Ben Bova has 38 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 45 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.1★ across 136 ratings. The most-rated is Mars.
Survival
Summary
When a human team is sent to scout a few hundred light-years in front of the death wave, it encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences.These sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons and have survived earlier "death waves" - gamma-ray bursts from the core of the galaxy. They are totally self-sufficient, completely certain that the death wave cannot harm them, and utterly uninterested in helping to save other civilizations, whether organic or machine. But now that the humans have discovered them, they refuse to allow them to leave their planet, reasoning that other humans will inevitably follow if they learn of their existence.
©2017 Ben Bova (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Precipice
Summary
Once, Dan Randolph was one of the richest men on Earth. Now the planet is spiraling into environmental disaster, with floods and earthquakes destroying the lives of millions. Martin Humphries, fabulously wealthy heir of the Humphries Trust, also knows that space-based industry is the way of the future. But unlike Randolph, he does not care if Earth perishes in the process. As Randolph, accompanied by two brilliant women astronauts, flies out to the Asteroid Belt aboard a fusion-propelled spacecraft, Humphries makes his move. The future of mankind lies in Randolph's hands.
©2001 Ben Bova (P)2001, 2005 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC
Jupiter
Summary
Grant Archer merely wanted to study astrophysics, to work quietly as an astronomer on the far side of the Moon. But the forces of the "New Morality", the coalition of censorious do-gooders who run 21st-century America, have other plans for him. To his distress, Grant is torn from his young bride and sent to a research station in orbit around Jupiter, charged with the task of spying on the scientists who work there. What they don't know is that his loyalty to science may be greater than his loyalty to "The New Morality". But that loyalty will be tested in a mission as dangerous as any ever undertaken.
©2001 Ben Bova (P)2005 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC
Voyagers II
Summary
When Keith Stoner awoke, he found himself in a world changed almost beyond recognition. Eighteen years before, Stoner had been the American member of a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to capture an alien ship. The Soviets had to pull out, but Stoner persisted, and while on the strange ship, he fell into suspended animation. Jo Camerata, the ambitious young student who fell in love with Stoner, is now head of Vanguard Industries, which has recovered the alien ship. As a result, her company is now in control of its vast new technology and the fortune it reaps - and in control of Keith Stoner. What Camerata doesn't know, however, is that someone else has been awake, someone who dwells within Stoner's mind. The alien presence that has kept Stoner alive all this time is now free and intends to explore our world, letting nothing stand in its way.
©1986 Ben Bova (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy
Summary
Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories. Take your imagination into futuristic and mystical worlds where gravity can kill and humans become walking biochip labs. See the world through the eyes of a four-legged creature in Susan Shwartz's "Critical Cats", and meet an electronic storyteller in Isaac Asimov's "Someday". The other stories include Greg Bear's "Blood Music," Ben Bova's "The Man Who Hated Gravity", Arthur C. Clarke's "Breaking Strain", Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air", Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Sing" and "Story Child", Dan Simmons's "Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell", Connie Willis's "Ado", and Jane Yolen's "Green Messiah."
©198 8; 1990 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; 1956 by Royal Publications; 1991 by Susan Shwartz; 1951 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation, Renewed 1978 by Fritz Leiber; 1949 by Arthur C. Clarke; 1988 by Jane Yolen; 1989 by Davis Publications; 1987 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; 1983 by Greg Bear (P)1991 Dove Audio
Space Station Down
Summary
When an ultra-rich space tourist visits the orbiting International Space Station, NASA expects a $100 million win-win: His visit will bring in much needed funding and publicity. But the tourist venture turns into a scheme of terror. Together with an extremist cosmonaut, the tourist slaughters all the astronauts on board the million-pound ISS - and prepares to crash it into New York City at 17,500 miles an hour, causing more devastation than a hundred atomic bombs. In doing so, they hope to annihilate the world's financial system. All that stands between them and their deadly goal is the lone survivor aboard the ISS, Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, a newly divorced astronaut who has barricaded herself in a secure area.
©2020 Ben Bova and Doug Beason (P)2020 Tantor
Power Play
Summary
Dr. Jake Ross, a university astronomer, wants nothing more than to teach a few classes each semester and continue his research. Instead, he finds himself aggressively recruited to be the science advisor to Frank Tomlinson, an ambitious politician with his eye on the US Senate. Tomlinson is in need of an edge that will allow him to defeat his opponent at the polls, and Dr. Ross can contribute just that: MHD. MHD, or magnetohydrodynamics, is a new innovation that will allow electricity to be generated efficiently and cheaply. The Senate seat is essentially guaranteed if Tomlinson can deliver unlimited energy to voters at less than half the price of nuclear power. But MHD is still in its infancy, and although the outlook is extremely promising there are great - and deadly - risks. The incumbent senator will not give up his seat without a fight, and as Ross discovers, the world of politics carries its own dangers. Nothing has prepared him for the extreme tactics that desperate and powerful people are willing to use. Power Play is a timely thrill ride by Ben Bova, one of science fiction’s most respected novelists. Ben Bova, six-time winner of science fiction’s Hugo Award, is the author of over one hundred works of science fact and fiction. A former editor of Analog and former fiction editor of Omni, he is also a past president of the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. He lives in Naples, Florida.
©2011 Ben Bova (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Hittite
Summary
Ben Bova brings us an exciting new take on the timeless legend of Troy. This is the tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search of the vicious slave traders who kidnapped his wife and sons. He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy, where he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles. Lukka is the man who builds the Trojan horse for crafty Odysseus, who topples the walls of Jericho for the Israelites, and who steals the beautiful Helen—the legendary face that launched a thousand ships—from her husband Menaleus, fighting his way across half the known world to bring her safely to Egypt.
©2010 Ben Bova (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Best of Bova, Vol. 2
Summary
The second volume of the best stories from legendary hard science fiction writer Ben Bova, the creator of the New York Times best-selling Grand Tour science fiction series, a six-time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society. The stories included in this volume span the five decades of Bova's incandescent career at the center of science fiction and space advocacy. Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the Solar System beyond - stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible - and those who often find that the problems of tomorrow are always linked to human values, and human failings, that are as timeless as the stars. Full cast of narrators includes Stefan Rudnicki, T. J. Storm, and Mirron Willis.
©2017 Ben Bova (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Return
Summary
After more than a century of exploring the stars, Keith Stoner returns to Earth to find that the world he has come back to does not match the one he left. The planet is suffering the consequences of disastrous greenhouse flooding. Most nations have been taken over by ultraconservative religion-based governments, such as the New Morality in the United States. With population ballooning and resources running out, Earth is heading for nuclear war. Stoner, the star voyager, wants to save Earth's people. But first he must save himself from the frightened and ambitious zealots who want to destroy this stranger - and the terrifying message he brings from the stars.
©2009 Ben Bova (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Farside
Summary
Farside, the side of the moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. It is also the setting for a tangled web of politics, personal ambition, love, jealousy, and murder. Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some 30 light-years away. Now the race is on to get pictures of that distant world, photographs and spectra that show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth - and if it bears life. Farside observatory will have the largest optical telescope in the solar system as well as a vast array of radio antennas, the most sensitive radio telescope possible, insulated from the interference of Earth’s radio chatter by a thousand kilometers of the moon’s solid body. Building Farside is a complex, often dangerous task. On the airless surface of the moon, under constant bombardment by hard radiation and in-falling micrometeoroids, builders must work in cumbersome spacesuits and use robotic machines as much as possible. Breakdowns - mechanical and emotional - are commonplace. Accidents happen, some of them fatal. But what they ultimately find will stun everyone, and the human race will never be the same.
©2013 Ben Bova (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc
Earth
Summary
Earth is the latest science fiction novel from multiple Hugo Award winner Ben Bova, author of Apes and Angels and Survival. A wave of lethal gamma radiation is expanding from the core of the Milky Way galaxy at the speed of light, killing everything in its path. The countdown to when the death wave will reach Earth and the rest of the solar system is at 2,000 years. Humans were helped by the Predecessors, who provided shielding generators that can protect the solar system. In return, the Predecessors asked humankind’s help to save other intelligent species that are in danger of being annihilated. But what of Earth? With the Death Wave no longer a threat to humanity, humans have spread out and colonized all the worlds of the solar system. The technology of the Predecessors has made Earth a paradise, at least on the surface. But a policy of exiling discontented young people to the outer planets and asteroid mines has led to a deep divide between the new worlds and the homeworld, and those tensions are about to explode into open war.
©2019 Ben Bova (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
New Earth
Summary
We’ve found another Earthlike planet, but what secrets does it hold? The entire world is thrilled by the discovery of a new, Earthlike planet. Advance imaging shows that the planet has oceans of water and a breathable, oxygen-rich atmosphere. Eager to learn more, an exploration team is soon dispatched to explore the planet, now nicknamed New Earth. All the explorers understand that they are essentially on a one-way mission. The trip takes 80 years each way, so even if they are able to get back to Earth, nearly 200 years will have elapsed. They will have aged only a dozen years thanks to cryonic suspension, but their friends and family will be gone, and the very society they once knew will have changed beyond recognition. The explorers are going into exile, and they know it. They are on this mission not because they were the best available but because they were expendable. Upon landing, the team discovers something unexpected: New Earth is inhabited by a small group of intelligent creatures who look very much like human beings. Who are these people? Are they native to this world or invaders from elsewhere? While they may seem inordinately friendly to the human explorers, what are their real motivations? What do they want? Moreover, the scientists begin to realize that this planet cannot possibly be natural. They face a startling and nearly unthinkable question: Could New Earth be an artifact?
©2013 Ben Bova (P)2013 Blackstone Audio
Mars Life
Summary
Jamie Waterman has made an important discovery on Mars. A cliff dwelling reveals the fact that an intelligent race lived on the red planet 65 million years ago, only to be driven into extinction by the crash of a giant meteor. But now the exploration of Mars is itself under threat of extinction, as the ultraconservative New Morality movement gains control of the U.S. government and cuts off all funding for the Mars program. Meanwhile, Carter Carleton, an anthropologist who was driven from his university post by unproven rape charges, has started to dig up the remains of a Martian village. Science and politics clash on two worlds as Jamie desperately tries to save the Mars program and uncover who the vanished Martians were.
©2008 Ben Bova (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Best of Bova, Vol. 3
Summary
The third and final volume of the very best of Ben Bova, creator of the New York Times best-selling Grand Tour science fiction series, six-time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society - a grand master of science fiction storytelling. These stories span the five decades of Bova's incandescent career. Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the Solar System beyond - stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible - and those who often find that the problems of tomorrow are always linked to human values, and human failings, that are as timeless as the stars. Full cast of narrators includes Arthur Morey, Margy Moore, and Stefan Rudnicki.
©2017 Ben Bova (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Power Failure
Summary
Award-winning writer Ben Bova returns with another tense political thriller starring Jake Ross, science advisor to Senator Frank Tomlinson, as they continue their complex power maneuvers they began in Power Play and Power Surge. Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington to try to make a difference, but he's learned the only way to get something done in Washington, assuming your ideals survive the corrosive atmosphere, is to gather power. Ross has gathered a great deal riding in the wake of Frank Tomlinson. But now Tomlinson has decided to shoot for the moon. If they win, they get it all. If they lose, the game is over for Jake Ross. The Power trilogy combines the political thriller with nuts-and-bolts near-future science fiction. Bova's vision of a future powered by solar satellite transmission is tantalizingly within reach.
©2018 Ben Bova (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Power Surge
Summary
Six-time Hugo winner Ben Bova brings us a gripping political thriller on the cutting edge of science and technology. Dr. Jake Ross came to Washington to make a difference. As the science advisor to a newly elected freshman senator, Jake has crafted a comprehensive energy plan that employs innovative new technologies to make America the world's leader in energy production while simultaneously boosting the economy and protecting the environment. The facts - and the science - are on Jake's side, but his plan soon runs afoul of entrenched special interests, well-funded lobbies, cynical bureaucrats, pork-barrel politics, and one very powerful US senator. To keep his plan alive and secure a sustainable future for America, Jake needs a crash course in the way Washington really works. Everyone keeps telling him that his plan has no hope of succeeding, but Jake is determined to prove them wrong even if it kills him...something that certain hostile parties may be all too happy to arrange.
©2015 Ben Bova (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
My Favorites
Summary
In this new collection, Ben Bova has compiled 14 of his favorite short stories. Each story includes an all-new introduction with compelling insight into the narrative. Exploring the boundaries of the genre, Bova not only writes of spaceships, aliens, and time travel in most of his titles, but also speculates on the beginnings of science fiction in “Scheherazade and the Storytellers,” as well as the morality of man in “The Angel’s Gift.” Stories such as “The Café Coup” and “We’ll Always Have Paris” dip into speculative historical fiction, asking questions about what would happen if someone could change history for the better. This expansive collection is a key addition for Bova fans and sci-fi lovers alike! Stories included in this collection: “Monster Slayer,” “Muzhestvo,” “We’ll Always Have Paris,” “The Great Moon Hoax, or A Princess of Mars,” “Inspiration,” “Scheherazade and the Storytellers,” “The Supersonic Zeppelin,” “Mars Farts,” “The Man Who Hated Gravity,” “Sepulcher,” “The Café Coup,” “The Angel’s Gift,” “Waterbot,” and “Sam and the Flying Dutchman.”
©2020 Ben Bova (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing