Second Variety
"Second Variety" is an influential short story by Philip K. Dick first published in Space Science Fiction magazine, in May 1953. A nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the West has reduced much of the world to a barren wasteland. The war continues however among the scattered remains of humanity. The Western forces have recently developed "claws", which are autonomous self-replicating robots to fight on their side. It is one of Dick's many stories in which nuclear war has rendered the Earth's surface uninhabitable.
The short story "Jon's World" (1954) revisited the claw-infested world of "Second Variety". The story was adapted to the movie Screamers in 1995.
Read more about Second Variety: Plot Summary, Critical Analysis, Publication History, Adaptations
Famous quotes containing the word variety:
“Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death, a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves ... and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.”
—Coleman Dowell (1925–1985)