Cast of characters

See notes on Dr. Bloodmoney

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He eventually finds another settlement, and they let Trent know the hard truth that humans have made Earth inhospitable for themselves and forfeited their right to live there anymore. The Earth belongs to all the mutants, and the humans deserve this for nuking the surface. They are leaving for good in search of other planets in a rocket they have constructed, and they agree to take Trent’s group with them. 

Cast of characters

• Trent
• Jackson and Earl Potter – friendly mutants Trent runs into on the surface. They also show up in the wasteland of Deus Irae.
• Norris – a human in the settlement leaving Earth

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The crew is equipped with screens that render them invisible and once aboveground they are able to observe the saps in their primitive tribal existence. Harl is enamored with a young sap woman, and when she is alone he disables his screen in an attempt to make contact. She runs in fear, alerting the others in the tribe and prematurely ending the raid. 

In a narrative gimmick Dick often used in his stories around this time, he ends with a change in the point of view, in this case switching to the tribe’s perspective, and with names like Julie, Ken and Mr. Stebbins perhaps they aren’t the savages they seem to be. Julie describes to the others the pale, sickly apparition she saw, and Mr. Stebbins informs her she saw a goblin, the creatures like men, but not men, who live and dig tunnels underground.

Cast of characters

• Harl Boynton – a member of the Youth League
• Edward Boynton – Harl’s father planning the surface raid
• Robin Turner – Ed’s assistant
• Fashold – a Youth League leader
• Julie, Ken, Mr. Stebbins – aboveground Homo Sapiens

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Both Tibor and Pete encounter the Great C in Dick’s Zelazny collaboration Deus Irae, although in that book the Great C is more of a trickster trying to feed on passerby.

In 2018 Secret Location released a VR movie based on this story that also borrows the idea of the computer’s female avatar from Deus Irae. 

Cast of characters

• Walter Kent – the tribe leader
• Tim Meredith – that year’s sacrifice to the Great C
• Bill Gustavson, Anne Fry, John Page – members of the tribe

The post The Great C appeared first on the world Dick made.

Humans, lacking any other way to stop these autofacs, pit the factories in adjacent cities against each other as the autofacs scavenge for the same raw materials. The Kansas City factory ends up destroyed by a factory from another city, or at least it appears that way until the humans discover that deep underground the factory has started to manufacture miniature replicas of the factory itself that will presumably take over the entire earth.

This story was adapted for season one of Electric Dreams which takes the premise in a different direction with a not-too-satisfying twist ending.

Cast of characters

Earl Perine, Morrison, O’Neill, Judith O’Neill – members of a settlement in Kansas City

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While traveling to meet with the Russians, the American Major Hendricks finds this out when he encounters the young child David, the third variety of these robot simulacra. The Russians tell him about the first robot variety, but then the question becomes which one of them is the second variety pretending to be human.

The next story Dick wrote is a sequel of sorts called “Jon’s World” that takes place in the future after the war. The 1995 movie Screamers based on “Second Variety” starring Peter “RoboCop” Weller sticks close to the short story and managed to entertain me in spite of some 90s-era special effects.

Cast of characters

• Major Hendricks – our protagonist
• David – the third robot variety
• Klaus Epstein – a Russian soldier
• Rudi Maxer – a corporal in the Soviet army
• Tasso – a young girl embedded with the Russians

The post Second Variety appeared first on the world Dick made.

After a few chapters set in Berkeley, California on the last day of modern civilization in 1981 we jump ahead seven years to a world trying to rebuild itself after a nuclear disaster. The mentally unhinged (and telekinetic somehow) Bluthgeld is the man responsible for raining down the nuclear bombs, and he hides out as Mr. Tree in a West Marin commune where the rest of the story takes place. The armless and legless (and also telekinetic) Hoppy Harrington, who had been held down most of his life, is able to become BMOC of this West Marin community until a showdown with seven-year-old Edie (and Bill) Keller that caught me off guard.*

On top of all this there is a man stuck in orbit, since a rocket to Mars had been launched moments before the disaster. He serves as a DJ to the inhabitants of Earth as he passes over each day. Even Stuart McConchie in this one manages to rise above the standard bland everyman in many PKD books. The whole thing comes together as one of Dick’s most accessible novels, and I would highly recommend it.

*Yes, I read this before, but my memory can charitably be described as not good.

Cast of characters

• Stuart McConchie – salesman at Modern TV Sales & Service before the disaster
• Jim Fergesson – owner of Modern TV Sales & Service. Modern TV Sales and Service is also the name of the store owned by Roger Lindahl in Puttering About in a Small Land. Jim Fergesson shares his name with the owner of Modern TV Sales and Service in Voices from the Street and the mechanic in Humpty Dumpty in Oakland.
• Bruno Bluthgeld aka Jack Tree– the titular Dr. Bloodmoney. Responsible for a nuclear fallout disaster in 1972 and responsible for the nuclear attack in 1981
• Doctor Stockstill – Bluthgeld’s psychoanalyst before the attack
• Bonny Keller – member of the West Marin community who had referred Bluthgeld to Stockstill
• George Keller – Bonny’s husband
• Edie Keller – the Keller’s young daughter although she was fathered by Andrew Gill
• Bill Keller – Edie’s unborn twin who lives and communicates inside of her
• Hoppy Harrington – a phocomelus with telekinetic powers
• Walt and Lydia Dangerfield – supposed to be the first couple to emigrate to Mars. Instead Walt ends up in orbit around Earth after the nuclear attack
• Mr. Austurias – member of the West Marin commune who was killed for attempting to track down Bluthgeld
• June Raub – on the West Marin planning committee
• Andrew Gill – a cigarette entrepreneur after the attack
• Eldon Blaine – a glasses salesman from Bolinas
• Orion Stroud – chairman of the West Marin school board
• Hal Barnes – a new school teacher in West Marin
• Dean Hardy – Stuart’s business partner in a homeostatic vermin trap business
• Paul Dietz – West Marin’s newspaper man

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A religion called the Servants of Wrath springs up after a nuclear war wipes out most of the planet’s population. The followers worship the destroyer who has come to Earth in the form of Carl Lufteufel, the man responsible for the bombs.

Tibor McMasters, an armless and legless man very similar to the phocomelus Hoppy Harrington from Dr. Bloodmoney (except that Tibor’s cart is pulled by a cow), is hired to paint a church mural featuring Lufteufel for the Servants of Wrath. He sets off on a pilgrimage, followed by Pete Sands, across the post-apocalyptic wasteland in order to find Lufteufel and take a photo of him to reference for the mural.

Cast of characters

• Father Handy – father in the Servants of Wrath church
• Tibor McMasters – limbless artist who paints the SOW church mural
• Pete Sands – Christian church member
• Dr. Jim Abernathy – Christian priest in Charlottesville
• Lurnie Rae – SOWer who decides to join the Christian church
• Carl Lufteufel – Deus Irae. The God of Wrath. Former Chairman of the Energy Research and Development Administration who was responsible for the nuclear war
• Jackson and Earl Potter – lizard-like mutants Tibor meets on his journey
• Jack Schuld – a hunter who says he is tracking Lufteufel but turns out to be Lufteufel himself
• The Great C – a computer out in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that captures passerby and dissolves them in underground vats of acid

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