THE READING RHEUM: "SECOND VARIETY" (1953)

 

I'm reviewing this lone Philip K Dick tale purely as a prelude to reviewing the 1995 film adaptation. Although "Second Variety" shows some of Dick's familiar tropes, it's mainly a gimmick story with a surprise ending. In a future where the US and Russia go to war, most of Earth is annihilated. The surviving American forces send a military detachment to their Moon base as a defensive maneuver, but the Soviets have a base there and do the same thing. However, Yankee know-how allows the Americans to stymie the Commie forces with a series of robots called "claws." Humans originally crafted these mechanical attack dogs-- which burrow beneath the ground and spring out to attack living things with sharp implements. However, over time the humans left the creation of the claws to automatic factories. As a result, the claws began to make improvements on the forms they take. These alterations include emulating the forms of humans-- a trope Dick would explore to much greater effect in 1968's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?                                                                                   

American soldier/ viewpoint character Hendricks-- who, like the other characters in the story, is a cypher-- receives intel that the Russian contingent wants a parley. Alone, he proceeds to the Russian moon base. On the way he's joined by a pathetic little ragamuffin, theoretically the survivor of some armed conflict. Once he reaches the other moon base (nothing is said about how the moon has been terraformed for human survival there), the Russians shoot the kid, who proves to be a new variety of "claw." Once Hendricks is inside the compound, he finds that the three soldiers, one of whom is a woman named Tasso, fear that they've been infiltrated by a "second variety" of human-mimicking robot, in contrast to the other two varieties that they can recognize. Suffice to say, they're right. There are a couple of other tropes Dick works into the story. One is the idea that the claws' relentless self-improvement is a form of evolution, hearkening their replacement of humankind, which does not transfer to the 1995 movie. The other is the idea that the robots are going to be just as divisive against their own kind, which does make it into the film, albeit in altered form.