Gregory Benford has 11 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 24 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 14 ratings. The most-rated is Timescape.
Timescape
Summary
In a future wracked by environmental catastrophe and social instability, physicist John Renfrew devises a longshot plan to use tachyons - strange, time-traveling particles - to send a warning to the past. In 1962, Gordon Bernstein, a California researcher, gets Renfrew's message as a strange pattern of interference in an experiment he's conducting. As the two men struggle to overcome both the limitations of scientific knowledge and the politics of scientific research, a larger question looms: can a new future arise from the paradox of a forewarned past? Winner of both the Nebula Award and the John W. Campbell Award for best science-fiction novel, Timescape is an enduring classic that examines the ways that science interacts with everyday life to create the many strange worlds in which we live.
©1980 Gregory Benford and Hilary Benford (P)2001 Recorded Books
A Hunger for the Infinite
Summary
A Hunger for the Infinite, which first appeared in Robert Silverberg's Far Horizons anthology, is a novella that takes place in the universe of "The Galactic Center Saga", detailing a galactic war between mechanical and biological life. Here, the pilots had made it to True Center in order to destroy something, anything, important to the Mechs, but Paris had something else on his mind. A story of the Mantis, and the decline of humans beginning in 3600 AD.
©1999 Gregory Benford (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories
Summary
An unabridged audio collection spotlighting the "best of the best" hard science fiction stories published in 2016 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster, as narrated by top voice talents. In "Vortex", by Gregory Benford, astronauts find a once thriving microbial lifeform that carpets the caves of Mars dying off. A code monkey tracks down the vain creator of a pernicious software virus that people jack cerebrally in "RedKing", by Craig DeLancey. In "Number Nine Moon", by Alex Irvine, illicit scavengers on Mars are on a rescue mission to save themselves after one of their team members dies. A young girl's thirst for vengeance becomes a struggle for survival when she is swallowed by a gigantic sea creature on an alien planet in "Of the Beast in the Belly", by C.W. Johnson. In "The Seventh Gamer", by Gwyneth Jones, a writer immerses herself into a MMORPG community to search for characters being played by real aliens from other worlds. A woman armed with a rifle stalks a herd of cloned wooly mammoths in British Columbia in "Chasing Ivory", by Ted Kosmatka. In "Fieldwork", by Shariann Lewitt, a volcanologist struggles with her research on Europa where both her mother and grandmother suffered dire consequences. A daughter pays homage to her mother with mega-engineering projects to deal with climate change over eons in "Seven Birthdays", by Ken Liu. In "The Visitor from Taured", by Ian R. MacLeod, a cosmologist in the near future is obsessed with proving his theory of multiverses. The citizens of a small town on a "Jackaroo" planet object to a corporation placing a radio telescope near local alien artifacts in "Something Happened Here, But We're Not Quite Sure What It Was", by Paul McAuley. And, finally, in "16 Questions for Kamala Chatterjee", by Alastair Reynolds, a graduate student defends her dissertation on a solar anomaly that threatens humanity.
©2016 Gregory Benford, Gwyneth Jones, Shariann Lewitt, Ken Liu, Ian R. MacLeod, Paul McAuley, Alastair Reynolds, Craig DeLancey, Alex Irvine, C.W. Johnson, Ted Kosmatka (P)2017 AudioText
The Berlin Project
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Gregory Benford creates an alternate history about the creation of the atomic bomb that explores what could have happened if the bomb was ready to be used by June 6, 1944. Karl Cohen, a chemist and mathematician who is part of the Manhattan Project team, has discovered an alternate solution for creating the uranium isotope needed to cause a chain reaction: U-235. After convincing General Groves of his new method, Cohen and his team of scientists work at Oak Ridge, preparing to have a nuclear bomb ready to drop by the summer of 1944 in an effort to stop the war on the western front. What ensues is an altered account of World War II in this taut thriller. Combining fascinating science with intimate and true accounts of several members of the Manhattan Project, The Berlin Project is an astounding novel that reimagines history and what could have happened if the atom bomb was ready in time to stop Hitler from killing millions of people.
©2017 Gregory Benford (P)2017 S&S Audio
In the Ocean of Night
Summary
It is 2019. NASA astronaut Nigel Walmsley is sent on a mission to intercept a rogue asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Ordered to destroy it, he instead discovers that it is actually the shell of a derelict space probe - a wreck with just enough power to emit a single electronic signal. In 2034, a reply is heard. Searching for the source of this signal, which comes from outside the solar system, Nigel discovers the existence of a sentient ship. When the new vessel begins to communicate directly with him, the astronaut learns of the horrors that await humanity. For the ship was created by an alien race that has spent billions and billions of years searching for intelligent life… to annihilate it.
©1972, 1973, 1974, 1977 Abbenford Associates (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 2
Summary
An unabridged audio collection spotlighting the “best of the best” hard science-fiction stories published in 2017 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster, as narrated by Tom Dheere and Nancy Linari. In “Shadows of Eternity” by Gregory Benford, a student investigates enigmatic SETI recordings from probes sent to nearby stars despite her teachers’ admonishments to stick to the curriculum. As war and pollution ravage the last survivors on Earth, an alien robot descends to help save the planet in “The Chatter of Monkeys” by Bond Elam. In “Acadie” by Dave Hutchinson, the first humans still, even after 500 years, hunt across the stars for their augmented children who have left Earth in search of paradise. The crew of an exploratory starship finds an icy moon that might harbor life in “Canoe” by Nancy Kress. In “The Use of Things” by Ramez Naam, an astronaut struggles to survive after being jolted free from an asteroid while on a solitary prospecting mission. A problem with the local birds threatens the rebuilding of Bikini Island as sea-levels rise due to global warming in “The Proving Ground” by Alec Nevala-Lee. In “Holdfast” by Alastair Reynolds, a genmod human soldier faces off with an alien warrior in the inhospitable terrain of a superjovian planet. A Russian astronaut, gathering debris in near-Earth space, must make tough moral choices when asked to carry out a special mission in “Vanguard 2.0” by Carter Scholz. And finally, after a terrorist attack, a technically dead fish farmer gets a new body and second chance at life as an experimental super soldier, in “ZeroS” by Peter Watts.
©2018 AudioText (P)2018 AudioText
Tides of Light
Summary
Onboard an ancient starship, Killeen and the Bishop tribe escape the mech-ruled world of Snowglade. Seeking refuge on a faraway planet, they discover vast wonders: an organic life-form as large as a world, a planet-coring cosmic string, a community of humans ruled by a brutal tyrant, and ultimately an alien race more awesome than any they have encountered. As they battle for survival against these myriad dangers, Killeen and his crew will gain an unforeseen ally - one that may determine humanity’s true destiny.
©1989 Abbenford Associates (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Across the Sea of Suns
Summary
It is 2076: Lancer, Earth’s first starship, is on a mission to find interstellar civilizations. Although astronaut Nigel Walmsley’s experiences with alien encounters make him the expert, no one believes Nigel’s theory that machines are the dominant intelligent beings left in the galaxy and that their purpose is to annihilate all organic life. Then the explorers discover once-living planets where only machines remain – and ruined worlds where fugitive survivors must evade omnipresent and lethally advanced A.I. warships. By the time the crew of Lancer realizes that Nigel is right, it will be too late – for the machines have already found Lancer…and Earth.
©1984 Gregory Benford (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Sailing Bright Eternity
Summary
Millennia of conflict between humans and mechs have driven the human race to near-extinction. Now, as the fierce AI mechs begin their final assault on mankind, it soon becomes apparent that three men - three generations in a family of voyagers - are their targets. Toby Bishop, his father, Killeen Bishop, and his grandfather, Nigel Walmsley, each carry a piece of the lethal secret that can destroy their enemies. But hunted through space and time by relentless assassins, they have no idea that they possess the only weapon that can save humanity.
©1995 Abbenford Associates (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Furious Gulf
Summary
Few writers have successful blended hard science and speculation with fully realized characters as Gregory Benford has in his critically acclaimed novels. Now he draws us into a vortex of mystery and danger at the heart of the galaxy in his dazzling epic drama, Furious Gulf.Containing the remnants of humanity from the planet Snowglade, the spaceship Argo hurtles toward its uncertain destiny, the bold and brilliant Captain Killeen at its helm. But he has grown increasingly isolated and anguished in command. The ship’s gardens are failing, its voyagers face starvation, and there are dark whispers within, talk of mutiny. Killeen’s will, however, remains as strong as ever, his determination to reach the True Center of the galaxy bordering on obsession.Amid a mad swirl of incandescent suns and ghostly blue clouds of galactic dust, beset by hostile worlds controlled by the mechs – a vast and violent artificial intelligence whose only meaning, only mission, is the complete extermination of the human race - Killeen pursues his desperate search, convinced his people’s one hope of survival lies in the True Center. The crew has followed him this far on faith, a faith now being tested to the limit. Even his own son Toby, groomed for leadership, is beginning to question his father’s command.As the Argo undertakes a perilous quest into the unknown, Toby faces his own journey into the mysteries of adulthood. Like the others in this Family of voyagers, Toby’s spine contains microchip implants holding the memories – the legacy – of his race. But just as the technology designed to save his people may tear Toby himself apart, so his father’s desperate gamble to save the Argo may plunge the ship and its inhabitants into a cosmic pit of all-consuming fire. In this extraordinary novel, part of an interconnected series of novels that began with In the Ocean of Night and continued in Across the Sea of Suns, Great Sky River, and Tides of Light, Gregory Benford explores the fundamental nature of human development and discovery. Across the gulf that stretches between fear and faith, past and future, we watch in wonder as an age-old question continues…the quest for the fulfillment of an individual, for the evolution of a species, for the immortality of the soul.
©1994 Abbenford Associates (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Great Sky River
Summary
Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, only a few hundred humans survive. Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, Killeen and his child, Toby, of the Bishop Trib,e are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling “mechs”. Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity – neither organic nor cybernetic or living matter – reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen. But can the fallen descendent of starfarers understand this being in time - and seize his only chance to save his family and mankind from final annihilation?
©1987 Abbenford Associates (P)2012 Audible, Inc.