Second Variety

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.