My Favorites, Ben Bova
My Favorites, Ben Bova
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My Favorites
A Collection of Short Stories

Author: Ben Bova, Spider Robinson

Narrator: Ben Bova, Efrem Zimbalist, Alex Hyde-White, Stefan Rudnicki, Paul Boehmer, Orson Scott Card, Grover Gardner, John Rubinstein, Gabrielle de Cuir, Arthur Morey, various narrators, Steven Hoye

Unabridged: 9 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/13/2020

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction


Synopsis

In this new collection, Ben Bova has compiled fourteen of his favorite short stories. Each story includes an all-new introduction with compelling insight into the narrative.Exploring the boundaries of the genre, Bova not only writes of spaceships, aliens, and time travel in most of his titles, but also speculates on the beginnings of science fiction in “Scheherazade and the Storytellers,” as well as the morality of man in “The Angel’s Gift.” Stories such as “The Café Coup” and “We’ll Always Have Paris” dip into speculative historical fiction, asking questions about what would happen if someone could change history for the better. This expansive collection is a key addition for Bova fans and sci-fi lovers alike!Stories included in this collection: “Monster Slayer,” “Muzhestvo,” “We’ll Always Have Paris,” “The Great Moon Hoax, or A Princess of Mars,” “Inspiration,” “Scheherazade and the Storytellers,” “The Supersonic Zeppelin,” “Mars Farts,” “The Man Who Hated Gravity,” “Sepulcher,” “The Café Coup,” “The Angel’s Gift,” “Waterbot,” and “Sam and the Flying Dutchman.”

About Ben Bova

Ben Bova (1932–2020) was an American author of more than one hundred books of science fact and fiction. His work earned six Hugo Awards and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005.

About Spider Robinson

Spider Robinson is renowned for his Callahan’s Place series of bestselling novels. With his late wife, Jeanne, he wrote the award-winning Stardance series. As an audiobook reader of his own and others’ work, he has won the Earphones Award and been a finalist for the Audie Awards. In 2008, he won the Robert A. Heinlein Award for Lifetime Excellence in Literature.

About Efrem Zimbalist

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (1918–2014) was born in New York City and trained at the Yale School of Drama. An actor on stage, film, and television, he was also a narrator, voice-over artist, director, and award-winning producer. He is best remembered for his role as investigators on the TV shows 77 Sunset Strip and The FBI.

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 an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.

About Paul Boehmer

Paul Boehmer attended his first Shakespearean play while in high school; he knew then that he was destined to become the classically trained actor he is today. Graduating with a master's degree, Paul was cast as Hamlet by the very stage actor who inspired his career path. A nod from the Universe he'd chosen aright! Paul has worked on Broadway and extensively in regional theater. Coinciding with another of his passions, sci-fi, Paul has been cast in various roles in many episodes of Star Trek. Paul's love of literature and learning led him by nature to his work as a narrator for audiobooks, his latest endeavour. Paul is married to the love of his life, Offir, and they live in Los Angeles with their two midnight-rambling tomcats, Dread and David.

About Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game and its many sequels that expand the Ender Universe into the far future and the near past. Those books are organized into the Ender Saga, which chronicles the life of Ender Wiggin; the Shadow Series, which follows on the novel Ender's Shadow and is set on Earth; and the Formic Wars series, written with co-author Aaron Johnston, which tells of the terrible first contact between humans and the alien "Buggers." Card has been a working writer since the 1970s. Beginning with dozens of plays and musical comedies produced in the 1960s and 70s, Card's first published fiction appeared in 1977--the short story "Gert Fram" in the July issue of The Ensign, and the novelette version of "Ender's Game" in the August issue of Analog. The novel-length version of Ender's Game, published in 1984 and continuously in print since then, became the basis of the 2013 film, starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin. Card was born in Washington state, and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he runs occasional writers' workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.He is the author many science fiction and fantasy novels, including the American frontier fantasy series "The Tales of Alvin Maker" (beginning with Seventh Son), and stand-alone novels like Pastwatch and Hart's Hope. He has collaborated with his daughter Emily Card on a manga series, Laddertop. He has also written contemporary thrillers like Empire and historical novels like the monumental Saints and the religious novels Sarah and Rachel and Leah. Card's work also includes the Mithermages books (Lost Gate, Gate Thief), contemporary magical fantasy for readers both young and old. Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card. He and Kristine are the parents of five children and several grandchildren.

About Grover Gardner

Grover Gardner has recorded more than 650 audiobooks since beginning his career in 1981.  He's been named one of the "Best Voices of the Century" as well as a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine.  Gardner has garnered over 20 AudioFile Earphones Awards and is the recipient of an Audio Publishers Association Audie Award, as well as a three-time finalist.  In 2005, Publishers Weekly deemed him "Audiobook Narrator of the Year." Gardner has also narrated hundreds of audiobooks under the names Tom Parker and Alexander Adams.  Among his many titles are Marcus Sakey's At the City's Edge, as well as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and John Irving's The Cider House Rules.  Gardner studied Theater and Art History at Rollins College and received a Master's degree in Acting from George Washington University.  He lives in Oregon with his significant other and daughter.

About John Rubinstein

Kevin Baker is the author of one previous novel, Sometimes You See It Coming, and served as chief historical researcher for the recently published The American Century by Harold Evans. He is married and lives in New York City.John Rubenstein won a Theater World Award, a Tony, and a Drama Desk Award for his performances in Pippin and Children of a Lesser God.

About Gabrielle de Cuir

Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award.  She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.

About Arthur Morey

Arthur Morey has recorded over two hundred audiobooks in history, fiction, science, business, and religion, earning a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards and two Audie Award nominations. He was an editor at two publishers and has taught writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed. Arthur attended Harvard and the University of Chicago.


Reviews

A collection of fourteen short stories, selected by the author, with a new introduction for each story. There are stories on working in zero G, time travel, alternative history, bits of suspense, quite a lot of humour, and even some sci-fi-noir. I particularly enjoyed the first story (Monster Slayer),......more

Goodreads review by AndrewP

This collection of short stories were picked by the author and includes a quite wide variety. Several of the stories are set in the 'Grand Tour' universe and there are many references to characters, locations and events. Having read most of that series these were all familiar to me, but they are all......more


Quotes

“Ben Bova was my primary gateway to science fiction, and so many of these stories have been dear to me for as long as I’ve been a serious fan of science fiction—and they’ve remained so after twenty years of being an editor. This volume is an ideal introduction to the works of this science fiction legend!” John Joseph Adams, Hugo Award–winning editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and Lightspeed magazine

“This is a great collection! I’d missed some of these.” Larry Niven

“Bova gets better and better, combining plausible science with increasingly complex fiction.” Los Angeles Daily News

“The author’s excellence at combining hard science with believable characters and an attention-grabbing plot makes him one of our most accessible and entertaining storytellers.” Library Journal

“This book is the work of a gifted storyteller putting on a grand display of his versatility. Bova’s fans will rejoice at this collection, and newcomers will find it a great introduction to the works of one of the grand masters of science fiction.” Booklist (starred review)

“[The stories] are all eminently entertaining and very well-crafted, and together represent a worldview of optimism and triumph over adversity that was once considered synonymous with science fiction…A bridge between the oldest roots of SF and its twenty-first-century forms, still enjoyable and admirable.” Paul Di Filippo, Locus

“This collection of short stories features several standouts…This collection has something for all sf readers…Bova is one of the grand masters of the field, and this anthology reflects the breadth of his writing. Recommended for readers seeking an introduction to the author, and for libraries that do not own a more complete collection.” Library Journal


Awards

  • Gizmodo Pick