Harlan Ellison has narrated 14 audiobooks on Listento.it by 28 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 292 ratings. The most-rated is Ender's Game.
Ender's Game
Summary
Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut - young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
©1977, 1985, 1991 Orson Scott Card (P)2002 Fantastic Audio, an imprint of Audio Literature
Thief of Time
Summary
Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. On Discworld that is the job of the highly capable Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like underwater - how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough time. But the construction of the world's first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time, for the monk Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. For if the perfect clock starts ticking, Time, as we know it, will stop. And then the trouble will really begin. Subtle, sly, thought-provoking, and hilarious, Thief of Time is Terry Pratchett at his best. This multi-voice production features Christopher Cazenove, Gabrielle de Cuir, Karesa McElheny, John Rubinstein, and Stefan Rudnicki, with a guest appearance by Harlan Ellison. Browse more novels of Discworld.
©2001 Terry and Lynn Pratchett (P)2001 Audio Literature
Perchance to Dream
Summary
The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer. It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone - for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes. Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied, they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more - all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont's hands, nothing is impossible; it all seems plausible, even likely.
©2016 Charles Beaumont (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Wastelands
Summary
Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence - the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon - these are our guides through the Wastelands. From the Book of Revelation to The Road Warrior, from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving eschatological tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. In doing so, these visionary authors have addressed one of the most challenging and enduring themes of imaginative fiction: The nature of life in the aftermath of total societal collapse. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction - including George R. R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King - Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon. Whether the end of the world comes through nuclear war, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm, these are tales of survivors, in some cases struggling to rebuild the society that was, in others, merely surviving, scrounging for food in depopulated ruins and defending themselves against monsters, mutants, and marauders. Wastelands delves into this bleak landscape, uncovering the raw human emotion and heart-pounding thrills at the genre's core.
©2008 John Joseph Adams (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
Untouched by Human Hands
Summary
Untouched by Human Hands consists of 13 stories of beings who dwell on the strange borders of reality. Some of these stories tell of people you know or of events that might happen - but haven't yet. Some will take you to the furthermost reaches of the sky and to planets whose names are unknown this side of Arcturus. And some - perhaps the richest and most memorable of these stories - open into the interior of strange minds to reveal the reflection of ourselves. This classic collection consists of the following short stories: "The Monsters" "Cost of Living" "The Altar" "Shape" "The Impacted Man" "Untouched by Human Hands" "The King's Wishes" "Warm" "The Demons" "Specialist" "Seventh Victim" "Ritual" "Beside Still Waters"
©2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc., and Skyboat Media, Inc. (P)1954 Robert Sheckley
The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, July-August 2003
Summary
Take Audible's July/August Fantasy & Science Fiction collection with you to the beach. It's got rich humor galore, as well as a couple of particularly evocative futures which offer new perspective on these troubled times.We begin with the latest installment of Paul Di Filippo's Plumage from Pegasus column, "Write What You Sell," providing a new twist on literature and publishing.Then, Al Michaud takes us Down East for the annual clambake in "Clem Crowder's Catch," a Maine horror story that will elicit both shivers and laughs.Benjamin Rosenbaum's surreal "Red Leather Tassels" introduces us to the sex life of a very special woodpecker. "Repository" by Carol Emshwiller is an edgy and powerful glimpse into the mind of "the universal soldier." Harlan Ellison reads Harvey Jacobs' existential fish story, "Spawning," with comic restraint.From the pen of the wonderful Pat Murphy comes "Dragon's Gate," a tale about a prince, a minstrel and, of course, a dragon, that sets the entire tradition of such stories on its ear.And finally, Adam-Troy Castro's stunning novella "The Tangled Strings of the Marionettes," explores the nature and purposes of art, humanity, and perhaps life itself.
©2003 Spilogale, Inc.
Coffins
Summary
A chill inducing and masterful collection of vampire tales, culled from the dark recesses of the nefarious and world renowned Vampires Archives. Coffins, the third volume in the mass market series, contains some of the best of the best of vampire fiction. Including Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Edgar Allan Poe, and F. Paul Wilson, it takes its listeners deep inside the crypts of the living dead, in all their supernatural splendor. Featuring: "Heart Pounding Shrieks" "Blood Soaked Moonlit Hunts" "High Stakes Adventure" "Evil Assignations"
©2010 Otto Penzler (P)2010 Random House
Thirty Years of Treason, Volume 1
Summary
A fascinating look into the federal government's anti-Communist investigations The testimony that the author has gleaned for this book from the 30-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee focuses on HUAC's treatment of artists, intellectuals, and performers. This highly listenable and absorbing collection of significant excerpts from the hearings shows with painful clarity how HUAC grew from a panel that investigated possible subversive activities in a "dignified" manner to a huge, unrelenting accusatory finger from which almost no one was safe. Thirty Years of Treason serves as a warning for the future and creates living history from the documentary record.
©2014 Eric Bentley (P)2014 Blackstone Audiobooks
More of the Greatest Mysteries of All Time
Summary
More of the Greatest Mysteries of All Time is the second in a series featuring the finest short story mystery fiction by the most acclaimed writers, past and present. From Thomas Hardy, O. Henry, Jack London, Vincent Starrett and everyone in between, this unique collection, edited by multi-award winning mystery connoisseur Otto Penzler, is a delightful mixture of mystery and suspense.
©2009 Phoenix (P)2009 Phoenix
Honeymoon in Hell
Summary
Imagine… Ghosts, gods, and devils - heavens and hells - cities in the sky and cities beneath the sea. Time machines, spaceships - certainly you can imagine Martians, but what about interplanetary vampires? Or a mouse that isn't a mouse? Honeymoon in Hell proves that Fredric Brown has a special vision, a sight beyond our wildest nightmares, a perception of things we couldn't even begin to imagine. Stories include: "Honeymoon in Hell" "Too Far" "Man of Distinction" "Millennium" "The Dome" "Blood" "Hall of Mirrors" "Experiment" "The Last Martian" "Sentry" "Mouse" "Naturally" "Voodoo" "Arena" "Keep Out" "First Time Machine" "And the Gods Laughed" "The Weapon" "A Word from Our Sponsors" "Rustle of Wings" "Imagine"
©1963 Frederic Brown (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, 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.
Vengeance
Summary
The enemy of her enemy is...still her enemy. All Cyn wants is justice. Kolya Kurev murdered her family in cold blood and got away with it. Single-minded in her determination, Cyn becomes the killer she needs to be. Until she meets Lee, a man also deeply wronged by Kurev. Cyn's new problem? Lee. Lee is stealing her revenge and screwing with the carefully carved life she’s made for herself. As if his mere presence and counter-productive ambitions weren’t enough, he’s going to get her caught. The FBI has been on her tail for several years now, but they haven’t even come close to finding her. Cyn has been leaving fake evidence at her crime scenes and counting on the one thing the FBI hasn’t figured out yet: Their most-wanted criminal is just a girl. Vengeance is the first book in the Vendetta Trifecta. While it can be listened to as a stand-alone, be prepared to reach for book two as you finish this one.
©2010 A.J. Scudiere (P)2019 A.J. Scudiere
Operation Homecoming
Summary
In the summer of 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts organized a series of writing workshops, led by prominent authors, to encourage U.S. troops and their families to record their experiences and reflections on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The result is this extraordinary volume of first-hand letters, poems, journals, memoirs, and e-mails from the men and women directly involved in battle and their families back home. This uniquely personal addition to the long tradition of war literature covers the entire arc of a soldier's journey, from those first experiences of combat, encounters with Iraqis and Afghans, and the humor and boredom of the daily grind, to the physical and emotional toll of battle, the struggle of loved ones back home to carry on, and finally the return and integration back into American life. Featured on the cover of the New Yorker and in various print and TV news programs, this rich historical document will preserve the stories of American troops at a crucial moment in American history. Edited by Andrew Carroll. Read by Sandi Austin, Joe Barrett, David Birney, Stephen Bonnell, Richard Brewer, Scott Brick, Emily Janice Card, Orson Scott Card, Andrew Carroll, Ross Cohen, Gabrielle De Cuir, Harlan Ellison, Robert Forster, Kirby Heyborne, Stephen Hoye, Arte Johnson, Stephen Lang, Rex Linn, Kathe Mazur, John Rubinstein, Stefan Rudnicki, Judith Smiley, Mirron E. Willis, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and Stephanie Zimbalist.
©2006 Southern Arts Federation (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc