Marc Vietor has narrated 170 audiobooks on Listento.it by 116 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 3,068 ratings. The most-rated is Hyperion.
Parallel Worlds
Summary
Is our universe dying? Could there be other universes? In Parallel Worlds, world-renowned physicist and best-selling author Michio Kaku - an author who "has a knack for bringing the most ethereal ideas down to earth" (Wall Street Journal) - takes listeners on a fascinating tour of cosmology, M-theory, and its implications for the fate of the universe. In his first book of physics since Hyperspace, Michio Kaku begins by describing the extraordinary advances that have transformed cosmology over the last century and particularly over the last decade, forcing scientists around the world to rethink our understanding of the birth of the universe and its ultimate fate. In Dr. Kaku's eyes, we are living in a golden age of physics, as new discoveries from the WMAP and COBE satellites and the Hubble space telescope have given us unprecedented pictures of our universe in its infancy. As astronomers wade through the avalanche of data from the WMAP satellite, a new cosmological picture is emerging. So far the leading theory about the birth of the universe is the "inflationary universe theory", a major refinement on the big bang theory. In this theory our universe may be but one in a multiverse, floating like a bubble in an infinite sea of bubble universes, with new universes being created all the time. A parallel universe may well hover a mere millimeter from our own. The very idea of parallel universes and the string theory that can explain their existence was once viewed with suspicion by scientists, seen as the province of mystics, charlatans, and cranks. But today physicists overwhelmingly support string theory and its latest iteration, M-theory, as it is this one theory that, if proven correct, would reconcile the four forces of the universe simply and elegantly and answer the question "what happened before the big bang?" Already, Kaku explains, the world's foremost physicists and astronomers are searching for ways to test the theory of the multiverse using highly sophisticated wave detectors, gravity lenses, satellites, and telescopes. The implications of M-theory are fascinating and endless. If parallel worlds do exist, Kaku speculates, in time - perhaps a trillion years or more from now, as appears likely - when our universe grows cold and dark in what scientists describe as a big freeze, advanced civilizations may well find a way to escape our universe in a kind of "interdimensional lifeboat". An unforgettable journey into black holes and time machines, alternate universes, and multidimensional space, Parallel Worlds gives us a compelling portrait of the revolution sweeping the world of cosmology.
©2006 Michio Kaku (P)2016 Random House Audio
Unfettered
Summary
You define life or it defines you. In Shawn Speakman’s case, it was both. Lacking health insurance and diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011, Shawn quickly accrued a massive medical debt that he did not have the ability to pay. That’s when New York Times best-selling author Terry Brooks offered to donate a short story that Shawn could sell to help alleviate those bills - and suggested he ask the same of his other writer friends. Unfettered is the result: An anthology built in order to relieve that debt, featuring short stories by some of the best fantasy writers in the genre. Twenty-three tales comprise this incredible collection, and as the title suggests, the writers were free to contribute whatever they wished. Here is the table of contents: Foreword by Patrick Rothfuss Introduction: On Becoming Unfettered Imaginary Friends by Terry Brooks How Old Holly Came to Be by Patrick Rothfuss The Old Scale Game by Tad Williams Game of Chance by Carrie Vaughn The Martyr of the Roses by Jacqueline Carey Mudboy by Peter V. Brett The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian The Coach with Big Teeth by R. A. Salvatore Keeper of Memory by Todd Lockwood Heaven in a Wild Flower by Blake Charlton Dogs by Daniel Abraham The Chapel Perilous by Kevin Hearne Select Mode by Mark Lawrence All the Girls Love Michael Stein by David Anthony Durham Strange Rain by Jennifer Bosworth Nocturne by Robert V. S. Redick Unbowed by Eldon Thompson In Favour with Their Stars by Naomi Novik River of Souls by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson The Jester by Michael J. Sullivan The Duel by Lev Grossman Walker and the Shade of Allanon by Terry Brooks The Unfettered Knight by Shawn SpeakmanWith the help of stalwart friends and these wonderful short stories, Shawn has taken the gravest of life’s hardships and created something magical. Unfettered is not only a fantastic anthology in its own right, but it’s a testament to the generosity found in the science fiction and fantasy community—proof that humanity can give beyond itself when the need arises. After all, isn’t that the driving narrative in fantasy literature?
©2013 Shawn Speakman (P)2013 Audible Inc.
World of Wonders
Summary
Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as a "modern classic", Robertson Davies' acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. World of Wonders, the third book in the series after The Manticore, follows the story of Magnus Eisengrim - the most illustrious magician of his age - who is spirited away from his home by a member of a traveling sideshow, the Wanless World of Wonders. After honing his skills and becoming better known, Magnus unfurls his life's courageous and adventurous tale in this third and final volume of a spectacular, soaring work.
©1975 Robertson Davies (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
The Master Switch
Summary
A secret history of the industrial wars behind the rise and fall of the 20th century's great information empires - Hollywood, the broadcast networks, and AT&T - asking one big question: Could history repeat itself, with one giant entity taking control of American information? Most consider the Internet Age to be a moment of unprecedented freedom in communications and culture. But as Tim Wu shows, each major new medium, from telephone to cable, arrived on a similar wave of idealistic optimism only to become, eventually, the object of industrial consolidation profoundly affecting how Americans communicate. Every once-free and open technology was in time centralized and closed, a huge corporate power taking control of the master switch. Today, as a similar struggle looms over the Internet, increasingly the pipeline of all other media, the stakes have never been higher. To be decided: who gets heard, and what kind of country we live in. Part industrial exposé, part meditation on the nature of freedom of expression, part battle cry to save the Internet's best features, The Master Switch brings to light a crucial drama rife with indelible characters and stories, heretofore played out over decades in the shadows of our national life.
©2010 Tim Wu (P)2010 Audible, Inc
The Shiva Option
Summary
Defeat was not an option. The war wasn't going well. The mind-numbingly alien Arachnids were an enemy whose like no civilized race had ever confronted. Like some carnivorous cancer, the "Bugs" had overrun planet after planet...and they regarded any competing sentient species as only one more protein source. They couldn't be reasoned with, or even talked to, because no one had the least idea of how to communicate with a telepathic species with no recognizable language...and whose response to any communication attempt was a missile salvo. No one knew how large their civilization - if it could be called a civilization - actually was or how it was organized, but the huge fleets they threw against their opponents suggested that it was enormous. The Grand Alliance of Humans, Orions, Ophiuchi, and Gorm, united in desperate self-defense, have been driven to the wall. Billions of their civilians have been slaughtered. Their most powerful offensive operation has ended in shattering defeat and the deaths of their most experienced and revered military commanders. The edge in technology with which they began the war is eroding out from under them, and whatever they do, the Bugs just keep coming. But the warriors of the Grand Alliance know what stands behind them, and they will surrender no more civilians to the oncoming juggernaut. They will die first...and they will also reactivate General Directive 18, however horrible it may be. Because when the only possible outcome is victory or racial extermination, only one option is acceptable. The Shiva Option.
©2002 David Weber and Steve White (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
A Hymn Before Battle
Summary
With Earth in the path of the rapacious Posleen, the Galactic Federation offers help to the backward humans - for a price. You can protect yourself from your enemies, but God save you from your allies!
©2001 John Ringo (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
The Listener
Summary
It's 1934. Businesses went under by the hundreds, debt and foreclosures boomed, and breadlines grew in many American cities. In the midst of this misery, some folks explored unscrupulous ways to make money. Angel-faced John Partlow and carnival huckster Ginger LaFrance are among the worst of this lot. Joining together they leave their small-time confidence scams behind to attempt an elaborate kidnapping-for-ransom scheme in New Orleans. In a different part of town, Curtis Mayhew, a young black man who works as a redcap for the Union Railroad Station, has a reputation for mending quarrels and misunderstandings among his friends. What those friends don't know is that Curtis has a special talent for listening...and he can sometimes hear things that aren't spoken aloud. One day, Curtis Mayhew's special talent allows him to overhear a child's cry for help (THIS MAN IN THE CAR HE'S GOT A GUN), which draws him into the dangerous world of Partlow and LaFrance. This gritty Depression-era crime thriller is a complex tale enriched by powerfully observed social commentary and hints of the supernatural, and it represents Robert McCammon writing at the very top of his game.
©2018 Robert McCammon (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
In Death Ground
Summary
Five thousand years after Sun Tzu writes The Art of War, his advice is followed during the Fourth Interstellar War between the terrible Bugs and the humans, who are aided by their catlike Orion allies.
©1997 David Weber & Steve White (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Crusade
Summary
Spacers call the warp point Charon's Ferry. No star ship has ever entered it and returned since a vengeful Orion task force pursued a doomed Terran colonization fleet into it in 2206. Almost a century has passed. The fiery hatreds of a quarter-century of warfare between the Terran Federation and the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieeee, the cat-like species humans called the "Orions", have eased at least a little. The "Grand Alliance" forged by the need to fight side-by-side against the genocidal Rigelians remains, but there are those on either side who continue to hate, continue to distrust. Now the strength of that war-forged alliance is about to be tested. For Charon's Ferry is about to give up the secret of its dead. A ship has emerged from the deadly warp point at last. A ship which responds to the challenge of an Orion star ship using ancient human communications codes...then opens fire. The holocaust of interstellar warfare has been ignited anew, in a bloody crusade to free Holy Mother Terra.
©1992 David Weber & Steve White (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
The Automatic Detective
Summary
Even in Empire City, a town where weird science is the hope for tomorrow, it's hard for a robot to make his way. It's even harder for a robot named Mack Megaton, a hulking machine designed to bring mankind to its knees. But Mack's not interested in world domination. He's just a bot trying to get by, trying to demonstrate that he isn't just an automated smashing machine, and to earn his citizenship in the process. It should be as easy as crushing a tank for Mack, but some bots just can't catch a break. When Mack's neighbors are kidnapped, Mack sets off on a journey through the dark alleys and gleaming skyscrapers of Empire City. Along the way, he runs afoul of a talking gorilla, a brainy dame, a mutant lowlife, a little green mob boss, and the secret conspiracy at the heart of Empire's founders - not to mention more trouble than he bargained for. What started out as one missing family becomes a battle for the future of Empire and every citizen that calls her home.
©2008 A. Lee Martinez (P)2011 Audible, Inc.
The Fountains of Paradise
Summary
Vannemar Morgan's dream is to link Earth to the stars with the greatest engineering feat of all time: a 24,000-mile-high space elevator. But first he must solve a million technical, political, and economic problems while allaying the wrath of God. For the only possible site on the planet for Morgans Orbital Tower is the monastery atop the Sacred Mountain of Sri Kanda.
©1953 Arthur C. Clarke (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
Shattered Spear
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of The Lost Fleet returns to the "strong saga" of a rebellion against a totalitarian regime and the determination of two people to create a better future in the farthest reaches of the colonized galaxy.... The Syndicate Worlds continue to splinter as more star systems pledge allegiance to President Gwen Iceni, General Artur Drakon, and the new government they're establishing at Midway. But the toxic legacy of Syndicate rule continues to undermine their efforts as the rebels encounter difficulty trusting one another and believing their new leaders' promises of freedom from tyranny. Before Iceni and Drakon can put their house in order, they must deal with an even greater threat. An enigma warship has appeared and vanished near a Syndic colony. If the aliens are capable of jumping into other human-occupied star systems, then billions of people could be vulnerable to a hostile invasion fleet anywhere they choose to strike. But an even greater vulnerability lies with Iceni and Drakon, as a once-trusted adviser-turned-saboteur plans revenge....
©2016 John G. Hemry (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Something from the Nightside
Summary
"Taylor is the name. John Taylor...My card says I'm a detective, but what I really am is an expert on finding things. It's part of the Gift I was born with as a child of the Nightside - the hidden heart of London where it's always three a.m., where inhuman creatures and otherworldly gods walk side-by-side in the endless darkness of the soul. "Assignment: Joanna Barrett hires me to track down her teenage daughter, who decided to forgo the circus and run away to the Nightside. The kid has no idea what she's getting herself into...You can find anything in the Nightside-if it doesn't find you first." John Taylor is not a private detective per se, but he has a knack for finding lost things. That's why he's been hired to descend into the Nightside, an otherworldly realm in the center of London where fantasy and reality share renting space and the sun never shines.
©2003 Simon R. Green (P)2008 Audible, Inc.
Wholesale Slaughter
Summary
A king can't defeat an army of lawless pirates. But a mercenary can. Logan Conner is the son of a king, the heir to the largest of the five star-dominions, and the best mech pilot in the galaxy. His people are plagued by pirates and raiders, surrounded by enemies, and not even his father can fight them all. Logan gives up his position, his rank, even his name, and becomes Jonathan Slaughter, leader of a rough-and-ready band of mercenary mech-jocks bent on taking the battle to the enemy on their own terms. They’re Wholesale Slaughter. Kicking ass is what they do. Get book one in this thrilling and unpredictable military sci-fi adventure today!
©2019 Aethon Publishing (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
A.I. Destroyer
Summary
It came from deep space. It sent the signal. Now our computers are killing us, helping the enemy drive us into extinction. But some of us refuse to die. We fight back. We learn. Jon Hawkins revives from cryogenic sleep in a drifting SLN battleship. The crew is dead and the main computer has been destroyed. Jon is a soldier, the start of the resistance, the one man with the will to beat the alien death machines that have terminated 1000 races. This is our hour as we face the ultimate evil, the galactic destroyer of life.
©2017 Vaugn Heppner (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
The Breach
Summary
John Hawkins is counting down his last days as chief of police on the Lone Crow Reservation in the lonely, frigid woods of the Yukon. But when a faceless body with mysterious wounds washes up on the shores of the Porcupine River, he’s pulled deeper in than ever before. Hawkins and coroner Jacob Littlecorn suspect the disfigured body is that of theoretical physicist Graham Raphelson, also known as the “molecular madman of Trinity College”, who recently disappeared. The two investigators enlist Meg Gilday, a charter boat captain, and Linda Raphelson to examine the place where her husband was last seen alive. There, they find a house infested with more than secrets: bugs wriggle behind the walls, and in the attic sits a bizarre machine cobbled together from toy parts and electrical wire, a device that might be able to tear a hole through the fabric of reality itself. When Meg and Jacob get bitten and someone goes missing, Hawkins realizes that firing up the machine might be the only way to solve the case. Buzzing with suspense, this dark, gripping mystery from acclaimed horror writer Nick Cutter will leave listeners’ skin crawling.
©2020 Nick Cutter (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC.
The Sentinel
Summary
In the fifth book of the multi-author Sundering series, New York Times best-selling author Troy Denning sends an embittered paladin, Kleef Kenric, on a quest to stop evil forces from taking advantage of the chaos rolling across the land of Faern and claiming dominion over the entirety of the Realms. Stubbornly clinging to his family’s worship of a long-forgotten god, Kleef Kenric soon discovers that his god has blessed him with divine gifts, making him one of a new group of Chosen cropping up around the Realms. This divine gift makes him an excellent ally—and a target for those who wish corral his powers. After battling his way out Marsember, a city besieged on all sides in the wake of the Sundering, he becomes swept up in the mission of a group of odd allies—a warrior noblewoman, an accomplished thief, and a mysterious short pudgy man exuding a faint odor of decay. With the forces of Shade tracking their every step, they travel to the Underdark to thwart the rise of the goddess of Death, but before long Kleef learns that his allies hide dangerous secrets—secrets that could destroy not only Kleef but the very fabric of the Forgotten Realms.
©2014 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Gust Front
Summary
In this, the sequel to A Hymn Before Battle, Captain Michael O'Neal and his forces on Earth prepare to hold back an impending Posleen invasion. "Thanks to alien technology and sheer guts, the Terrans on two worlds fought the Posleen to a standstill. Thank God there was a moment to catch our breath, a moment, however brief, of peace. "Now, for the survivors of the Barwhon and Diess Expeditionary Forces, it was a chance to get some distance from the blood and misery of battle against the Posleen centaurs. A blessed chance to forget the screams of the dying in purple swamps and massacres under searing alien suns."
©2002 John Ringo (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
Watch on the Rhine
Summary
The invaders are coming; the Posleen, a seemingly unstoppable horde who have conquered one star system after another, literally feeding on their conquests. Earth's dubious allies, the Darhel, have given the humans a number of highly-advanced technological devices, including a process for rejuvenating the aged, including trained and proven soldiers who otherwise would be too old to fight. Rejuvenation may give a critical edge, since to survive, the Earth must use every resource at hand. Every resource . . .In the dark days after the initial Posleen attack, but before the primary invasion, the Chancellor of Germany faces a critical decision. Over the years, with military cutbacks, the store of experienced German military personnel had simply dwindled. After the destruction of Northern Virginia, he realized that it was necessary to tap the one group he had sworn never, ever, to recall: the few remaining survivors of the Waffen SS. Has he made a devil¿s bargain, or is this a chance for the reviled SS at last to fight the good fight? And, perhaps, gain redemption?Watch On the Rhine, a new chapter in the New York Times best-selling Posleen War saga, is perhaps the most unbiased, and brutal, look at the inner workings of the Waffen SS in history. Meticulously researched, it explores all that was good, and evil, about the most infamous military force in history using the backdrop of the Posleen invasion as a canvas.
©2007 Baen (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
Darkblade Assassin
Summary
The best assassin in the world doesn’t come cheap. Betraying him will cost your soul. The Hunter is a name feared by all in Voramis. He is an outcast, driven by a cursed dagger with an unquenchable thirst for blood and death. Yet he follows one simple code: Kill those who truly deserve to die. His creed is put to the test when, deceived by a shadowy employer, he unknowingly slaughters an innocent man. With the most powerful criminal organization in the city after his head, the Hunter must fight for his life and find a way to atone for his mistake. When his enemies harm the people under his protection, it will take much more than an army criminals to stand in the way of his revenge.
©2018 Andy Peloquin (P)2019 Podium Publishing