Far Futures, Greg Bear
Far Futures, Greg Bear
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
Club: $11.47

Far Futures

Author: Greg Bear, Donald Kingsbury, Poul Anderson, Joe Haldeman, Charles Sheffield, Gregory Benford

Narrator: various narrators, Vikas Adam, Paul Boehmer, Susan Hanfield, Alex Hyde-White, Stefan Rudnicki

Unabridged: 16 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Skyboat Media

Published: 06/17/2014


Synopsis

Five novellas of hard science fiction by five modern masters of the formFrom Nebula Award winner Gregory Benford comes this ambitious hard SF anthology that collects five original novellas. Each one takes the very long view—all are set at least ten thousand years in the future. The authors take a rigorously scientific view of such grand panoramas, confronting the largest issues of cosmology, astronomy, evolution, and biology.The last moments of a universe beseiged occupy Greg Bear's Judgment Engine. Can something human matter at the very end of creation, as contorted matter ceases to have meaning and time itself stutters to an eerie halt?Genesis by Poul Anderson is set a billion years ahead, when humanity has become extinct. Earth is threatened by the slowly warming sun, and vast machine intelligences decide to recreate humans.Donald Kingsbury contributes Historical Crisis, a starting work on the prediction of the human future that challenges the foundations of psychohistory, as developed in Isaac Asimov's famous Foundation Trilogy.Joe Haldeman's For White Hill confronts humanity with hostile aliens who remorselessly grind down every defense against them. A lone artist struggles to find a place in this distant, wondrous future when humanity seems doomed.In At the Eschaton by Charles Sheffield, a man tries to rescue his dying wife from oblivion by hurling himself forward, in both space and time, to the very end of the universe itself.

About Greg Bear

Greg Bear is an American author of more than forty books spanning the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. His science fiction works have garnered five Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards, the Monty Award, and the Heinlein Award.

About Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson (1926–2001), one of the most prolific and popular writers in science fiction, won seven Hugo Awards, three Nebula Awards, and many other awards and accolades.

About Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman has written numerous science fiction novels and several series, which have earned many awards, including Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.

About Charles Sheffield

Charles Sheffield (1935–2002) was an English-born mathematician, physicist, and author of both nonfiction and science fiction. His novels won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Nebula Award, and the Hugo Award.

About Gregory Benford

Gregory Benford is a physicist, educator, and author. He received a BS from the University of Oklahoma and a PhD from the University of California, San Diego. Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, where he has been a faculty member since 1971. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. He has served as an advisor to the Department of Energy, NASA, and the White House Council on Space Policy. He is the author of over twenty novels, including In the Ocean of the Night, The Heart of the Comet (with David Brin), Foundation's Fear, Bowl of Heaven (with Larry Niven), Timescape, and The Berlin Project. A two-time winner of the Nebula Award, Benford has also won the John W. Campbell Award, the British Science Fiction Award (BSFA), the Australian Ditmar Award, and the 1990 United Nations Medal in Literature. In 1995 he received the Lord Foundation Award for contributions to science and the public comprehension of it. He has served as scientific consultant to the NHK Network and for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

About Claire Bloom

Claire Bloom, CBE, is an English film and stage actress, known for leading roles in plays such as Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll’s House, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, along with nearly sixty films and countless television roles, during a career spanning over six decades. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen’s birthday honors for services to drama.

About Vikas Adam

Vikas Adam is a classically trained actor with numerous credits in stage, film, commercials, and television, in addition to his over 200 audiobooks. He's established himself as one who creates versatile, distinct, and clear voices for characters he embodies. Equally at home with a light piece of literature or a dark thriller, a short story or an epic novel (his longest-forty-nine hours!), Vikas's audiobooks have garnered numerous awards and nominations, including AudioFile Earphones Awards, various Best of the Year lists, and the Audie Award. When not recording, acting, or directing, he's a lecturer in the Theater Department at UCLA. He was an inaugural inductee into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame.

About Paul Boehmer

Paul Boehmer has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway, and regionally across the country. He has also worked in film and television, including The Thomas Crown Affair, three Star Trek movies, and Frasier. Paul is most proud of his award-winning unabridged recording of Moby Dick. He holds a BFA in acting from Southern Methodist University and an MFA in acting from the Professional Theatre Training Program at the University of Delaware.

About Susan Hanfield

Susan Hanfield is an Audie Award–winning narrator who comes from a strong classical theater background and loves bringing deep characterizations to all of her work. She has narrated over twenty books, including Ru Emerson’s six-book Night-Threads series.

About Alex Hyde-White

Alex Hyde-White is an actor and a producer of two films and hundreds of audiobooks thru his label Punch Audio.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards, as well as more than twenty-five Earphones Awards, and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kogiopsis on November 01, 2015

There's something profoundly alienating about being a woman in 2015 and reading science fiction 20 years old. Especially hard sci-fi. This is the thing about this subgenre, for me: the ideas may be weird and wondrous, the technology artfully extrapolated, the projections of human futures fascinating.......more

Goodreads review by Carl on March 13, 2025

I have a soft spot for deep time SF (and Fantasy), so I had high hopes for this collection of three long short stories and two novellas... thankfully, they were realised. Gregory Benford's introduction sets things up well, giving a brief but interesting history of this fairly unsubscribed sub-genre,......more

Goodreads review by Don on November 17, 2022

I'm a sucker for the ideas presented and wouldn't mind if some were explored further. However, as some have mentioned the stories are mostly a series of ideas held together by the thinnest of characters. The viewpoints, specifically the way the women are written, is also especially old fashioned.......more

Goodreads review by Clint on December 03, 2022

I read this a long time ago and remember being blown away by each of the stories. Some were better than others, but I seem to recall the Greg Bear story being the highlight.......more

Goodreads review by Michael on January 02, 2023

Nothing especially memorable, but all good.......more


Quotes

Far Futures is the kind of science fiction that got me reading SF in the first place. These stories have all the dazzling sweep of Golden Age SF, combined with the sensitive characterizations and complex moralities of a genre finally grown up. Not to be missed.” Nancy Kress, Nebula Award–winning author

“Most notable about all of these oft-apocalyptic novellas—excluding their common acceptance that organic life is destined to be superseded—is their essential vivacity. This volume presents five glorious adventures bound to delight anyone with an abiding curiosity about the distant future.” Publishers Weekly

“Five novellas by veteran authors of hard SF focus on imaginary far futures and explore the death of the universe, the end of time, and the evolution of human consciousness….These selections challenge the boundaries of the imagination. A strong addition for most libraries’ SF collections.” Library Journal

“Fictional scenarios of the remotely distant future, such as Stapledon’s classic Last and First Men, are rare in sf, perhaps because humans, at least in their current form, aren’t expected to last that long. To fill this void, editor Benford offers five novellas by leading hard-sf veterans that safeguard the human perspective while reaching ten thousand years and more into the future…A superb collection that stretches sf to its imaginative limits.” Booklist

“Excellent…A must for any fan of hard SF or good storytelling of any genre.” Starlog