The Votes Are In: 2024's Top Sci-Fi Audiobooks Revealed!

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the 2024 Discover Sci-Fi Readers’ Choice Awards, audiobook edition! From thrilling narration to immersive soundscapes, your nominations and votes highlighted the sci-fi audiobooks that truly stood out this year.

And now, it’s time for the big reveal! Which audiobooks captivated listeners and claimed the top spots in 2024? Scroll on to uncover the standout titles chosen by fellow sci-fi audiobook enthusiasts like you!

*You can also see the Top Overall Sci-Fi Books of 2024 list here, and the 15 Must-Read Sci-Fi Books from across seven distinct sub-genres, as voted by readers.

10th Place: Vangie's Ghosts by Paul Di Filippo, Narrated by Emily Lawrence

Paul Di Filippo delivers a thrilling and thought-provoking adventure through the multiverse in Vangie’s Ghosts, a compelling science fiction novel about one girl with extraordinary powers.

Three-year-old Vangie is mute and unresponsive. She shows no interest in the people or world around her, much to the frustration of her callous adoptive parents. Little do they know, Vangie is otherwise occupied observing “ghosts”—an infinite number of versions of herself, in an infinite number of parallel universes.

When a tornado hits their trailer and Vangie is severely injured, she makes a desperate leap into another timeline where she survives the tornado, but her adoptive parents do not. So begins a life of shuttling through various foster homes, cultivating her abilities to seek out alternate timelines, and making jumps calculated to better her circumstances in order to avoid the exploitation of adults who seek to harness her powers for their own means.

Vangie never communicates with her avatars, until one day the “Council”—a group of Vangies—appear to her and warn her of an ominous, growing threat in the multiverse: a man they call the Massive. And thus begins an epic conflict, spanning millennia and worlds, in a brutal effort to control the fate of the multiverse.

Vangie’s Ghosts is Paul Di Filippo at the height of his imagination and versatility, filled with compelling characters who play captivating roles in a story where the stakes are nothing less than existence itself.

Grab Vangie's Ghosts on audiobook. Also available in ebook, paperback, and hardcover.

9th Place: I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin, Narrated by Ari Fliakos

Founded by the mysterious genius known as the Designer, the archipelago of Prospera lies hidden from the horrors of a deteriorating outside world. In this island paradise, Prospera’s lucky citizens enjoy long, fulfilling lives until the monitors embedded in their forearms, meant to measure their physical health and psychological well-being, fall below 10 percent. Then they retire themselves, embarking on a ferry ride to the island known as the Nursery, where their failing bodies are renewed, their memories are wiped clean, and they are readied to restart life afresh.

Proctor Bennett, of the Department of Social Contracts, has a satisfying career as a ferryman, gently shepherding people through the retirement process—and, when necessary, enforcing it. But all is not well with Proctor. For one thing, he’s been dreaming—which is supposed to be impossible in Prospera. For another, his monitor percentage has begun to drop alarmingly fast. And then comes the day he is summoned to retire his own father, who gives him a disturbing and cryptic message before being wrestled onto the ferry.

Meanwhile, something is stirring. The Support Staff, ordinary men and women who provide the labor to keep Prospera running, have begun to question their place in the social order. Unrest is building, and there are rumors spreading of a resistance group—known as “Arrivalists”—who may be fomenting revolution.

Soon Proctor finds himself questioning everything he once believed, entangled with a much bigger cause than he realized—and on a desperate mission to uncover the truth.

Get I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom here on audiobook. Also available in ebook, paperback, and hardcover.

8th Place: Exit Black by Joe Pitkin, Narrated by Carolina Hoyos

Air Force One meets The Martian—with a dash of Knives Out—in this action-packed sci-fi thriller.

Imperium is the most expensive structure ever created. Once an orbiting laboratory, it is now a space hotel for the fantastically wealthy. But as the station preps for its first group of space tourists, Dr. Chloe Bonilla, Imperium’s resident biophysicist, finds herself questioning whether babysitting a passel of space glampers is worth the distraction from her research.

A private rocket delivers a rogues’ gallery of the world’s elite to Imperium: eccentric billionaires, callow tech bros, a sponsored Instagram influencer, and a seemingly saintly philanthropist. However, posing among the staff are members of a global terrorist group who call themselves the Reckoners, hell bent on upending the economic inequality of twenty-first-century Earth—and they have a bone to pick with these scions of the 1 percent.

As the Reckoners take control of Imperium and demand an $8 billion ransom from their wealthy hostages, it’s up to Dr. Bonilla to save them, and fast. Or the captives will be forced to exit the station—and there’s only one way out.

Dive into Grab Exit Black here on audiobook. Also available in ebook, and paperback.

7th Place: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, Narrated by George Weightman and Katie Leung

A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.

Grab The Ministry of Time here on audiobook. Also available in ebook, paperback, and hardcover.

6th Place: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Narrated by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Murderbot meets Redshirts in a delightfully humorous tale of robotic murder from the Hugo-nominated author of Elder Race and Children of Time.

To fix the world they must first break it, further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service.

When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away.

Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.

Get Service Model on audiobook here. Also available in ebook, paperback, and hardcover.

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5th Place: Absolution (Southern Reach Trilogy, Book Four) by Jeff Vandermeer, Narrated by Bronson Pinchot

When the Southern Reach Trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestsellers list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.

And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast—before Area X was called Area X—had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?

Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

Grab Absolution on audiobook here. Also available in ebook, paperback, and hardcover.

4th Place: Call to Armor (Terran Expeditionary Corps Book One) by Richard Fox, Narrated y Luke Daniels

A planet in danger. An impossible enemy. Only Armor can stand against the darkness.

The extra-galactic bridge between Earth and Terra Nova reopens after decades. Governor Hale calls for aid against an impossible alien threat known as the Inheritors, an advanced alien species with a mysterious connection to old allies. Hale needs the most powerful soldiers in the galaxy: Armor.

His son, Ely, finally reconnects with his family and will return to Terra Nova not as the scared kid who left the dwarf galaxy, but as the leader of an Armor lance.

When the Ibarra Nation joins the Expeditionary Corps, old wounds and older suspicions threaten to drive a wedge between human factions.

Get your copy of Call to Armor on audiobook here. Also available in ebook, paperback, and hardcover.

3rd Place: Force Majeure (Wolfhounds Book Three) by John Van Stry, Narrated by Kyf Brewer

Chase is finally coming to understand just what being Prince Chase means, and what becoming emperor of the Solarian Empire will mean as well.

He's getting better at the job every day. Now if only he could just bring himself to tell Captain Witner and the other members of the command staff that he really is a prince and not the fraud they all believe he is.

Another thing he is starting to learn more about is Imperial politics and the kinds of things princes and emperors are known for, as well as expected to do. He's also discovering that there are a lot of people who still believe he's a fraud, because of Neill's efforts at proclaiming him as such. Of course, his criminal background isn't helping him much there.

What is helping him however are some of the people he's discovering, and some of the things he's learning about his family from them. There are still a good many surprises in store for Chase. Hopefully, none of those surprises will end up killing him.

Dive into Force Majeure on audiobook here. Also available in ebook, and paperback.

2nd Place: Point Nemo by Jeremy Robinson, Narrated by R.C. Bray

In the heart of the South Pacific lies Point Nemo, the most desolate and remote place on Earth.

At its core is a dead zone, devoid of life, where government agencies crash their obsolete satellites and space stations, confident they won't harm a soul. When the International Space Station suffers a catastrophic failure and plummets through the atmosphere, it's here that Mission Specialist Julie Rohr, an astrobiologist studying living space dust called xylem, finds herself marooned.

Julie's only hope for rescue lies in the hands of her estranged father, Dr. Finn Maddern, a renowned mycologist. Plucked from the depths of the Amazon rainforest, Finn is thrust into a daring rescue mission alongside a team of specialists. Their destination: an impossible island at the center of Point Nemo—an island that shouldn't exist—composed of xylem.

The island is a living enigma, giving birth to strange and terrifying creatures, each generation more evolved and deadly than the last. As the team delves deeper into the island's alien mysteries, they find themselves in a race against time: the island is moving. If it escapes the dead zone and reaches fertile waters, nothing in humanity's arsenal will be able to stop the invasive species from colonizing and remaking the world.

With their team dwindling and the stakes rising, Finn and Julie must confront their past and face an unthinkable choice. To save humanity, a sacrifice must be made. A life exchanged for the world. The burden of survival and the weight of their family's legacy falls on their shoulders.

Point Nemo by New York Times and #1 Audible bestselling author Jeremy Robinson is a chilling journey into the unknown, a tale of sacrifice and survival that blurs the line between science fiction and horror. It's a testament to the lengths a parent will go to protect their child and a stark reminder of our fragile place in the universe.

Get your copy of Point Nemo on audiobook here. Also available in ebook, and paperback.

1st Place: Task Force Hammer (Expeditionary Force Book 17) by Craig Alanson, Narrated by R.C. Bray

The Merry Band of Pirates stopped the enemy from stealing a Sentinel, and destroyed its Elder starship, so why weren’t the Pirates planning a victory party?

The enemy was not what they thought it was.

It was much, much worse.

They had not a single clue how to defeat that enemy, or how to fight it, or whether fighting it was even possible. Only one thing was certain: the Pirates couldn’t handle this fight alone.

Grab Task Force Hammer on audiobook here. Also available in ebook, and paperback.

How many of the 2024 Readers' Choice top 10 list have you listened to? Which ones are you adding to the top of your TBR for 2025? Any stellar audiobooks you think didn't get their due? Let us know here in the comments, or over in the Discover Sci-Fi Facebook group!