Audiobooks by Ben Bova

Earth has been devastated by a massive solar flare. Now a small group of survivors fights to rebuild civilization. Cities became ovens, grasslands seas of flame. As the touch of dawn swept westward across the spinning planet, its fiery finger killed everything in its path. Glaciers in Switzerland began to melt; floodwaters poured down on burning Alpine villages. Paris became a torch, then London. North of the Arctic Circle, Laplanders in their summer furs burst into flame as their reindeer collapsed and roasted on the smoking tundra. The line of dawn raced westward across the Atlantic, but as it did, the sun dimmed as quickly as it had flared. The Americas escaped the sun’s wrath … almost. “A hard, dark book, the story of mankind after the fall…Compulsive reading…The battle to rebuild Earth after its almost total destruction by a gigantic solar flare.”—Harry Harrison

Ben Bova (Author), Dean Sluyter (Narrator)

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Mars, Inc.: The Billionaire’s Club

Bova, a six-time Hugo Award winner and past president of the National Space Society, returns to his most popular and bestselling subject: the quest for Mars! How do you get to the Red Planet? Not via a benighted government program trapped in red tape and bound by budget constrictions, that’s for sure. No, what it will take is a helping of adventure, science, corporate power plays, a generous dollop of seduction—both in and out of the boardroom—and money, money, money! Art Thrasher knows this. He is a man with a driving vision: send humans to Mars. The government has utterly failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat: form a “club” of billionaires to chip in one billion a year until the dream is accomplished. The problem is, these men and women are tough cookies, addicted to a profitable bottom-line and disdainful of pie-in-the-sky dreamers who want to use their cash to make somebody else’s dreams come true. But Thrasher is different from the other dreamers in an important regard: he’s a billionaire himself, and the president of a successful company. Still, it’s going to take all his wiles as a captain of industry and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and sabotage—and get a rocket full of scientists, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet. The man for the job has arrived. Art Thrasher is prepared to do whatever it takes to put humans on Mars—or die trying! “The Hugo winner returns to his most popular subject: the quest for Mars.”—Publishers Weekly

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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Survival

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.

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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New Earth

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 eighty years each way, so even if they are able to get back to Earth, nearly two hundred 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? “[An]…absorbing entry in Bova’s Grand Tour series.”—Kirkus Reviews

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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Leviathans of Jupiter

What secrets lurk in the depths of Jupiter's oceans? In Ben Bova's novel Jupiter, physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter's planet-wide ocean, attempting to study the unusual and massive creatures that call the planet their home. Unprepared for the hostile environment and crushing pressures, Grant's team faced certain death as their ship malfunctioned and slowly sank to the planet's depths. However, one of Jupiter's native creatures—a city-sized leviathan—saved the doomed ship. This creature's act convinced Grant that they were intelligent, but he lacked scientific proof. Now, several years later, Grant prepares a new expedition to prove it once and for all. The new team faces dangers from both the hostile environment and from humans who will do anything to make sure the mission is a failure—even if it means murdering the entire crew. "Fully realized characters and a fast-action plot…Bova's fans and hard SF lovers should flock to his latest novel."—Library Journal

Ben Bova (Author), A Full Cast, Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle De Cuir, Rosalyn Landor, Samantha Eggar, Various Readers, Various Readers (Narrator)

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Voyagers

Stoner knew. The fiery object hurtling toward the Earth was an alien spacecraft. But the world might never know. For the discovery had shattered the world power balance, setting off a brutal struggle for supremacy that raged from the sacred halls of the Vatican to the corridors of the Kremlin and the Pentagon.

Ben Bova (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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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)

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Able One

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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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)

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Venus

The surface of Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system, its ground hot enough to melt aluminum, its air pressure high enough to crush spacecraft landers like tin cans, its atmosphere a choking mix of poisonous gases. This is where the frail young Van Humphries must go—or die trying. Years before, Van's older brother perished in the first attempt to land a man on Venus. Van's father has always hated him for being the one to survive. Now, his father is offering a ten-billion-dollar prize to the first person who lands on Venus and returns his oldest son's remains. To everyone's surprise, Van takes up the offer. But what Van Humphries will find on Venus will change everything—our understanding of Venus, of global warming on Earth, and his knowledge of who he is. "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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The Precipice

The first novel of the Asteroid Wars about earth's near future from the leading light of hard Science Fiction and space advocacy. Once, Dan Randolph was one of the richest men on Earth. Now the planet is spiralling 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 Randolphaccompanied 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. *Booklist

Ben Bova (Author), Amanda Karr, Scott Brick (Narrator)

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The Best of Bova, Volume 1

The first volume in a sterling collection of stories from legendary hard science fiction master Ben Bova These are selected stories from Bova's amazing career at the center of science fiction and space advocacy. He is the creator of the New York Times bestselling Grand Tour series, a six-time Hugo award winner, and past president of the National Space Society. The very best of Ben Bova, 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 which are as timeless as the stars.

Ben Bova (Author), Alex Hyde-White, Efrem Zimbalist, Gabrielle De Cuir, Harlan Ellison, Jim Meskimen, Orson Scott Card, Paul Boehmer, Stefan Rudnicki, Various, Various Narrators, Various Narrators, Vikas Adam (Narrator)

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