Satire Science

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.

It was just supposed to be a quick trip to the pet store for some cat food, but the universe had other plans for Florence Valentine. Good for nothing kids and some annoying store employees were giving her a hard time, and then things got worse when she was killed by a delivery truck. Instead of angels, pearly gates, and eternal rewards, a voice in her head keeps telling her that she’s become a dungeon core, whatever that is.

It’s two decades in the future, and a Christian college student named Ace Hartwick has just destroyed his neighbor’s so-called “wife”—actually a sexbot named Sally—in a trash compactor. Soon, Ace will be on trial for murder. Unfortunately for Ace, everyone despises his kind of “radical” Christianity, and, in the fragile America of the future, all the juries are fixed.

Stephen and his friends spent their teenage years immersed in the fantasy gaming worlds of wizards and warriors, undertaking quests to fight evil occultists, vanquish terrible monsters, and rescue damsels in distress. Now, 20-something years later, there is a real-life quest. Life as a monk has hardly prepared Brother Stephen for the mission ahead. Demon Rutspud is definitely not a damsel, but he is in distress. The evil occultists are real and if Stephen doesn’t rescue Rutspud from a fate worse than death, no one will...

The location: London. The date: Very, very soon. Beset by multiple crises and buried under a growing mountain of debt, the leaders of the G7 have taken the only logical decision. They've sold the planet. When Toby, a penniless student, and his two new flatmates find out one morning on TV, they're surprised to find the Earth's new alien owners are staggeringly cute and bring the promise of a debt-free future. They're just getting ready to celebrate along with the rest of the world, when a chance encounter with a mysterious professor reveals the truth.

Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody. Where what a person "feels" and "truly believes" is protected under the law, while what is rational, even provable is condemned as heresy. A world where to question ignorance and intolerance is to commit a Crime against Faith. Imagine it. Or just wait until After the Flood.

The Believer magazine presents a compendium of advice from producers, writers, and actors of The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, Late Show with David Letterman, The Hangover, and The Colbert Report, along with other musicians, cartoonists, New Yorker writers, and those similarly unqualified to offer guidance.

This panoramic fictional oral history begins with one small mystery: the body of a young woman found in an Arizona border town, presumed to be an illegal immigrant, disappears from the town morgue. Soon, the US government - and eventually biomedical researchers, disgruntled lawmakers, and even an insurgent faction of the Catholic Church - must come to terms with what they're too late to stop: an epidemic of vampirism that will sweep first the United States, and then the world. With heightened strength and beauty and a steady diet of fresh blood, these changed people, or "Gloamings", rapidly rise to prominence in all aspects of modern society.

Today's political pundits express shock and disappointment when candidates resort to negative campaigning. But history reveals that smear campaigns are as American as apple pie. Anything for a Vote is a look at 200-plus years of dirty tricks and bad behavior in presidential elections, from George Washington to Barack Obama and John McCain. Let the name-calling begin!

Earth is rising in the House of Voltar.... And there’ll be hell to pay! That’s right. The invasion is on...and it’s coming soon to a galaxy near you. The action couldn’t be hotter, and the plot couldn’t be more diabolical. Earth is coming to Voltar - and the Voltarians won’t know what hit them. Murder, blackmail, drugs, psychoanalysis, PR firms, sex-crazed teenyboppers, riots in the streets, women in chains. These are the powerful secret weapons of war.

The corporations promised it could never happen. Of course they would say that. Their products were everywhere. They had turned everything from scarecrows to coffee makers into robots, and there wasn't a home on Earth that wasn't filled with their machines.

Flatland, first published in 1884, is classic work of satire. The full title, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, reveals the story's most compelling characteristic, its discussion of multiple dimensions. It is this fascinating examination which has contributed to Flatland's enduring popularity.

Certainly not the twins at the heart of the matter of all things Apocalypse, Calvin and Trent, who soon must decide what—or rather whom—they’re willing to sacrifice in order to delay your world’s dying gasps. Definitely not the high school principal, Gary Mustafa, whose hyperfixation on balloons will leave your mind only loosely tethered to your head. Then there’s Love and Yew, the former government hacker and ex-reality TV star, the latter a psychedelic therapist who thinks she’s better than you. The less said about these two women, the better.

They love nothing better than sipping free-trade gourmet coffee, leafing through the Sunday New York Times, and listening to David Sedaris on NPR (ideally all at the same time). Apple products, indie music, food co-ops, and vintage T-shirts make them weak in the knees. They believe they're unique, yet somehow they're all exactly the same.

How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous "smart" house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the secrets to quashing a robot mutiny.

Churchill is Prime Minister for the last time. Rationing is still in force. All music sounds like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. People like living in 1952: it's familiar and reassuring, and Britain knows its place in the world. Few have noticed it's been 1952 for the past 65 years. Meet Professor Quanderhorn; a brilliant, maverick scientific genius who has absolutely no moral compass. With his Dangerous Giant Space Laser, High Rise Farm, Invisible Robot and Fleet of Monkey-driven Lorries, he's not afraid to push the boundaries of science to their very limit.

Morag Murray works for the secret government organization responsible for making sure the apocalypse goes as smoothly and as quietly as possible. In her first week on the job, Morag has to hunt down a man-eating starfish, solve a supernatural murder, and, if she's got time, prevent her own inevitable death.

Young Kit Kellan has led a rough-and-tumble life - knocking around the Vega System in his youth as a tiger hunter, a brawler, and a bouncer in a bar. But his real fight is just beginning. Summarily expelled from the prestigious Terra University, he is taken into custody by an agent of the System Bureau of Investigation (SBI). Kit's crime: thinking too much and thinking too well. He’s not in custody for long, however. Snatched from captivity by the People’s Revolutionary Society, Kit sets out an epic adventure that will take him to the farthest reaches of the universe.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman made history when he became the first person of Jewish faith to be included on a major-party ticket. But he wasn't the first one to think of it. Not by a long shot. Long before he ran for office, Al Franken asked the question, Why Not Me? in his comedic audiobook of the same name....

Steve is hell's super, its handyman. Being Mr. Fixit to the underworld keeps him and his assistant, Orson Welles (yes, that Orson Welles), pretty busy, since things go on the blink all the time down there. No malfunction has ever created so much inconvenience, though, as the malfunction of hell's escalator, which leads from the pearly gates to the depths of Hades. What's worse: The breakdown appears to be sabotage.