John Scalzi's The Dispatcher: Zachary Quinto to narrate

Zachary Quinto can add another thrilling sci-fi project to his resume — but this time, you won’t see his face.

The Star Trek actor has been cast to narrate an exclusive novella by author John Scalzi, which Scalzi wrote exclusively for Audible. The Dispatcher is set in a contemporary world just like ours, except for one pretty major twist — people who get murdered have been coming back to life. If you die of natural causes or commit suicide, you stay dead, but murder, much to everyone’s surprise, has become nearly impossible to commit. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher, someone sent to “release” people if, say, they’re in the midst of an operation and are about to die, before they actually go. But when a fellow Dispatcher goes missing, it’s up to Valdez to track him down.

“We were looking for one, obviously someone who has really good acting chops, but also… someone who not only can talk the talk — which they’d have to do with narration — but walks the walk, knows the genre, knows the field, knows about the worlds that we’re going to inhabit,” Scalzi tells EW of the casting process. “So you look at Zachary Quinto: He was in Heroes. He was in Star Trek. He has more than a passing understanding of the world of science fiction and fantasy. He’s done far-future stuff, but he’s also done contemporary urban fantasy in Heroes, which is right down the alley of what The Dispatcher is. When he came up as a possibility, everybody was just like, ‘Oh yeah. That makes total sense.'”

To preorder The Dispatcher in advance of its Oct. 4 release date, head to audible.com/dispatcher.