Vicarious cover art

Vicarious

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Vicarious

By: Rhett C. Bruno
Narrated by: Wil Wheaton, Katherine McNamara
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

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

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

Award-winning performers Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Big Bang Theory, and Ready Player One audiobook) and Katherine McNamara (Shadowhunters, The Stand, CW’s Arrow) bring this mind-bending, deeply imagined sci-fi tale to life.

The real world is only where you breathe....

In High Earth, digital entertainment is everything. Shows. Virtual worlds. Simulations - there’s something for everybody in a city where working for a living has been rendered obsolete by technological advancements. Even a short walk outside to visit with others is no longer necessary. Just load into the network and you can be with anyone, anywhere.

For Asher Reinhart, nothing compares to Ignis; a live reality show that pushes human beings to their very extremes. As a volunteer director, Asher closely monitors the lives of those living on an interstellar ark, believing they're the last of humanity.

But when it's determined that the life of the show’s brightest star, Mission, must be put in danger to boost declining ratings, Asher is forced to choose: the show he loves or the woman whose existence has been the focus of his attention since the day he was born.

From number-one Audible best-selling author and Nebula Award nominee Rhett C. Bruno comes a story about the power of human connection. The Truman Show meets Ready Player One in a novel perfect for fans of Hugh Howey, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Michael Crichton.

©2021 Rhett C. Bruno (P)2021 Podium Audio
Adventure Cyberpunk Dystopian Fantasy Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Technothrillers Thriller & Suspense Technology Thriller

Listeners also enjoyed...

Starter Villain cover art
The Kaiju Preservation Society cover art
Titanborn cover art
Redshirts cover art
Roadkill cover art
The Roach cover art
Web of Eyes cover art
The Circuit cover art
Metamorphosis cover art
The Android's Dream cover art
Artemis cover art
The Martian cover art
The GEOs: The Complete Series cover art
Agent to the Stars cover art
Little Fuzzy [Audible] cover art
Alexander X cover art

Critic reviews

"This perceptive take on the reality-TV-in-the-future premise deserves boffo ratings" (Kirkus Reviews)

"A truly unique sci-fi experience...Mission's story is both heartbreaking and triumphant, and the growth Asher shows from start to finish blew me away." (Nicholas Sansbury Smith, NYT best-selling author of Hell Divers)

Vicarious is 2001: A Space Odyssey meets The Truman Show. A riveting take on man’s inhumanity to man". (Scott Sigler, number one New York Times best-selling Author of Earthcore)

All stars
Most relevant
I very much enjoyed the plot of this book. Always scary that this could become a reality especially with the world's fascination of reality TV.
Wonder if there is another book (not looked yet) 😊

Our strive for perfection will be our downfall.

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

A future in which people live there lives watching virtual TV.
An out cast people who live in poverty out side a city wall. where people look perfectly. The poor people are trying to get connect to addict VR world.
A space ship which is supposed heading to a star.
It takes a bit of time to get into the story. but gets more exciting and interesting as you get into the story.
Good character building
A story I enjoyed listening to.

An interesting story.

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

a great story and narration, slow paced story but it has to be to slowly build the world for us so we can fully appreciate it and its importantance

a slow burn masterpiece

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

A mix between the 100 and The Trueman show is pretty close to what this is as a large ark on a journey trying to survive is nothing but a popular reality tv show for a VR obsessed populace. Only a young girl birthed illegally will put everything into jepoardy as we follow her birth and her revelation so closely with the debut narration by McNamara doing extremely well bringing the listener into our hearts. Wheaton doing the VR director of the programme also showcases his usual skills as we see his eyes being opened to the manipulation being done to rhe unknowing populace. The two seperate but connected viewpoints coming into collision bring great interest for the listener and we feel the emotions that Bruno writes into events which are all too believable for an apocalyptic future eden for the mighty chosen elite. Great story telling and narration is 5 stars all across the board.

An Audio that just comes to life

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

An interesting concept for a story, you can imagine this happening in the future with the world hooked on screens. Well performed by both narrators and an ending you don't expect. Slow burn to start but stick with it, full of thought and exploring emotions.

Engrossing if you like Sci-fi

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

See more reviews