Jacob Szymanski

Because he starts in the book on the spaceship with amnesia, not knowing why he's there, and finds out that he's on his own.

Which leaves a lot of questions to be answered for the reader.

the first chapter involves him trying to figure out which direction is up and at that point i'm like what is this what are we reading like i don't what is going on and it's very slowly comes together and the i actually really quite enjoyed those flashbacks um figuring out what the astrophages are because the mystery of what they were in the first place was really well done too

Capital S storytelling.

It's great, isn't it?

I think it was 13 years.

Was it not?

Can we talk about the narration in the audiobook by Ray Porter?

It rightfully won the Audi for Best Audiobook in 2022.

He was fantastic.

One of these audiobooks that's very much acted out.

When he's in distress, you can really hear it.

When he's joyful for finding a solution for something, you can really hear it in his voice.

It's not read straight whatsoever.

But I think one of the pieces of sound design that was really impressive for the book was what they did for Rocky.

Yeah.

Because he has dialogue, but it's sort of assumed that it's been translated from the software.

And the way they portray that is by every time Rocky says something, you hear these little synthesized, harmonized notes of polyphony perfectly synced up to the voice.

And it's so clear.

It was really clever and a really good understanding of what Rocky would do.