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Looking for amazing Sci-fi audiobook

Lord Midas

Lord Midas

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I've not long finished listening to the entire The First Law by Joe Abercrombie read by Stephen Pacey. Utterly superb. It's a kind of medieval setting, with a smidge of magic. I guess in the GoT vein where it's not fantasy per-se but more real.

Anyway, I've been wanting to listen to another sci-fi. The last one I listened to was The Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter ready by Michael Fenton Stevens. Again, superbly read, and a rather good story.

Every time I do a search for top Sci-fi the number one book is almost always Dune by Frank Herbert. My problem here is that I've seen the film a couple of times, and it's clouding my judgement on actually wanting to read/listen to the book. Is the book as amazing as they say, and the film being a bit naff?

Or are there any other great audiobook sci-fi stories that are amazingly read that you guys can recommend?

thx :headphone:
 
The film had a PhD in weirdness, courtesy of David Lynch, who directed it :). It's a bit Marmite - some fans of the book love it, some can't stand it but the main thing that they all agree on is that, in spite of following the book's plot quite closely, it is a very different animal.

I very much enjoyed the book, having read it a long time before the film was made, and I'd commend it to you. I can't say the same of the sequels, which have a tendency to descend into incomprehensible mysticism and improbable plot twists, but "Dune" itself is brilliant, in my opinion.
 
I love Iain M Banks (and his alter ego, Iain Banks, come to that), though some of his stuff can seem a bit impenetrable. One of my favourites is The Player of Games, which I see is available as an audiobook, via Audible. It's read by Peter Kenny who, by the look of it, has done all of Iain Banks' books, both Sci-Fi and General Fiction, as audiobooks - so the Publisher must like him, anyway.

A word of caution - Banks' style can be quite visceral, and takes no prisoners, so I wouldn't recommend him to everyone.
 
Thanks everyone. I'll investigate these suggestions :D
 
jay hay-char said:
A word of caution - Banks' style can be quite visceral, and takes no prisoners, so I wouldn't recommend him to everyone.
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Visceral? As is graphic and gory?
 
Lord Midas said:
Visceral? As is graphic and gory?
Click to expand...
Yes. Not exclusively so, and often with a comic undertone, but he can be quite hard reading sometimes.

It's not one of his science fiction titles, but Banks set the tone with his very first published book, "The Wasp Factory". In the words of the entry on Wikipedia:

The book sold well, but was greeted with a mixture of acclaim and controversy, due to its gruesome depiction of violence. The Irish Times called it "a work of unparalleled depravity."
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In spite of this, The Wasp Factory was a stunning debut and a favourite of mine. When something is described as "a work of unparalleled depravity" I just have to read it :)
 
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