Showing results by author "Philip K Dick" in All Categories

"The Variable Man" is a science fiction story by Philip K. Dick. Excerpt: At this moment, 9:30 AM, May 7, 2136, the statistical ratio on the SRB machines stood at 21-17 on the Centauran side of the ledger. All facts considered, the odds favored a successful repulsion by Proxima Centaurus of a Terran military attack. 21-17 on the Centauran side. But a month ago it had been 24-18 in the enemy's favor. Things were improving, slowly but steadily. Centaurus, older and less virile than Terra, was unable to match Terra's rate of technocratic advance.

For fifteen years, subterranean humanity has been fed on daily broadcasts of a never-ending nuclear destruction, sustained by a belief in the all powerful Protector. Now someone has gone to the surface and found no destruction, no war. The authorities have been telling a massive lie…

In Mr. Spaceship, humans in the distant future are at war with alien life forms known as Yuks. Using outdated mechanical machines to wage war against the life-based weapons of the advanced Yuks, a research team decides to build a spaceship powered by a human brain. Enlisting a dying professor who agrees to donate his brain to the project, the humans believe they have turned the tables on the Yuks. But the spaceship has other plans.

Conger, a skilled hunter, is being sent on a very special and peculiar mission: to seek out and kill the founder of the church. There are only two problems: No one knows what the founder looks like, and...he's been dead for two centuries! But Conger has one identifying clue - the founder's skull.

A war between the Soviet Union and the United States has been going on for years. Americans have resorted to guerrilla warfare, with small contingents operating deep within the enemy-occupied territory. As a desperate measure, they have constructed extremely efficient killer robots called claws that can operate on their own and are capable of repairing themselves and improving on their own design. Be careful what you design. Never make it smarter than yourself.

This 1953 science fiction short story takes place somewhere in the future. The Cold War has turned into a hot war, and the Soviets are engaged in a war with the Americans. The war has become so hot that the surface of the world is no longer habitable by humans. The surface of the earth has become a radioactive nuclear wasteland, but the war must go on and it is being conducted by highly intelligent robots.

Adjustment Team is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in Orbit Science Fiction (September–October 1954, No. 4) with illustration by Faragasso. A man called the Clerk approaches a talking dog, and explains in businesslike manner that "Sector T137" is scheduled for "adjustment" at 9 o'clock. He instructs the dog to bark at exactly 8:15, which the Clerk explains will summon "A Friend with a Car", which will take real estate salesman Ed Fletcher to work before 9, but while the Clerk is preoccupied, the dog falls asleep and as a result barks a minute too late.

Ten-year old Tony Rossi, an Earthman growing up on Betelgeuse, becomes aware that the natives, known as the "Pas-Udeti", are driving out the Earthmen colonists on nearby Orion. His father, a staunch believer in the superiority of Earthmen, describes Tony's native friends as "Beetles". A trip into town to meet his native friends leads to awkward encounters with a Pas-Udeti cab driver and a fellow bus passenger.

This audiobook contains three stories from the pen of Philip K. Dick, a science-fiction writer of the 1950s. The stories are: "Beyond Lies the Wub", "The Gun", and "Beyond the Door".

Pre-empting novels such as the Booker Prize-winning ‘Time’s Arrow’ by as much as twenty years, Counter-Clock World is a story of racial tensions told against the background of the year 1998, in which time flows in reverse as people are born old only to grow younger and younger.

Il secondo volume della raccolta di straordinari racconti di Philip K. Dick, i primi scritti del più geniale tra gli innovatori del genere della fantascienza. Un totale di trentatré racconti, pubblicati tra il 1947 e il 1953, di un Philip K. Dick che muove i primi passi nella letteratura fantascientifica.

Trentatré racconti, pubblicati tra il 1947 e il 1953, di un Philip K. Dick che muove i primi passi nella letteratura fantascientifica: storie che possono essere raggruppate in tre categorie principali, quella basata sul grimmick, la trovata che risolve un complesso quadro di indizi volti a porre l'enigma di una civiltà aliena, quella dei racconti di fantasia, in cui l'immaginazione dickiana può uscire dagli schemi ed esprimersi al meglio, e quella fondata sul tema della guerra, una delle sue ossessioni, che risente ancora delle visioni apocalittiche con cui l'umanità ha visto schiudersi il secondo conflitto mondiale.

Il terzo volume della raccolta di straordinari racconti di Philip K. Dick, i primi scritti del più geniale tra gli innovatori del genere della fantascienza. Un totale di trentatré racconti, pubblicati tra il 1947 e il 1953, di un Philip K. Dick che muove i primi passi nella letteratura fantascientifica.

Discover Philip K. Dick's chilling post-apocalyptic masterpiece "The Defenders," where humanity hides underground while robot "leadies" wage nuclear war above. But when humans venture to the surface, they uncover a shocking conspiracy that challenges everything they believe.

Louis Rosen and his partners sell people—ingeniously designed, historically authentic simulacra of personages such as Edwin M. Stanton and Abraham Lincoln. The problem is that the only prospective buyer is a rapacious billionaire whose plans for the simulacra could land Louis in jail. Then there's the added complication that someone—or something—like Abraham Lincoln may not want to be sold.

Leo Runcible—of Runcible Realty—is too excitable and too pushy. His wife drinks too much. He may be a man of principle, but Liberal Jewish Leo is an outsider in the lilywhite Carquinez, Marin County. When he gets into a pointless argument with a customer over his neighbour Walt Dombrosio's house guests, the resulting ramifications follow a bizarre logic of cause and effect to lead in entirely unexpected directions ...

The terrible destruction of total nuclear war between the Western and Eastern Blocks has succeeded in sterilizing the surface of the earth. No living creature can now exist there and all humans, on both sides, have fled to the hives built miles below the surface where they constantly work to produce the war materials necessary to carry on the battle. For eight years now, the actual fighting between these super powers has been conducted by robots known as Ledeys.

Step aboard a deep-space transport and experience one of Philip K. Dick’s earliest and most thought-provoking sci-fi tales. Beyond Lies the Wub explores the nature of intelligence, communication, and survival when a crew encounters a mysterious, telepathic creature with unsettling wisdom. Blending humor, suspense, and existential questions, this timeless short story will leave you questioning reality itself.

California, fine anni Cinquanta: una sorta di terra promessa già alle prese con il mito postbellico dello sviluppo economico e della crescita urbana, dove la questione razziale è ancora aperta. Jim Fergesson e Al Miller sono, o credono di essere, amici. Il primo è un meccanico avanti con l'età, amareggiato dalla vita, che da anni affitta al secondo un lotto di terra adiacente alla sua officina, in cui Miller vende auto usate, relitti rabberciati alla meglio.

Nel XXI secolo i cittadini degli Stati Uniti sono guidati da un sistema teologico e filosofico chiamato "Relativismo di Hoff", perfetta rappresentazione di un mondo in cui le persone non hanno nulla in comune e gli individui conducono le loro esistenze in un'intollerabile solitudine. Questa mancanza di unità permette al Governo di mantenere la sua struttura di potere e di soggiogare una popolazione la cui mancanza di emozioni impedisce di comunicare e di ribellarsi.