
Second Variety and Other Stories
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Narrated by:
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William Coon
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By:
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Philip K. Dick
About this listen
When asked by an interviewer "Why is there science fiction?" Phillip K. Dick responded, "There is science fiction because the human brain craves sensory and intellectual stimulation before anything else, and the eccentric view provides unlimited stimulation, the eccentric view and the invented world.... The function of SF, psychologically, is to cut the reader loose from the actual world that he inhabits…." And cut us loose he does. And never disappoints.
This collection of five stories from early in his career casts a spotlight on Dick’s incredible imagination. In "Second Variety", robot warriors appear to have given one side the advantage in a devastating war. But a small band of soldiers begins to question just what the robots’ endgame truly is. In "Beyond Lies the Wub", a member of a spaceship’s crew buys a Wub ("a huge dirty pig!") for 50 cents, thinking it might be a good source of meat for the long journey home. Then the Wub speaks. In "The Eyes Have It", a man’s imagination gets the best of him, as he takes the words in a paperback novel a bit too literally. In "Piper in the Woods", a doctor attempts to unravel the mystery of why workers on an asteroid base begin to behave as if they have become plants. In "The Variable Man", giant computers indicate earth will likely win an interstellar war that will free it from the limits imposed by an aging Centauran empire. Plans are disrupted, however, when a man from the past arrives and throws off all calculations.
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Performance
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In this collection of five stories, all first published in the 1950s, Dick justified his existence by exploring a number of truly interesting ideas. In “Small Town” a man creates a perfect scale model of his own town, as a means of escaping his unbearable reality. In “Human Is” the wife of a scientist notices that her husband has returned from a scientific expedition a changed man, but she’s not complaining. In “Foster, You’re Dead” a father’s unwillingness to participate in his country’s preparations for a war that never happens, leads to unexpected consequences for his family....
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
UN forces have retreated to a moon base in the aftermath of early Soviet victories in a nuclear conflict. In response, the UN forces developed special robots, called "Claws", which feature spinning blades and rudimentary artificial intelligence. Six years later, the Soviet leadership asks for negotiations to end the war. A UN officer travels back to earth to discover that not only have the Claws learned to replicate themselves, they have also created a much deadlier cyborg that threatens humanity itself.
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- Narrated by: Tanya Eby, Luke Daniels, Peter Berkrot, and others
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Performance
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By: Philip K. Dick
-
Radio Free Albemuth
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings, Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Radio Free Albemuth, his last novel, Philip K. Dick morphed and recombined themes that had informed his fiction from A Scanner Darkly to VALIS and produced a wild, impassioned work that sounds like a visionary alternate history of the United States. Agonizingly suspenseful, darkly hilarious, and filled with enough conspiracy theories to thrill the most hardened paranoid, Radio Free Albemuth is proof of Dick's stature as our century's greatest science fiction writer.
-
-
The Pistol to the Head
- By Darwin8u on 01-02-17
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Mars, the harsh climate could make any colonist turn to drugs to escape a dead-end existence. Especially when the drug is Can-D, which transports its users into the idyllic world of a Barbie-esque character named Perky Pat. When the mysterious Palmer Eldritch arrives with a new drug called Chew-Z, he offers a more addictive experience, one that might bring the user closer to God. But in a world where everyone is tripping, no promises can be taken at face value.
-
-
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-
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- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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Critic reviews
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Great author good readers
- By Kindle Guy on 02-17-22
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-
The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick: 11 Science Fiction Stories
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Kevin Killavey
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick is a collection of 11 science fiction stories by Philip K. Dick.
-
-
Good Stories...well read.
- By cindilla on 12-18-12
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby, Luke Daniels, Peter Berkrot, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though perhaps most famous as a novelist, Philip K. Dick wrote more than 100 short stories over the course of his career, each as mind-bending and genre-defining as his longer works. Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams collects 10 of the best. In "Autofac," Dick shows us one of the earliest examples (and warnings) in science fiction of self-replicating machines. "Exhibit Piece" and "The Commuter" feature Dick exploring one of his favorite themes: the shifting nature of reality and whether it is even possible to perceive the world as it truly exists.
-
-
Liked most of the stories
- By F. Delaney on 08-24-18
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The Early Stories of Philip K. Dick
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Chris Lutkin
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best known for such blockbuster film adaptations of his work as Blade Runner and Total Recall, Dick (1928…82) is an iconic figure in sf whose every written word remains of interest. This generous sampling of his early writings is an entirely original collection covering a wide variety of themes and settings, ranging from the near to the far future and from the earthly mundane to almost unimaginably exotic worlds.
-
-
Excellent and captivating
- By Lowball on 02-04-15
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Minority Report and Other Stories (Unabridged Stories)
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Keir Dullea
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Viewed by many as the greatest science fiction writer on any planet, Philip K. Dick has written some of the most intriguing, original, and thought-provoking fiction of our time. This collection includes "The Minority Report," "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," "Paycheck," "Second Variety," and "The Eyes Have It."
-
-
Nice Collection of Four P.D.K. Short Stories
- By DailyDog on 05-12-11
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Volume I: The King of the Elves
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 20 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The King of the Elves is the opening installment of a uniform, five-volume edition of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, expanded from the previous Collected Stories set to incorporate new story notes, and two added tales, one previously unpublished, and one uncollected.
-
-
Fantastic stories!
- By Renee Tang on 04-18-17
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Philip K. Dick: Selected Sci-Fi Stories
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jim Roberts, Al Kessel, Cindy Killavey, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philip K. Dick was an award-winning giant of American science fiction, right up there with Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. He became the first science fiction writer ever to be included in The Library of America series. Although he died fairly young at 53, he created many incredible sci-fi stories - 44 published novels and over 120 short stories! These 14 selections represent some of his most imaginative work. Included in this collection are: "Adjustment Team", "The Golden Man", "A World of Talent", "The Last of the Masters", "The Crystal Crypt", and more.
-
-
Great author good readers
- By Kindle Guy on 02-17-22
By: Philip K. Dick
What listeners say about Second Variety and Other Stories
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- E.
- 11-04-11
The narrator's accent / inflection ruins this book
The stories are great, but I cannot listen to this narrator. He does try to "perform" the stories using different accent and intonations, but his natural way of speaking makes me want to rip my headphones and ears off.
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Overall
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- lavi
- 09-16-11
terrible acting
The phony accents were impossible to listen to. I'm certain that the stories are great, but
i won't know until I've checked it out in print.
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