Second Variety: Short Story

Philip K. Dick

Apr 2013 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war between the United Nations and the Soviet Union, sophisticated robots—nicknamed “claws”—are created to destroy what remains of human life. Left to their own devices, however, the claws develop robots of their own. II-V, the second variety, remains unknown to the few humans left on Earth. Or does it?

Philip K. Dick was an American science-fiction novelist, short-story writer and essayist. His first short story, “Beyond Lies the Wub,” was published shortly after his high school graduation. Some of his most famous short stories were adapted for film, including “The Minority Report,” “Paycheck,” “Second Variety” (adapted into the film Screamers) and “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” (adapted into the film Total Recall).

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Ratings and reviews

I just got finished watching the so-said film 'Screamers while also from popular science fiction culture based on the storyline from the books like Blade Runner and franchises like RoboCop starring great actors as sir Peter Weller, such an enormously underated science fiction classic. These are marvelous truly remarkable sci-fi stories which having been molded and crafted by the likes of such masterful writing talent and share inventiveness from the creative and imaginative brilliance of Philip K. Dick; he was a visionary for his era, as much as now even with today's standards of advancements with new means of technological breakthroughs and advancements in things like modern robotics. It's a quick read but worth every penny with tons of stellar reading content and material found within these pages here. Bravo!

Book was excellent, but the end was very predictable and, without giving spoilers, I found the decisions taken at the end kind of stupid. Up to that point, this book was a 4 for me, but due to what happens at the end, I dropped it to 3.

I first read this story many years ago. I Had assumed the Terminator movies had been based on the Second variety story.