I tried listening to an audiobook once but I just couldn’t. It took way too long and I kept missing things because I kept losing focus due to doing other things.

Having a story told by a friend face-to-face is no problem, on the contrary. But listening to some random voice hours at a time..

I quite like the story, and have been a fan of Escape Pod for some time.

But I am not commenting to leave a bit of mindless agreement, but to say that I found your point on audio books interesting. Until I moved to Los Angeles (where I spend at least an hour a day, sometimes two or three, in the car), I was firmly in the “audio books are for people who are too dumb or lazy to actually read a book” camp. It’s taken those long hours in the car every day for me to come around.

I agree completely that audio books provide an inferior experience. Even with the best of readers, it won’t sound as good as it would in my head. It’s somebody else’s interpretation of the material being forced on the listener. But I’ve found them to be an excellent way to get to content that I’m interested in but know I’d never get around to otherwise. I’ve been interested in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games for months, but I’ve got dozens of unread books already vying for my attention, and (though I don’t mean this to sound dismissive), a young adult novel will probably never trump an unread John Irving or Ray Bradbury or Michael Chabon book.

So I listen to the audio book, and it’s been a good system so far. Actual reading is my starting lineup, and audio books are my second string–not as good, but there in a pinch, when I need them.

I prefer reading over listening myself, but I have become an audio book hound of late simply because I do not have the time to sit down and read these days, but I do have a fairly lengthy commute. So I have turned that time into book listening time and I have caught up (and sometimes revisted) any of a number of science fiction classics over the last couple of years. I highly recommend this to anybody out there that spends a fair amount of time commuting to and from work.

Spoilers ahead, you have been warned. Sorry if the names are spelt wrong or a little off, but that’s audio books for you :).

Good story, if a little predictable. It was obvious Western’s comments about the sand would be much wiser than what Gruen makes of them at the time. The words are lost on Gruen’s relatively young and arrogant mind but years of reflection give them new light. Classic enlightenment story. Other than that, Gruen’s specie is quite interesting : it’s hard to imagine having your life limited by movements and not time. As much as I hate putting labels on things, I’d classify it as SF, mainly because I’ve seen this theme handled more often in SF than in Fantasy.