Audiobooks by Ben Bova

When a nuclear missile launched by a rogue North Korean faction explodes in space, the resulting shock wave destroys most of the world's satellites, throwing global communication into chaos. U.S. military satellites, designed to withstand such an assault, show that two more missiles are sitting on launch pads in North Korea, ready to be deployed. Faced with the threat of a thermonuclear attack, the United States has only one possible defense: Able One. ABL-1, or Able One, is a modified 747 fitted with a high powered laser able to knock out missiles in flight. But both the laser's technology and the jet's crew is untested. What was originally a training flight with a skeleton crew turns into a desperate race to destroy the two remaining nukes. Will Able One's experimental technology be enough to prevent World War III'especially when it becomes clear that a saboteur is on board? Able One is a timely thrill-ride by one of science fiction's most respected novelists. Directed by Judy Young 'Bova proves himself equal to the task of showing how adversity can temper character in unforeseen ways.''New York Times

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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Answer, Please Answer

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. Two drafted soldiers, an optical astronomer and a radio astronomer, are stationed in an isolated weather dome at the South Pole for the winter. While observing a distant star, they inexplicably detect a complex signal being transmitted through space. Through painstaking analysis, they determine the signal carries a message conveying the technological history of an advanced alien civilization.

Ben Bova (Author), Digital Voice Mike G (Narrator)

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Answer, Please Answer !: A dire warning from space that humans do not want to hear

Two army draftees, both astronomers of different types, are sent to spend six months at the South Pole, monitoring weather patterns. The tensions of cold war between the US and Russia have increased to the breaking point and each nation has mobilized for imminent nuclear strikes. A sort of peace still exists but just by the narrowest margins. Sitting in their tiny igloo beneath the ice, the men talk about their jobs of searching the stars for intelligent life; one using visual means and the other using radio frequency means. In doing so, a strange anomaly is noticed in a star 600 light years away. It appears to be a regular signal of some type. Absurd of course but having little else to do, these two scientists try to crack the code, if indeed there is one, as a way to pass the time. They do. And the message is most definitely not one they wish to get. Listen to this story by the astronomer and master story teller Ben Bova and think about the consequences of our world's current armament race.

Ben Bova (Author), Philip Chenevert (Narrator)

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Apes and Angels

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in Apes and Angels, the last installment in the Star Quest Trilogy. Humankind headed out to the stars not for conquest, nor exploration, nor even for curiosity. Humans went to the stars in a desperate crusade to save intelligent life wherever they found it. A wave of death is spreading through the Milky Way galaxy, an expanding sphere of lethal gamma radiation that erupted from the galaxy's core twenty-eight thousand years ago and now is approaching Earth's vicinity at the speed of light. Every world it touched was wiped clean of all life. But it's possible to protect a planet from gamma radiation. Earth is safe. Now, guided by the ancient intelligent machines called the Predecessors, men and women from Earth seek out those precious, rare worlds that harbor intelligent species, determined to save them from the doom that is hurtling toward them. The crew of the Odysseus has arrived at Mithra Gamma, the third planet of the star Mithra, to protect the stone-age inhabitants from the Death Wave. But they'll also have to protect themselves.

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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Ben Bova: The Next Logical Step: Ordinarily the military does not want to have the enemy know the f

Things are not good. The tension between the USA and t he USSR have continued to grow until each side is glowering at the other behind thousands of nuclear missiles on submarines, silos, railroads and planes. Each nation is on a hair trigger. The entire world is armed now and ready to blow at the slightest provocation. 'If you try anything, I will retaliate with 20 times the destruction, I will take you so far down you won't see daylight for 500 years!' The US has built a massive computer to run battle simulations; a computer so innovative and big that it can show what will happen in excruciating detail and as a visual reality. Unfortunately the generals that have used it so far have either quit the military or committed suicide so a CIA agent is called into give advice.

Ben Bova (Author), Philip Chenevert (Narrator)

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Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction

Seventeen hard science fiction tales by today’s top authors Hard science fiction is the literature of change, rigorously examining the impact—both beneficial and dangerous—of science and technology on humanity, the future, and the cosmos. As science advances, expanding our knowledge of the universe, astounding new frontiers in storytelling open up as well. In Carbide Tipped Pens, over a dozen of today’s most creative imaginations explore these frontiers, carrying on the grand tradition of such legendary masters as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, while bringing hard science fiction into the twenty-first century by extrapolating from the latest scientific developments and discoveries. Ranging from ancient China to the outer reaches of the solar system, this outstanding collection of original stories, written by an international roster of authors, finds wonder, terror, and gripping human drama in topics as diverse as space exploration, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, alternate history, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, interplanetary war, and even the future of baseball. From tattoos that treat allergies to hazardous missions to Mars and beyond, from the end of the world to the farthest limits of human invention, Carbide Tipped Pens turns startling new ideas into state-of-the art science fiction. This collection includes stories by Ben Bova, Gregory Benford, Robert Reed, Aliette de Bodard, Jack McDevitt, Howard Hendrix, Daniel H. Wilson, and many others! “A science-fiction anthology that strikes a balance between radical scientific ideas and grounded human emotion…Hard-core sci-fi fans will gobble this up, and readers newer to the genre should give it a chance, too.”—Kirkus Reviews

Ben Bova, Eric Choi, Various Authors, Various Authors (Author), Alex Hyde-White, Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle De Cuir, Judy Young, Paul Boehmer, Stefan Rudnicki, Various, Various Narrators, Various Narrators (Narrator)

Audiobook

Colony

In the future, everything is different—but nothing has changed. “The Earth has been poisoned by pollution, choked by overpopulation, and ravaged by the mindless greed of power-hungry corporations. A fragile peace is threatened by landless revolutionaries, and global anarchy seems imminent. Yet a single ray of hope remains…” Island One is a celestial utopia, and David Adams is its most perfect creation—a man with a brain as advanced as any computer and a body free of human frailties. But David is a prisoner—a captive of the colony that created him—destined to spend the days of his life in an island-sized cylinder that circles a doomed and desperate home planet. Thousands of miles below him, a world trembles; its people cringe in terror and despair in anticipation of an impending apocalypse. And fate has cast one extraordinary human in the role of savior. For David Adams has a plan—one that will ultimately ensure the salvation of his species … or its annihilation. “A beautiful story full of prophetic visions.”—Frank Herbert, New York Times bestselling author

Ben Bova (Author), Kristoffer Tabori (Narrator)

Audiobook

Colony

In the future, everything is different—but nothing has changed. 'The Earth has been poisoned by pollution, choked by overpopulation, and ravaged by the mindless greed of power-hungry corporations. A fragile peace is threatened by landless revolutionaries, and global anarchy seems imminent.Yet a single ray of hope remains…' Island One is a celestial utopia, and David Adams is its most perfect creation—a man with a brain as advanced as any computer and a body free of human frailties. But David is a prisoner—a captive of the colony that created him—destined to spend the days of his life in an island-sized cylinder that circles a doomed and desperate home planet. Thousands of miles below him, a world trembles; its people cringe in terror and despair in anticipation of an impending apocalypse. And fate has cast one extraordinary human in the role of savior. For David Adams has a plan—one that will ultimately ensure the salvation of his species … or its annihilation.

Ben Bova (Author), Kristoffer Tabori (Narrator)

Audiobook

Death Wave

Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system. In Ben Bova's previous novel New Earth, Jordan Kell led the first human mission beyond the solar system, where they discovered the ruins of an ancient alien civilization. But one alien AI survived, and it revealed to Jordan Kell that an explosion in the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy has created a wave of deadly radiation, expanding out from the core toward Earth. Unless the human race acts to save itself, all life on Earth will be wiped out. When Kell and his team return to Earth many years after their departure, they find that their world has changed almost beyond recognition. Not only has a second wave of greenhouse flooding caused sea levels to rise, but society has been changed by the consequences of the climate shift. Few people want to face Jordan Kell's news. He must convince Earth's new rulers that the human race is in danger of extinction unless it acts to forestall the death wave coming from the galaxy's heart. "I believe that by far the science fiction author who will have the greatest effect on the science fiction world, and the world as a whole, is Ben Bova."-Ray Bradbury, praise for the author

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

Audiobook

Earth

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 two thousand 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.

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

Audiobook

Empire Builders

Dan Randolph never plays by the rules. A hell-raising maverick with no patience for fools, he is admired by his friends, feared by his enemies, and desired by the world's loveliest women. Acting as a twenty-first privateer, Randolph broke the political strangle-hold on space exploration, and became one of the world's richest men in the bargain. Now an ecological crisis threatens Earth-and the same politicians that Randolph outwitted the first time want to impose a world dictatorship to deal with it. Dan Randolph knows that the answer lies in more human freedom, not less-and in the boundless resources of space. But can he stay free long enough to give the world that chance? "Solid action-adventure/politicking/consciousness-raising from a veteran pro."-Kirkus Reviews Directed by Judy Young

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

Audiobook

End of Exile

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

Audiobook