America's Greatest Indian Chief
- By: Gerald Kolpan
- Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a riveting novel of love and adventure, young Julius Meyer comes to the New World to find himself acting as translator for the famed Indian chief, Standing Bear. Young Jewish immigrant Julius comes of age surrounded by the wild world of 1867 Nebraska. He befriends the mysterious Prophet John, who saves his life when the two are captured by the Ponca Indian tribe. Living as a slave, Julius meets the noble chief Standing Bear and his young daughter, Prairie Flower, with whom he falls in love.
Summary
1855: the Industrial Revolution is in full swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his analytical engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. Three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with the future: Sybil Gerard - fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator; Edward Leviathan Mallory - explorer and palaeontologist; Laurence Oliphant - diplomat, mystic and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for.
Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine took the science-fiction community by storm when it was first published. It is a prime example of the steampunk sub-genre; it posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer called engines.
Provocative, compelling and intensely imagined, this audiobook is poised to impress a whole new generation.