So I have been a bit behind with my reviews

When I was looking for what to spend some of my first Audible credits on, The Martian by Andy Weir stood out. This still ranks at the top of roughly 15 audiobooks I’ve listened to for two reasons. First, the story and writing was engaging. This was “hardest” sci-fi I’ve read so far. There is a lot of math, chemistry, physics, and botany (yes botany). I’m sure that many people would be put off by such dry and detailed descriptions, but that leads me to my second point. The performance of the narrator, R.C. Bray, was superb. He made the “hard science” interesting and entertaining. His voice strikes me as a perfect fit for the main character, Mark Watney. Do yourself a favor and listen to the 5 minute sample on Audible and judge for yourself. While the book focuses on his Watney’s mission log, R.C. Bray does voices for other characters in NASA back on Earth. The voices are OK, nothing but nothing spectacular. I can’t say there is anything wrong, but there are other narrators with a stronger skill for differing character voices. (more…)

Black Market memories is a story about a settlement many light years away from Earth named Jamestown. The residents can be individuals that had crippled bodies of some sort, then were given the opportunity to be “free” in a Stellar Unit (SU). The brain is scanned over a period of time then digitized and placed into a mechanical body. I would not classify these as cyborgs, but essentially AI that controls a ship of sorts. Some use the settlements as a base for research trips to find new worlds. (more…)