Satire Science

Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.

Blending fact and fiction, China Dream is an unflinching satire of totalitarianism. Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, is feeling pleased with himself. He has an impressive office, three properties, and multiple mistresses who text him day and night. After decades of loyal service, he has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with replacing people's private dreams with President Xi Jinping's great China Dream of national rejuvenation.

A gleefully gruesome look at the actual science behind the most outlandish, cartoonish, and impossible deaths you can imagine. What would happen if you took a swim outside a deep-sea submarine wearing only a swimsuit? How long could you last if you stood on the surface of the sun? How far could you actually get in digging a hole to China? Paul Doherty, senior staff scientist at San Francisco's famed Exploratorium Museum, and writer Cody Cassidy explore the real science behind these and other fantastical scenarios.

They’ve taken everything from him. Now Jerry and Chewy are headed to Niagara Falls to take out the wasteland’s greatest villain once and for all. But The Librarian isn’t the only one looking for revenge. Several other post-apocalyptic nomadic warriors have experienced Invcitus’ horrors firsthand and are in town to find vengeance. The Bookkeepers have lived under the tyrant’s iron fist for far too long. They’re well informed, organized, and ready to strike.

It’s been a year since the events in Niagara Falls. Things have generally gotten better in the wasteland and civilization is starting to take hold along the rivers. No one knows where the Librarian is, or if he’s alive, but there’s a man and a mastiff running passengers from Hannibal to Cairo that might have an idea as to what really happened. Life is starting to return to normal along the river if you don’t count the pirates and the sea monsters. But all of that is about to change and the end of the world may never be the same again.

First we live. Then we die. And then...we get another try? Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to "get it right". Answer all the big questions. Achieve wisdom. And become one with everything. Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn't make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her.

In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan.

Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world...or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

Nilanjana Sikdar is an outsider to the town of Night Vale. Working for Carlos, the town's top scientist, she relies on fact and logic as her guiding principles. But all of that is put into question when Carlos gives her a special assignment investigating a mysterious rumbling in the desert wasteland outside of town. This investigation leads her to the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God and to Darryl, one of its most committed members.

The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari­juana overdose - and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell.

After pacifying the old Earth underground military base and defeating the Sleem, Tyson Dawes and Silken Sands are flush with new items and morties. But the Dearth Conglomerate has been circling over them in Arizona, and they want his land. Which wouldn't be such a problem if the boss weren't such an incompetent and spoiled child.

A price on their heads has driven Jerry, the post-apocalyptic nomadic warrior, Erica, and their loyal mastiff west in search of a new beginning. But when their truck breaks down in what was once Southern Colorado, they are swept into an epic quest at the behest of King Elias, ruler of the Kingdom of the Five Peaks. On their quest, they will meet old friends and new foes, mutant cannibals, savage mountain men, fearsome knights, and much, much more.

Many view "hitting rock bottom" as a foundation on which to rebuild one's life, a place from which one can only ascend. Gamers know to search for a secret door leading down to the sewer.

Vainqueur Knightsbane is your average dragon: A giant, fire-breathing lizard who loves to take naps on his golden hoard, kidnap princesses for fun, and make the life of adventurers miserable. Vainqueur's only pleasure in life is to watch his treasure get bigger, one coin at a time. So when a would-be thief turned unwilling minion tells him about "classes", "levels", and "quests", Vainqueur wonders if maybe, just maybe, he should consider a career change. After all, why bother hunting monsters for free when you can get paid for it?

The new book censor hasn't slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish-allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians.

Pocket has been Lear's cherished fool for years. So naturally Pocket is at his brainless, elderly liege's side when Lear demands that his kids swear to him their undying love and devotion. Of course Goneril and Regan are only too happy to brownnose Dad. But Cordelia believes that her father's request is kind of...well...stupid, and her blunt honesty ends up costing her her rightful share of the kingdom and earns her a banishment to boot.

Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.

The adventuring industry drives the economy of Arth, a world much like our own but with more magic and fewer vowels. Monsters' hoards are claimed, bought by corporate interests, and sold off to plunder funds long before the Heroes' Guild actually kills the beasts. Of course, that's a terrible arrangement for the Shadowkin; orcs, goblins, kobolds, and their ilk must apply for to become Noncombatant Paper Carriers (or NPCs) to avoid being killed and looted by heroes.

The eagerly awaited new audiobook from the Emmy-winning, Oscar-hosting, Daily Show-anchoring Jon Stewart - the man behind the mega seller America (The Book). Where do we come from? Who created us? Why are we here? These questions have puzzled us since the dawn of time, but when it became apparent to Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show that the world was about to end, they embarked on a massive mission to write a book that summed up the human race.