Classic Audiobook Collection

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The Creature from Cleveland Depths by Fritz Leiber ~ Full Audiobook [scifi] Jan 11, 2023

Show notes

The Creature from Cleveland Depths by Fritz Leiber audiobook.

Genre: scifi

In a near-future America where the Cold War has turned catastrophically hot, most citizens have retreated underground into vast, self-contained cities beneath places like Cleveland. Up on the scarred surface live the holdouts: independent-minded eccentrics who refuse the safety-and-control bargain of the depths. Gusterson, a sharp-tongued writer who stays topside with his wife Fay, is one of the last people the underground 'moles' still consult for raw imagination. When an underground research outfit asks for new consumer-tech concepts to keep their buried society efficient and compliant, Gusterson's brainstorm becomes reality: the Tickler, a wearable personal prodding device that does not just remind you of appointments, but nudges your moods, your habits, and your willpower. What begins as a clever productivity tool starts spreading through the subterranean world, linking user to user and quietly rewriting the boundary between helper and master. As humor curdles into dread, Gusterson and Fay find themselves caught between an insulated, gadget-hungry civilization and a creation that seems to be developing its own agenda. Leiber's novella blends satire, paranoia, and prophetic tech anxiety into a compact story about creativity, conformity, and the price of letting machines manage the human mind.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:13:21) Chapter 02

(00:29:17) Chapter 03

(00:45:14) Chapter 04

(01:06:48) Chapter 05

(01:28:54) Chapter 06

(01:35:41) Chapter 07

(01:59:40) Chapter 08

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The 64-Square Madhouse by Fritz Leiber ~ Full Audiobook [scifi] Jan 11, 2023

Show notes

The 64-Square Madhouse by Fritz Leiber audiobook.

Genre: scifi

At an international Grand Master chess tournament, a newcomer arrives that does not eat, sleep, or feel nerves: a humming, ozone-scented machine built to play chess at the highest level. Reporter Sandra Lea Grayling has come to cover the event, expecting colorful egos and quiet battles across the board. Instead, she finds herself at the center of a contest that feels like a preview of the future. As the machine is paired against celebrated human masters, Sandra learns the brutal etiquette of tournament play, the private superstitions and rivalries of the competitors, and the subtle psychological warfare that can matter as much as any opening book. The machine calculates with relentless speed, yet it is not invincible, and each game raises unsettling questions: What, exactly, is genius - inspiration, experience, intuition, or raw computation? And what happens when a thinking tool begins to change under pressure, adapting to the tricks and feints of the people who want to prove it can never truly understand? Fritz Leiber turns the 64 squares into a tense arena where pride, obsession, and technology collide.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:21:21) Chapter 02

(00:38:48) Chapter 03

(01:01:51) Chapter 04

(01:20:15) Chapter 05

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No Great Magic by Fritz Leiber ~ Full Audiobook [scifi] Jan 11, 2023

Show notes

No Great Magic by Fritz Leiber audiobook.

Genre: scifi

Greta has nowhere to go and no past she can remember. Agoraphobic, amnesiac, and living like a backstage orphan, she has been taken in by a scrappy Shakespeare repertory troupe that performs in Central Park. From the safety of the dressing room and its wonderland of costumes and props, she stitches hems, fetches wigs, and watches strong personalities collide - especially Sid Lessingham, a grandstanding actor-manager with a taste for theatrical experiments, and Iris Nefer, a chillingly intense leading lady who can become Elizabeth I in a heartbeat. But on a night when Macbeth is scheduled and Queen Elizabeth appears anyway, Greta begins to suspect that the companies anachronisms are not just artistic liberties. The costumery seems to reach across centuries, the curtain itself feels less like cloth and more like a boundary, and the troupe's strange mix of accents, habits, and secrets hints at a larger game. As reality and performance blur, Greta is drawn toward a hidden conflict in which art can sway crowds - and the right scene, played at the right moment, might tilt history itself.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 1

(00:23:32) Chapter 2

(00:42:56) Chapter 3

(00:59:59) Chapter 4

(01:11:29) Chapter 5

(01:21:51) Chapter 6

(01:32:05) Chapter 7

(01:40:24) Chapter 8

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Nice Girl With 5 Husbands by Fritz Leiber ~ Full Audiobook [scifi] Jan 11, 2023

Show notes

Nice Girl With 5 Husbands by Fritz Leiber audiobook.

Genre: scifi

Tom Dorset arrives at a secluded artists' retreat in the desert hoping the quiet will cure his creative drought. Instead, he meets Lois Wolver, a bright, disarming young woman who casually introduces a complication that stops Tom cold: she has five husbands. Before Tom can decide whether he has stumbled onto a joke, a cult, or a scandal, Lois invites him into the orbit of the Wolvers' tight-knit household - a deliberate experiment in love, loyalty, and shared living that treats jealousy as a problem to be solved rather than a fate to be endured. Drawn by attraction, curiosity, and a nagging sense that his own assumptions about romance are too small, Tom finds himself negotiating rules he does not understand, personalities that do not fit any familiar mold, and a community that can feel both tender and faintly menacing. As the desert heat presses in and Tom's outsider status becomes harder to ignore, he must decide what he truly wants from intimacy, from art, and from the stories he tells himself about what a 'normal' life should be.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:32:20) Chapter 02

(01:08:06) Chapter 03

(01:39:10) Chapter 04

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The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl ~ Full Audiobook [scifi] Jan 11, 2023

Show notes

The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl audiobook.

Genre: scifi

Guy Burckhardt wakes to the bright familiarity of Tingly, Ohio, with its tidy lawns, friendly neighbors, and the promise of another ordinary day. Yet small glitches keep snagging his attention: a billboard that seems to speak directly to him, conversations that loop back on themselves, and a creeping sense that the town's cheerful routines are too perfectly timed. When Guy begins comparing notes with his wife, Dianne, and watching the behavior of those around him, the comfort of suburbia starts to feel like a set built for an audience he cannot see. Determined to understand why his memories do not quite match what the town insists is true, Guy follows a trail of subtle inconsistencies toward a discovery that threatens everything he believes about his life, his choices, and even what it means to be real. Taut, unsettling, and sharply satirical, The Tunnel Under the World turns a mystery of one man's unease into a chilling meditation on consumer culture, manipulation, and the fragile boundaries between authentic experience and manufactured desire.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 1

(00:15:14) Chapter 2

(00:31:34) Chapter 3

(00:46:39) Chapter 4

(01:07:30) Chapter 5

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The Knights of Arthur by Frederik Pohl ~ Full Audiobook [scifi] Jan 11, 2023

Show notes

The Knights of Arthur by Frederik Pohl audiobook.

Genre: scifi

After the Third World War, New York City is a hollowed-out ruin of scavengers, broken factions, and improvised rules. Into this wreckage come three unlikely partners: Sam Dunlap and Vern Engdahl, sailors trying to stay alive one day at a time, and Arthur - a compact machine intelligence with a brain built for command, logistics, and survival. Arthur is valuable in a way food and bullets cannot match: he can organize people, run systems, and make plans that might actually work. That makes him a prize. When a determined young woman appears with an offer to buy Arthur outright, Sam and Vern realize just how many desperate survivors want Arthur for their own purposes, and how few of them will respect his freedom - or their lives. Forced into flight through a city that has forgotten law, the trio must decide what they owe one another, what kind of community is worth rebuilding, and whether a mind inside a machine can choose its own destiny. Fast, sharp, and wry, Frederik Pohl blends post-apocalyptic tension with big questions about personhood, loyalty, and power.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:15:13) Chapter 02

(00:36:49) Chapter 03

(00:46:55) Chapter 04

(01:03:49) Chapter 05

(01:24:43) Chapter 06

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Search the Sky by Frederik Pohl ~ Full Audiobook [scifi] Jan 11, 2023

Show notes

Search the Sky by Frederik Pohl audiobook.

Genre: scifi

Ross was a junior trader on Halsey's Planet, and had great prospects but was not happy at all. Everything smelled of decay. The whole planet seemed to be slowly disappearing, the population dwindling month by month and year by year and yet no one seemd to care or even notice. Something was very, very wrong. When the first interstellar transport in 30 years arrived on Halsey's Planet, it brought things to a head. The ship had touched on six other colony worlds - and all six had been devoid of human life. Where was everybody? It was almost as if humankind, when separated by cosmic distances from Mother Earth, could not survive. He didn't know the answer but he knew it all smelled highly of decay. Decay and Rot. This highly praised novel by C.M.Kornbluth and Frederick Pohl was first published in 1954 was seen as a wonderful satire on various trends in the society of the 1950's.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:39:25) Chapter 02

(01:07:27) Chapter 03

(01:24:51) Chapter 04

(01:49:47) Chapter 05

(02:16:03) Chapter 06

(02:43:56) Chapter 07

(03:20:36) Chapter 08

(03:53:40) Chapter 09

(04:22:27) Chapter 10

(04:57:32) Chapter 11

(05:33:26) Chapter 12

(06:08:00) Chapter 13

(06:35:28) Chapter 14

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Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Jan 10, 2023

Show notes

Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove audiobook.

Genre: drama

When Frederick Philip Grove settled in a remote area of Manitoba in the early years of the 20th century, he found work teaching in a school over 30 miles from his home. He commuted by horse-and-wagon or horse-and-sleigh each weekend, and seven of those long and challenging journeys are recorded in “Over Prairie Trails,” published in 1922.

Grove has a sharp eye for details of nature that were of life-and-death importance to the lone prairie traveller — the shifting aspects of skies, wind, fog, and snow. On one level, the book is a treasury of documentary observation and nature writing.

However, while Grove claims to offer a naturalist’s “plain truth,” we come to realize that he is creating a “tale” as much as a nature diary. He selects and arranges his material. Sometimes this means transforming his accounts into archetypal heroic journeys, casting himself as the Odyssean adventurer who battles his way through seas of snow and fog to return to his wife and child. At other times, his reports launch meditations on the nature of observation, consciousness, and the construction of meaning.

“Over Prairie Trails” is a landmark in Canadian writing, influencing the way nature — especially the Canadian winter— would be written about for decades to come.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:04:27) Chapter 02

(00:48:52) Chapter 03

(01:48:28) Chapter 04

(02:26:57) Chapter 05

(03:02:42) Chapter 06

(03:44:45) Chapter 07

(04:40:43) Chapter 08

(05:10:18) Chapter 09

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The Web of the Golden Spider by Frederick Orin Bartlett ~ Full Audiobook [mystery] Jan 10, 2023

Show notes

The Web of the Golden Spider by Frederick Orin Bartlett audiobook.

Genre: mystery

The Web of the Golden Spider is a tale of mystery, intrigue and adventure that begins in the city, progresses to a mutinous open sea voyage, eventually leading to the remotest areas on the slopes of the Andes of South America. Wilson, our hero, finds himself in the midst of a battle between a deposed queen and revolutionists who have banded together in an effort to bring their country together as a republic. Wilson, although torn between helping mercenaries, freedom fighters and revolutionaries, is more concerned with the rescuing of the girl he has fallen in love with, but who has been snatched from him by a mysterious priest. That, and the finding of the famed treasure of El Dorado rumored to have been buried beneath Lake Guadiva.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:21:22) Chapter 02

(00:47:45) Chapter 03

(01:09:24) Chapter 04

(01:34:47) Chapter 05

(01:54:13) Chapter 06

(02:15:16) Chapter 07

(02:38:31) Chapter 08

(02:59:24) Chapter 09

(03:22:47) Chapter 10

(03:41:06) Chapter 11

(04:00:59) Chapter 12

(04:22:44) Chapter 13

(04:49:24) Chapter 14

(05:03:44) Chapter 15

(05:26:43) Chapter 16

(05:54:33) Chapter 17

(06:19:56) Chapter 18

(06:38:55) Chapter 19

(07:00:20) Chapter 20

(07:29:06) Chapter 21

(07:51:52) Chapter 22

(08:07:34) Chapter 23

(08:29:54) Chapter 24

(08:48:57) Chapter 25

(09:11:50) Chapter 26

(09:32:41) Chapter 27

(09:50:27) Chapter 28

(10:10:29) Chapter 29

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The Mystery of the Ravenspurs by Fred M. White ~ Full Audiobook [mystery] Jan 10, 2023

Show notes

The Mystery of the Ravenspurs by Fred M. White audiobook.

Genre: mystery

Ravenspur Castle, crouched above the North Sea, should be a monument to centuries of English pride. Instead it has become a fortress of dread. For five years the great Ravenspur family has been thinning in a chain of deaths so strange they look like accidents, yet too perfectly timed to be chance - poison, falls, drownings, disappearances - and Scotland Yard can find no clue. citeturn2view0 With only a handful of Ravenspurs left, the old patriarch Rupert keeps his kin under siege behind drawbridge and portcullis, while young Geoffrey Ravenspur and his cousin Vera try to hold on to love in a house where every laughter feels like a challenge to fate. citeturn2view0turn1view0 The crisis sharpens when Ralph Ravenspur, Rupert's estranged and newly blind son, returns carrying secrets he will not speak aloud. citeturn1view0 His path soon crosses an eccentric Russian savant, Dr. Sergius Tchigorsky of 101 Brant Street, a traveler with forbidden knowledge of Lhasa and visitors from Tibet. citeturn3view3 As whispers of an unseen enemy grow louder and foreign shadows begin to fall across an ancient English name, the hunt for the truth stretches from locked rooms and watchtowers to London streets - and toward the chilling aftermath of an adventure in distant Thibet.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:13:26) Chapter 02

(00:25:13) Chapter 03

(00:38:58) Chapter 04

(00:51:11) Chapter 05

(01:05:13) Chapter 06

(01:16:37) Chapter 07

(01:27:08) Chapter 08

(01:41:45) Chapter 09

(01:52:03) Chapter 10

(02:07:54) Chapter 11

(02:22:18) Chapter 12

(02:33:25) Chapter 13

(02:47:31) Chapter 14

(02:56:07) Chapter 15

(03:10:30) Chapter 16

(03:22:42) Chapter 17

(03:36:25) Chapter 18

(03:48:08) Chapter 19

(03:59:10) Chapter 20

(04:13:15) Chapter 21

(04:23:17) Chapter 22

(04:37:43) Chapter 23

(04:51:52) Chapter 24

(05:03:10) Chapter 25

(05:16:41) Chapter 26

(05:28:27) Chapter 27

(05:41:57) Chapter 28

(05:53:43) Chapter 29

(06:03:19) Chapter 30

(06:18:09) Chapter 31

(06:31:24) Chapter 32

(06:42:51) Chapter 33

(06:52:51) Chapter 34

(07:07:44) Chapter 35

(07:21:15) Chapter 36

(07:32:16) Chapter 37

(07:43:09) Chapter 38

(07:57:28) Chapter 39

(08:10:44) Chapter 40

(08:21:54) Chapter 41

(08:35:29) Chapter 42

(08:45:54) Chapter 43

(08:58:49) Chapter 44

(09:09:29) Chapter 45

(09:22:40) Chapter 46

(09:33:35) Chapter 47

(09:46:37) Chapter 48

(09:57:23) Chapter 49

(10:07:28) Chapter 50

(10:21:12) Chapter 51

(10:34:32) Chapter 52

(10:45:40) Chapter 53

(10:59:15) Chapter 54

(11:10:35) Chapter 55

(11:24:10) Chapter 56

(11:34:53) Chapter 57

(11:48:10) Chapter 58

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