By John J. Joex
When I first turned to audio books as a means of passing the time on my daily commute about four years ago, the selection of science fiction and fantasy titles was okay then, but far from expansive. However, as audio books have continued to grow in popularity (along with ebooks) because of the ease of listening to them with the many electronic device currently available, the selection of genre offerings has exploded. You can thank Audible.com in a large part for that (even though their format issues continue to irritate myself and others, but more on that in an upcoming column), because they continue to add titles every week, but Librivox.org has also contributed greatly as well as the many books released on CD as well as in download format. As proof of this, just take a look at NPR’s recent list of the Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books and see just how many of those are available as audio books.
Spend all the time you want arguing the merits of that particular list (and I have done a bit of that myself over at this link), but it does provide a good overview of the genre and covers many essential works of both science fiction and fantasy. And while I have not checked every title on that list, I would say that close to 75 percent of the books there can be found in audio format. Looking at the Top 30, twenty six of those are available on audio book (with one, Frankenstein, available for free from Librivox.org). Of the titles without an audio book version, two are graphic novels, Alan Moore’s The Watchmen and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Series, so you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be available in audio format (though it’s definitely possible they could do an adaptation, maybe a dramatization, at some point).
The two other missing entries are rather frustrating omissions from the world of audio books. At the top of the NPR list is J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Those books are available as BBC radio full-cast dramatizations, but they are heavily abridged. They run between four and five hours each whereas as a reading of the full books would run between fifteen and twenty hours each. I don’t know if the BBC somehow locked out the rights for any other audio adaptations for a certain time period, but I would love to see full audio book versions of this trilogy (and wouldn’t Ian McKellan make the perfect narrator?). The other book MIA in audio format is William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. There is actually a long out of print book-on-tape version that Gibson himself narrated and that I have heard parts of. But you can’t find that (legally) in digital format and Gibson leaves something to be desired as a narrator (I’ve said it before, authors should stick to writing).
Beyond the Top 30, just glancing through the list, I know that a lot of these have been transferred to audio book. So this list definitely points you toward plenty of good audio listening in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Below are the books that I have reviewed thus far in the Audio Files column, and I already have several more of the Top 100 on my radar. Following that list, I have links to the five books from the Top 100 that are available for free download from Librivox.org. So if you haven’t discovered audio books yet, what better time than now and what better reason than to make a run through the upper echelon of the genre? And as an added incentive, you can get started for no cost with the free selections from Librivox.
Note that my review referenced below for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is actually of the original radio version, which I consider the best way to experience Douglas Adams’ masterpiece. But the book itself has also been adapted to audio if you prefer to listen to that one.
Books in the NPR Top 100 Reviewed in the Audio Files Column (links to review included):
2 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Primary Phase by Douglas Adams
3 Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
4 Dune by Frank Herbert
6 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
8 The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov
9 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
20 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
30 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
31 Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
36 The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
39 War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
44 Ringworld by Larry Niven
49 Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
51 Hyperion by Dan Simmons
54 World War Z by Max Brooks
56 The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
65 I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
68 The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard
90 Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock
Books in the NPR Top 100 Available from Librivox.org (links to download page included):
Rank Book
20 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
36 The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
37 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne (Work in Progress)
39 War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
72 Journey To The Center Of The Earth by Jules Verne
