Free audio downloads
The themes of doomsday, surviving in a post-apocalyptic world and rebuilding from rudimentary means have been common tropes throughout the history of literature (it’s by no means a recent trend in sci-fi) – as explored in the article on recommended novels. Many of these older publications have fallen out of copyright restrictions and so are now with the public domain, available as free audio downloads. There is also a fantastic body of audio recordings that are free to download. I’ve collected together my recommended list of essential listening, pulling together the very best short stories and full novels. There are also a few poems here, such as Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’ and Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ that feature as chapter epigraphs in The Knowledge.
- Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Liebowitz
- Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy (dramatisation)
- Arthur C. Clarke, Hammer of God
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
- E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias of Egypt
- Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (read by the author)
- H.G. Wells, Time Machine
- Johann David Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson
(see OpenCulture for a full listing of all available short stories, novels and poems)
