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When Worlds Collide

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When Worlds Collide

By: Edwin Balmer, Philip Wylie
Narrated by: Peter Ganim
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About this listen

A runaway planet hurtles toward Earth. As it draws near, massive tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions wrack our planet, devastating continents, drowning cities, and wiping out millions. In central North America, a team of scientists race to build a spacecraft powerful enough to escape the doomed Earth. Their greatest threat, they soon discover, comes not from the skies but from other humans.

A crackling plot and sizzling, cataclysmic vision have made When Worlds Collide one of the most popular and influential end-of-the-world novels of all time.

©1932, 1933 Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie (P)2012 Audible, Inc. Science Fiction Fiction Natural Disaster Solar System Africa Classics

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OK, this is really bad science but timely and it's a great story. The characters are larger than life and so is the target.



Lyra and Bellus are a twin pair of rogue planets that are just about to close pass the Earth, loop around and wallop us. But! If we're lucky and clever we can launch Arcs to send life to the world that doesn't hit earth... Listen on...

Great Film. Better Story.

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I remember reading this book as a child , then watched the film which for it's time was made extremely good, know listening to the book I remember just how well it was written, the narration is fantastic. I would highly this Audible book to all and if ever a book needed a film update this is it.

Amazing , simply amazing

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all that make a science fiction novel worth reading. I would read it twice just catch the little things.

best book ever.

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I knew this story from the 1951 film, but this book and the narration just blows the celluloid attempt out of this solar system. A masterpiece of imaginative storytelling, writing and narration that I couldn’t stop listening to, I was spellbound. For the last half I sat all afternoon, not noticing the winter darkness enfolding me, listening to this exciting piece of science fiction set in that exciting period when adventures beyond our atmosphere were still an adolescent mix of theory and fact, with that possibility of fanciful flourish.

It was all brought magically to life by that spell weaving voice of Peter Ganim whose voice secured the heroes in their alpha male roles and brought the professors prior to Sputnik and post nuclear dawn sciences to life in true 1940s style; you could almost picture him narrating dressed in a trench coat and trilby. I have found in audio books there is a very real need to marry the writing style, the story and the narrator into a holy threesome and in this instance, in my view, they are going to live happily ever after.

World Smashingly Good

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Wants to be pulp fiction but occasionally goes off on a route that doesn't lead anywhere and which doesn't add to the story

Different from film

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For those familiar with 1951 paramount film of the same name there is much of interest here. The book gives more time to the collapse of society as it echoes the collapse of the planet but the plot remains the same. I don't want to spend much time comparing the book to the film, but it was interesting to note how the science changed between the two - the story was written in the early 1930s, the film made in the early 1950s, and some of the science was updated accordingly. Credit has to be given for any story trying to predict the nature of manned space flight and atomic power in 1933, and it does the story a disservice to talk about where the science of the story falls down. The story itself is a slow-burn that builds well to it's conclusion, but there are times when the pacing feels a little laboured (and that might be in part because the story first appeared as a six-part magazine serial in 1932-33, and the expansion into a novel inevitably introduced a degree of padding).
It also needs to be remembered that this was written in 1932-33, so casual racism (particular with regard to a Japanese servant) and institutionalized sexism are the order of the day. Thankfully it's not common in this book but when it happens it is cringeworthy. We may not like it, but we have to accept that as a society our past is a place to look back on to remind us of how we needed, and still need, to change. I'm of the opinion that to censor our mistakes of the past is to sanitise history and pretend it wasn't how it was. It was how it was, there's no changing it, we accept how flawed we were and try and move on, correcting our behaviour as we go. Humanity is a child, and it must continue to learn from its mistakes, and you cannot learn from what you cannot see.
As for this audible edition, the narrator does a decent job for the most part, but his chosen voice for the only speaking female charater grates somewhat, but frankly most male narrators do a terrible job voicing female characters - I just think he could have chosen better given that the character is not a lovelorn teenager. There are also a few times where pauses appear in the wrong places in sentences and the emphasis goes a bit awry, but nothing that detracts from the story.

A Pulp Classic - flawed but compelling

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I've read this book, and seen the film based on it, but didn't like the reading. Ganim's narration just didn't work for me. It was too laconic, and there wasn't enough differentiation between characters - all the male voices were too similar - conversations between Bronson, Ransdall, Drake and Hendron all sound the same, despite Bronson & Ransdall being South African.

There wasn't enough urgency in the reading, and as a result the League of the Last Days seemed more like a Friday afternoon than the end of the world.

I got this and the sequel at the same time, but I've returned the sequel un-listened, and will return this as soon as I've posted the review.

Didn't like the narrator, which spoilt the book.

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This is like some of the classic "go to the moon" stories - where the story is "go to the moon" rather than a larger picture of geo-politics which give it point and context

Lots of talk not that much action

Not bad enough to return ( although nearly)

I'd forgotten what SOME classic sci fi was like -

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I gave up when I realised the text was not intended to reflect the internal bigotry of the main protagonist, and that he was not merely one of several characters, others of whom may turn out not to be antiheroes, or be destined to undergo some sort of transformation into a more rounded human being,

Couldn't get past the racism

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I thought this would be interesting and the plot is. I got to the end thinking that nothing really happens. The plot seems to move on despite what is happening to the characters

Not going to even bother with the second book

Good start but then nothing

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