The Medusa Chronicles cover art

The Medusa Chronicles

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Medusa Chronicles

By: Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter
Narrated by: Peter Kenny
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

 Following an accident that almost cost him his life, Howard Falcon was not so much saved as he was converted, through the use of prosthetics, into something faster, stronger and smarter . . . but also slightly less human and more machine than he was. And with this change came an opportunity - that of piloting a mission into Jupiter's atmosphere, and ultimately of making first contact with the life forms he discovers there.

Picking up the threads of humanity versus artificial intelligences and machines, and of encounters with the alien, this collaborative novel between two superb writers is a sequel to Howard Falcon's adventures. A proper science fiction adventure, this is perfect for fans of Golden Age SF as well as the modern SF reader.

Read by Peter Kenny

(p) 2016 Orion Publishing Group©2016 Dendrocopos Ltd Adventure Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Revelation Space cover art
The Thousand Earths cover art
Permafrost cover art
Time's Eye cover art
House of Suns cover art
Beyond the Aquila Rift cover art
Children of Time cover art
The Sunborn cover art
Bridging Infinity cover art
All Systems Red (Dramatized Adaptation) cover art
Hyperion cover art
Earth cover art
Red Mars cover art
Fleet of Worlds cover art
Sleeping Gods Boxed Set cover art

Critic reviews

'A vivid and vital take on a pace age future that never actually happened. Clarke, you may find yourself thinking, would surely approve.'
A joy to read, it's yet another feather in Baxter and Reynolds' well-adorned hats.
With these two titans of the genre, jaw-dropping imagination and laser-sharp wordcraft are guaranteed. They have created a beautiful novel, wonderful to explore.
brings the strengths of both writers - a thorough grasp of scientific principles and the ability to present them in well-paced, engaging narratives
it certainly contains all that I love in the writing and imagination and vision of both Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds. Full justice has been done to Clarke and his original short story and I can only hope for more. My only greedy complaint is that I wish the book were longer. What there is, though, is wondrous and perfect.
Stephen Baxter and Alistair Reynolds choose to focus instead on the characters to help pull the storyline forward and that was what I liked most about The Medusa Chronicles, it's a character driven sci-fi book, something I feel the genre needs more of.
Baxter and Reynolds are the ideal writers to take this on. They capture a sense of the awe of the universe and the humility of the position of humanity within it, but they also clearly have a lot of fun with some very old SF genre conventions in the process.
if you like a political story combined with the effects of human interplanetary space travel, this book is definitely for you.
Humanist, meditative, this is old-fashioned science fiction as evidenced by its sense of wonder and a positive attitude to scientific progress but, alongside, manages to keep the thrills on overdrive and the cosmic and planetary problems ticking along. A good read.
If I'm honest, I wasn't expecting The Medusa Chronicles to be much more than a tip of the hat to Arthur C. Clarke, but Baxter and Reynolds go far farther by realising a resounding sweep of a story with rich seams of science and speculation, some unforgettable spectacle and not a few emotional moments.
One of the most compelling novels of either author's career, it combines moments of incredible action with an intricately-realised depiction of an expansive universe.
The Medusa Chronicles engenders in me the sense of wonder that first brought me to SF, and reminds me why I love it so much. Two masters of the genre taking up the mantle of the grandmaster himself (Gavin Smith)
A worthy sequel to a classic.
All stars
Most relevant
A pretty strong sci-fi book with a decent storytelling ability and some fairly imaginative lines of thought. The science part of the sci-fi is not the strongest or most detailed but stronger than most books

Enjoyable and imaginative

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not a fan of Stephen Baxter but am a fan of Alastair Reynolds particularly his machine dystopian work. So was worried with a very lack lustre, no detail, almost comic book start. However, things really tightened up to make it a good read. Peter Kenny to a very able job of narrator, but I personally would of preferred a bit more range and gravitas

Very good after a week start

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A ripping yarn about one man and his observations, and contributions, over 500 years of human/machine future history.

What an odyssey! *wink*

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Oh dear, during chaper 9 I gave up for the last time; the story didn't grip or appeal and i lost the will to keep on listening.

Tedious, goes nowhere very slowly

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Any additional comments?

I'm normally a fan of Alastair Reynolds, but this book... I can't put my finger on it from the randomness of the story as it jumped about, or the narration, to subject matter. It just didn't seem like one of his books. Probably just me, as many people seems to have liked this book, but I don't think I will be listening to the rest of the series.

C+/B-

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews