Science Fiction for Listening

Whether your favorites are alternative histories, dystopian rebellion, outer space adventures, zombie hunters, or classic favorites - this list has them all. Get your science fiction fix while you're driving to work, at the gym, cooking dinner, or just puttering around the house. Happy listening!


Station Eleven (2014) Emily St. John Mandel
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
Check for availability

The Age of Miracles (2012) Karen Thompson Walker
Luminous, haunting, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles is a stunning fiction debut by a superb new writer, a story about coming of age during extraordinary times, about people going on with their lives in an era of profound uncertainty.
Check for availability 








 Aurora (2015) Kim Stanley Robinson
A major new novel from one of science fiction's most powerful voices, AURORA tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system. 
Check for availability
Golden Son (2015) Pierce Brown
With shades of The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, and Game of Thrones, debut author Pierce Brown’s genre-defying epic Red Rising hit the ground running and wasted no time becoming a sensation. Golden Son continues the stunning saga of Darrow, a rebel forged by tragedy, battling to lead his oppressed people to freedom from the overlords of a brutal elitist future built on lies. Now fully embedded among the Gold ruling class, Darrow continues his work to bring down Society from within. A life-or-death tale of vengeance with an unforgettable hero at its heart, Golden Son guarantees Pierce Brown’s continuing status as one of fiction’s most exciting new voices.
Check for availability

The Maze Runner (2009) James Dashner
Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.
Check for availability

Divergent (2011) Veronica Roth
In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.
Check for availability

The Martain (2014) Andy Weir
An edge-of-your seat debut thriller with laugh-out-loud dialogue mixed in. After a bad storm cuts his team’s Mars mission short, injured astronaut Mark Watley is stranded. Now he’s got to figure out how to survive without air, shelter, food, or water on the harsh Martian landscape until the next manned mission in four years. It’s Science Fiction with a capital S, but Weir does a fabulous job of making it accessible to non-science geeks (like me). -- Dan Brooks for LibraryReads.
Check for availability





World War Z (2006) Max Brooks
In World War Z, life as we know it ends the way many horror fans knew it would: zombies rise up! After the post-war devastation, author Max Brooks "interviews" survivors and records their stories as well as details on what causes zombies, how they spread, what will stop them, and effective strategic warfare methods against them. -- Description by Dawn Towery.
Check for Availability







The Last Star (2016) Rick Yancey
"In the epic conclusion to the 5th Wave series, Cassie, Ben, Ringer, and Evan confront the Others' plans for the fate of the human race and the planet"--.
Check for availability










More Happy Than Not (2015) Adam Silvera
In his twisty, gritty, profoundly moving debut—called “mandatory reading” by the New York Times—Adam Silvera brings to life a charged, dangerous near-future summer in the Bronx.
Check for Availability












Underground Airlines (2016) Ben H. Winters
In these particular United States, the Civil War never happened and slavery is still legal in four states. Sent to Indiana, where he's tasked with locating a fugitive slave, Victor, an African-American U.S. Marshal, infiltrates abolitionist circles and risks blowing his cover when he decides to aid a struggling family he meets along the way. Don't miss this thought-provoking novel by the author of the apocalyptic Last Policeman trilogy. -- Description by Shauna Griffin.
Check for Availability






Brave New World (1932) Aldous Huxley
Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming and media--has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 A.F. (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
Check for Availability







The Handmaid's Tale (1986) Margaret Atwood
In a future world where the birth rate has declined, fertile women are rounded up, indoctrinated as "handmaids," and forced to bear children to prominent men.
Check Availability











Saturn Run: A Novel of 2066 (2015) John Sandford
When a Caltech intern notices what seems to be a spaceship decelerating towards Saturn, a new space race begins as governments hurry to get their hands on the technology.
Check Availability












The Three-Body Problem (2014) Liu Cixin
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
Check Availability





The Swarm (2016) Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston
As civilization reels from the scouring of China by the Formics and the threat of war still looms, Mazer Rackham's squad endeavors to create a weapon that will defend humanity in the next conflict.
Check Availability









 
All the Birds in the Sky (2016) Charlie Jane Anders
Reunited as adults in the hipster mecca San Francisco as the planet falls apart around them, childhood friends Patricia Delfine, who is magically gifted, and Laurence Armstead, an engineering genius, discover that something bigger than either of them has brought them together to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.
Check Availability








The Desert and the Blade (2015) S.M. Stirling
In his novels of the Change, New York Times bestselling author S.M. Stirling presents “a devastated, mystical world that will appeal to fans of traditional fantasy as well as post-apocalyptic SF.”* Continuing their quest that began in The Golden Princess, two future rulers of a world without technology risk their lives seeking a fabled blade…
Check Availability