Providence
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Providence
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Narrated by:
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Brittany Pressley
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By:
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Max Barry
About this listen
'Compelling and innovative... Barry takes a story that has been done countless times before and makes it seem original' - Daily Mail
She is the ultimate weapon. She once served us. Now she's got her own plans.
Once we approached the aliens in peace... and they annihilated us. Now mankind has developed the ultimate killing machine, the Providence class of spaceship.
With the ships' frightening speed, frightening intelligence and frightening weaponry, it's now the salamanders' turn to be annihilated... in their millions.
The mismatched quartet of Talia, Gilly, Jolene and Anders are the crew on one of these destroyers. But with the ship's computers designed to outperform human decision-making in practically all areas, they are virtual bystanders. The Providence will take them to where the enemy are and she will dictate the strategy in any battle.
The crew's only job role is to publicise their glorious war to a sceptical Earth. Social media and video clips are THEIR weapons in an endless charm offensive. THEIR chief enemy is not the space reptiles but each other, and boredom.
But then everything changes. A message comes from base: the Providence is going into the Violet Zone, where there are no beacons and no communications with Earth. It is the heart of the enemy empire - and now the crew are left to wonder whether this is a mission of ultimate destruction or, more sinisterly, of ultimate self-destruction...
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What listeners say about Providence
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Larry Reacher
- 22-05-21
Excellent book... Good read
Excellent book... Good read. I liked the interactions of the crew, There is not much use made of the AI, that runs the ship. Its a relationships book, the battles are OK as well. I liked the narrator as well.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rowlie
- 23-04-24
"All watched over by machines of loving grace"
an incredibly exciting and clever hard sci-fi tale that is an allegory for the cold bureaucratic governance and oversight of giant systems within neoliberalism, using story elements of hardwired techno-determinism (the AI) and biological determinism (the lethal eusocial hive creatures) in a forever-war setting out in space
the book follows astronauts in a super powered AI ship as it kills off an alien species many light years out, and we discover that what the machines and Aliens think and do is totally inexplicable and uninterpretable by the human crew, with them sucked into the cogs of war and manufactured consent and PR as if they too were just as mindless as the Aliens they've been sent to destroy. the reveal of where the Aliens come from was absolutely inspired.
the Californian ideology was this libertarian belief that computers could measure and control and automate for humans, having their best interests at heart in a kind of techno utopian fantasy, but due to the interests of business and governments the technology is of course bent to the will of those who own it, and therefore, as part of the superstructure, ends up becoming totally opaque to our insight and explanation. think of stock markets, hospital appointments, penalty notices, courts decisions, media spin etc. and although this opacity is not entirely malicious every single time, it still ends up creating malice given the fundamental interests inherent in the positions occupied by the people. power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. no one is accountable, it is all chalked up to the mystery of the technology. the mystery of an idiopathic illness or genetics. no one can say why a thing happens for sure under the cold, unfeeling gaze of machinery and technology designed to maximise productivity and profit and the generation of targets. the humans in the Providence ship and the salamanders are slaves to systems much bigger than them, but as avatars with faces and forms, are physical manifestations of the systems. they are manoeuvred into place, discharge their duties and carry on, and the systems are trusted to repeat this cycle. many of us benefit, but many are crushed under the weight of discriminate decisions and badly implemented policy and not everyone makes it out alive. the systems do not care, they just are. and without gods and religion in the picture anymore, we replace the concept of fate with one of trust, imagining that the systems must know what they're doing because why else would they be so large?
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