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Technical Error by Hal Clement audiobook.
Genre: scifi
When a human spacecraft is forced into an emergency landing on a lonely asteroid, the crew watches their own ship fail beyond repair and realizes the real countdown is not fuel or distance, but breathable air. Salvation appears in the least likely form: an ancient derelict vessel of unmistakably alien design, sealed and silent, its controls built around sound engineering principles but executed with methods no Terran manual ever imagined. As the crew splits between caution and desperation, they begin a methodical, engineer's investigation - mapping corridors, testing materials, tracing power paths, and arguing over what each baffling mechanism might do. Every discovery offers a new chance to escape and a new way to die, because the alien ship is not simply unfamiliar; it carries hints of a past disaster that may repeat itself if the wrong component is forced, overheated, or activated out of sequence. Hal Clement turns the problem of survival into a tight, technical mystery: how do you operate a machine when you can only infer its purpose from structure, physics, and the ticking of your own life-support? The result is classic hard science fiction about ingenuity under pressure, teamwork under strain, and the thin line between a clever fix and a fatal mistake.
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Chapters (Approximate)
(00:00:00) Chapter 01
(00:20:32) Chapter 02
(00:40:16) Chapter 03
(00:58:53) Chapter 04
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By Classic Audiobook Collection LLC3.9
172172 ratings
Technical Error by Hal Clement audiobook.
Genre: scifi
When a human spacecraft is forced into an emergency landing on a lonely asteroid, the crew watches their own ship fail beyond repair and realizes the real countdown is not fuel or distance, but breathable air. Salvation appears in the least likely form: an ancient derelict vessel of unmistakably alien design, sealed and silent, its controls built around sound engineering principles but executed with methods no Terran manual ever imagined. As the crew splits between caution and desperation, they begin a methodical, engineer's investigation - mapping corridors, testing materials, tracing power paths, and arguing over what each baffling mechanism might do. Every discovery offers a new chance to escape and a new way to die, because the alien ship is not simply unfamiliar; it carries hints of a past disaster that may repeat itself if the wrong component is forced, overheated, or activated out of sequence. Hal Clement turns the problem of survival into a tight, technical mystery: how do you operate a machine when you can only infer its purpose from structure, physics, and the ticking of your own life-support? The result is classic hard science fiction about ingenuity under pressure, teamwork under strain, and the thin line between a clever fix and a fatal mistake.
For ad-free listening try our premium subscription
Chapters (Approximate)
(00:00:00) Chapter 01
(00:20:32) Chapter 02
(00:40:16) Chapter 03
(00:58:53) Chapter 04
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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