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:
“His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping, opening his mouth the wrong way, and blinking in the odd bilboquet fashion peculiar to eyelids in his abnormal position. Even more extraordinary than the variety and velocity of the movements he made in imitation of animal hind legs was the effortlessness of his stance.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)