Talk nerdy to me, preferably in audiobook format. If I’m on the hunt for hard sci-fi, I want it hand delivered directly into my ear canals. Why read a book on boring paper when I could have it transferred into my brain via electrical signals converted into audio information by a machine? Sounds like alien technology, I’m in. If you’re looking to experience sci-fi through a futuristic medium, you can’t go wrong with these 10 best sci-fi audiobooks of all time.
The Expanse
Beginning with Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse series is one of the finest audiobooks on the market. It’s a story about a not too distant future where humanity has successfully colonized the Solar System, and yet still suffers from many of today’s social problems. After the invention of a fusion drive made inter Solar System travel feasible, Earth and Mars emerged as the dominant superpowers, maintaining an uneasy political relationship with both each other and the “Belters” that make their homes beyond the Asteroid Belt. The plot follows ice mining ship captain Jim Holden, who ends up inadvertently starting a Belt vs. Mars war after investigating a phony distress signal on a derelict ship. Narrated by the incomparable Jefferson Mays, listening to The Expanse will ruin audiobooks for you – no one does it better than Mays, after all.
The Three Body Problem
Before it was adapted into a Netflix series, Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem marked the first of Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy – a series about humanity’s close encounters of a third kind. Named for a classical physical problem, this book orbits around an alien planet that in turn orbits around three suns – with catastrophic consequences for extraterrestrial civilization. Rather than try to solve the three body problem and predict their planet’s orbital path, this alien race sets their sights on a more gravitationally hospitable planet nearby: Earth. They’re willing to take it by any means necessary, and humanity is willing to use similar means to stop them. There are many different versions of the audiobook, but one of the best is narrated by Rosalind Chao, who appears in the Netflix series as Ye Wenjie.
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary is the story of Ryland Grace – space explorer who can’t even remember his own name. After waking up with a head full of hazy memories and two corpses, Ryland struggles to recall what he was doing onboard the Hail Mary in the first place. While floating through cold desolation, Ryland makes contact with another interstellar misfit, a five legged alien being that he names ‘Rocky”. Despite the lightyears of cultural distance between them, Rocky and Ryland find common ground in their battle against a void-born parasite that threatens to destroy both of their species. Narrated by Ray Porter, this audiobook is a rare instance where a novel is improved by a narration. Porter is able to capture a subtle emotional edge in the text that doesn’t quite cut through on the page.
Hyperion
A soft sci-fi classic, Dan Stevens Hyperion is second only to Dune when it comes to legendary space opera. A reinterpretation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the novel follows seven pilgrims on an interstellar quest to visit planet Hyperion – home of the mysterious Time Tombs. The Tombs are said to be able to grant the desires of pilgrims who seek it out, provided they survive an encounter with the place’s terrifying guardian: The Shrike. Named for its penchant for impaling people on metal spikes like a certain species of Earth bird, The Shrike is one of the most horrifying antagonists in sci-fi history – and the dread is captured in full by the full cast who narrate the Audible version of the novel.
Ender’s Game
While most six year olds spend their formative years learning about shapes and colors, Ender’s Game protagonist Andrew “Ender” Wiggin was forced to spend his kindergarten days training to become a tactical military genius and command Earth’s forces to victory in a war against aliens. Orson Scott Card’s classic novel is a sci-fi bildungsroman about a young boy who, like many youthful protagonists, is forced to grow up faster than any child should. While navigating the rigors of military school and the personalities of his power hungry classmates, Ender is forced into playing a series of simulated “games” that have real world consequences a lightyear wide. Like Hyperion, the Audible version is narrated by a full cast of characters – bringing life to the death haunted universe they describe.
Dune
What did you expect? It’s Dune, only the most seminal sci-fi novel ever written – the book that spawned Star Wars, Warhammer 40k, and the goth space lesbians of Gideon the Ninth. Unless you live under a rock the size of Arrakis, you know the story: worm-riding chosen one liberates distant planet and becomes universe ruining tyrant. While the modern Dune movies are a vast improvement upon the 1984 original (sorry, David Lynch) one of the finest casts ever assembled to bring Frank Hebert’s novel to life appears in the audiobook. Looking for a single narrator without all the space laser sound effects? Try George Guidall’s version instead – you will not be disappointed.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy is a tongue in cheek sci-fi classic made even tongue and cheekier by its audiobook, read by the legendary Steven Fry. Written by Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide is the story of mild-mannered Arthur Dent, who finds himself as one of the last surviving members of the human race after Earth was destroyed to make room for a hyperspace highway. Rescued by an alien in disguise, Dent gallivants across a mysterious universe, populated by humorless alien bureaucrats, clinically depressed androids, and supercomputers that have calculated the meaning of life to be “42”. In a genre defined by downer existential themes and no-nonsense adherence to scientific principles, Hitchhiker’s Guide feels like a breath of compressed air.
Children of Time
Written by Adrian Tchaikovsky and narrated by Mel Hudson, Children of Time is the story of humanity’s last hope: a group of down and out survivors on a last ditch flight to a terraformed paradise. When Earth’s former inhabitants touch down on the distant planet, they find that a terraforming miscalculation has turned the place into an Eden for uplifted arachnids. The planet is ruled by a civilization descended from terrestrial spiders, who happened to evolve faster than primates. In order to ensure its survival, humanity’s last remnants wage a battle against their eight-legged cohabitants – whose may just prove themselves to be more “human” than their competitors through their enlightened ideals. In this story, the humans were the alien invaders all along.
The Space Between Worlds
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson is the story of a woman and her hundreds of identical twins. Well, doppelgängers. In a world where multiversal travel is possible so long as the traveler’s alternate self is dead in the world they intend to visit, Cara makes her living hopping between parallel dimensions in service of an oligarchical corporation. Hailing from a rough around the edges reality, Cara is uniquely qualified for the job because most of her alternate selves are dead already. But when one of her doppelgängers dies from a mysterious cause, Cara finds her tenuous relationship with the powers that be, and reality itself, has been thrown out of balance. Narrated by Nicole Lewis, your parallel selves will thank you for listening.
Leonard: My Fifty Year Friendship With A Remarkable Man
William Shatner’s Leonard: My Fifty Year Friendship With A Remarkable Man isn’t a work of sci-fi fiction, but a real world account of the friendship between two titans of the genre. Narrated by Shatner himself, the Star Trek legend recounts his five decade long relationship with Leonard Nimoy, who served as the Spock to his Captain Kirk. Beginning with their early days on the set of the USS Enterprise, Shatner explains how he and his co-star grew from cordial colleagues to lifelong friends throughout the time they spent together on and offscreen. It’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching look into a relationship that lived long, and prospered.
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