Audiolibros Literatura en inglés

Please note: This audiobook has been created using AI voice.Born in 1842, Camille Flammarion was a French astronomer who wrote many popular books about science and astronomy, together with a number of novels which we would now consider to be science fiction. He was a contemporary of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, though his works never achieved their level of popularity.Omega: The Last Days of the World is an English translation of Flammarions novel La Fin du Monde, published in 1893. The books fictional premise is the discovery of a comet on a collision course with the Earth in the 25th century. However, this is mostly a pretext on which Flammarion can hang his interesting scientific speculations about how the world will end, together with philosophical thoughts about war and religion. Much of the scientific description he uses in the book, while accurately representing the knowledge and thinking of his time, has today been superseded by modern discoveries. For example, we now know the source of the Suns energy to be nuclear fusion rather than being due to gravitational contraction and the constant infall of meteorites.When talking about the ills of society, however, Flammarion could well be talking about todays world. For example, he excoriates the vast waste of societys resources on war, and demonstrates how much more productive each nations economy would be without it. He also depicts the media of his future world as having been entirely taken over by commercial interests, publishing only what will excite the greatest number of readers rather than serving the public interest.Omega ranges over a vast period of time, from prehistory through to millions of years in the future when mankind has been reduced to the last two doomed individuals. Nevertheless, the book ends on a hopeful and inspiring note.

Please note: This audiobook has been created using AI voice.Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boys Progress was Charles Dickens second novel, following The Pickwick Papers, and was published as a serial in the magazine Bentleys Miscellany between 1837 and 1839. It details the misadventures of its eponymous character, Oliver Twist, born in a Victorianera workhouse, his mother dying within minutes of his birth. He is raised in miserable conditions, halfstarved, and then sent out as an apprentice to an undertaker. Running away from this situation, he walks to London and falls under the influence of a criminal gang run by an old man called Fagin, who wants to employ the child as a pickpocket.The novel graphically depicts the wretched living conditions of much of the poor people of Victorian times and the disgusting slums in which they were forced to live. It has been accused of perpetrating antiSemitic stereotypes in the character of Fagin, almost always referred to as the Jew in the books early chapters. Interestingly, while the serial was still running in the magazine, Dickens was eventually persuaded that he was wrong in this and removed many such usages in later episodes. He also introduced more kindly Jewish characters in such later novels as Our Mutual Friend.Oliver Twist was immediately popular in serial form, with its often gripping story and lurid details. It has remained one of Dickens bestloved novels, and the story has often been made into films and television series, as well as into a very popular musical, Oliver!.