The Sam Gunn Omnibus, Ben Bova
The Sam Gunn Omnibus, Ben Bova
List: $29.95 | Sale: $20.97
Club: $14.97

The Sam Gunn Omnibus

Author: Ben Bova, Stefan Rudnicki

Narrator: various narrators, Richard Brewer, Emily Janice Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Stephen Hoye, Hillary Huber, Moira Quirk, Don Leslie, Stefan Rudnicki

Unabridged: 29 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/03/2011

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction


Synopsis

A hero without peer or scruples, Sam Gunn has a nose for trouble, money, and women, though not necessarily in that order. A man with the ego (and stature) of a Napoleon, the business acumen of a P. T. Barnum, and the raging hormones of a teenage boy, Sam is the finest astronaut NASA ever trained and dumped. But more than money, more than women, Sam Gunn loves justice—and he really does love money and women. Whether he’s suing the pope, helping twin sisters entangled in the virtual sex trade, or on trial for his life, charged with interplanetary genocide, you can be sure of one thing: this is one space jockey who’ll meet every challenge with a smile on his lips, an ace up his sleeve, and a weapon in his pocket.Now, for the first time in one volume, Hugo-winner Ben Bova presents all the tales of Sam Gunn to date, including three never before collected in book form. Here is the entire chronicle of Sam Gunn, trailblazer and scoundrel, as he scams his way from one end of the solar system to the other, giving bold new meaning to the term venture capitalist.

About Ben Bova

Ben Bova (1932–2020), American author of more than one hundred books of science fact and fiction, was awarded posthumously the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. His work earned six Hugo Awards. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and his novel Titan won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science fiction novel of 2006. In his early career, he was a technical editor for Project Vanguard, the United States’s first effort to launch a satellite into space in 1958. He then was a science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, which built the heat shields for the Apollo 11 module. He held the position of president emeritus of the National Space Society and served as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

About Richard Brewer

Richard Brewer, a native Californian, has always been a lover of stories and storytelling. He has worked as a writer, actor, bookseller, story editor, book reviewer, audiobook narrator, and movie and television development executive. He is coeditor of the critically acclaimed Bruce Springsteen-inspired short story anthology Meeting Across the River.

About Emily Janice Card

Emily Janice Card (a.k.a. Emily Rankin) is an actor, writer, and singer. In addition to being a narrator, she has directed numerous audiobooks, including the 2007 Audie and Earphones Award winner Hubris, Legacy of Ashes by Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Weiner, and Them by Nathan McCall. Her own audiobook narration has won her four Earphones Awards.

About Gabrielle de Cuir

Gabrielle de Cuir, award-winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. She was a cowinner of the Audie Award for best narration in 2011 and a three-time finalist for the Audie and has garnered six AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her “velvet touch” as an actor’s director has earned her a special place in the audiobook world as the foremost producer for bestselling authors and celebrities.

About Stephen Hoye

Stephen Hoye has worked as a professional actor in London and Los Angeles for more than thirty years. Trained at Boston University and the Guildhall in London, he has acted in television series and six feature films and has appeared in London’s West End. His audiobook narration has won him fifteen AudioFile Earphones Awards.

About Hillary Huber

Hillary Huber is one of the most successful voice talents in Los Angeles. Recent books read for Blackstone Audio include Him, Her, Him Again, the End of Him by Patricia Marx, A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read, and A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart.

About Moira Quirk

Moira Quirk, a British actress and Earphones Award–winning narrator, co-narrated Ben Bova’s Mercury and has narrated other popular audiobooks for which she received Audie Award nominations. She is a successful comedian and can be heard on Nickelodeon’s cartoon My Life as a Teenage Robot as well as in The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd, The Wild Thornberrys Feature, and Serendipity, among others. She has also lent her voice to several video games, including Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction and Haunting Ground.

About Don Leslie

Don Leslie has appeared on Broadway, off Broadway, and in regional theaters throughout the country. He has been heard in thousands of commercials, promos for all the broadcast networks and most cable stations, political campaigns, movie trailers, and over fifty audiobooks.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on October 22, 2014

This was fun, but I appreciated the stories more when I'd run across them occasionally. Altogether, they got a bit repetitive. Sam Gunn was an extraordinary character who was well used to show a lot of Bova's ideas on how human nature & economics could follow us into space. Just because the circumst......more

Goodreads review by Jason on September 18, 2009

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.) Fans know that within any literary genre, there consists a handful of top-tier "breakout" stars -- pe......more

Goodreads review by 334哎 on November 04, 2019

VERY LIKE THIS BOOK!!!......more

Goodreads review by Clay on April 29, 2010

Got a hankering for that old-time science fiction? You know, where men are men and they chase skirts (usually inhabited by blonde bombshells) after performing death-defying feats of derring-do? Oh, and though they bend the rules sometimes, they always wind up doing good in the end, and the only peop......more

Goodreads review by Andreas on March 25, 2011

The Sam Gunn stories are now published in one omnibus edition. They really bring out the best in Bova. His hero Sam Gunn is a sort of space entrepreneur/adventurer, presumably inspired by explorers from human history such as Columbus and Shackleton. I also believe that Sam Gunn is Ben Bova’s alter e......more


Quotes

“Lovers of SF romance and adventure will welcome Hugo-winner Ben Bova’s The Sam Gunn Omnibus, which collects all the tales featuring his iconoclastic astronaut hero.” Publishers Weekly

“Done with an engaging degree of humor. Sam’s boundless energy is quite endearing. More importantly, behind it all there is Bova’s grand design laid out…This old-fashioned, yet likeable, volume is a great encapsulation of Bova’s writings over the past thirty years or so. Written in a style likely to appeal to fans of Heinlein or possibly John Varley, it can perhaps be seen as an entertaining alternate history these days...A lot of fun.”  SFFWorld.com

“Bova has ambitiously and deftly created a three-in-one narrative that satisfies any and all readerly desires to see the life of his signature rogue assembled into coherent form…Bova has successfully added to the storehouse of a particularly American folklore. Sam Gunn is Mike Fink and Paul Bunyan (although their opposite in size), Rockefeller and Carnegie, Sam Slick and Penrod, the plucky protagonists from Horatio Alger and the irreverent ones from Mark Twain. His exploits…are new manifestations of an eternal archetype in the American psyche.” SciFi Weekly