Old Venus – George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois (editors) Free Audiobook

Written by George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois (editors)
Read by Ensemble Cast
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain” to visionary novels such as C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earth’s next-nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in golden-age science-fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright-blue Venus was its polar opposite: a steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amid the dripping vegetation. Alas, just as the last century’s space probes exploded our dreams of Mars, so too did they shatter our romantic visions of Venus, revealing, instead of a lush paradise, a hellish world inimical to all life.

But don’t despair! This new anthology of 16 original stories by some of science fiction’s best writers – edited by number-one New York Times best-selling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois – turns back the clock to that more innocent time, before the hard-won knowledge of science vanquished the infinite possibilities of the imagination.

Introduction by Gardner Dozois
“Frogheads” by Allen M. Steele
“The Drowned Celestrial” by Lavie Tidhar
“Planet of Fear” by Paul McAuley
“Greeves and the Evening Star” by Matthew Hughes
“A Planet Called Desire” by Gwyneth Jones
“Living Hell” by Joe Haldeman
“Bones of Air, Bones of Stone” by Stephen Leigh
“Ruins” by Eleanor Arnason
“The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss” by David Brin
“By Frogsled and Lizardback to Outcast Venusian Lepers” by Garth Nix
“The Sunset of Time” by Michael Cassutt
“Pale Blue Memories” by Tobias S. Buckell
“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” by Elizabeth Bear
“The Wizard of the Trees” by Joe R. Lansdale
“The Godstone of Venus” by Mike Resnick
“Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan” by Ian McDonald