Second Variety

Second Variety by Philip K Dick finds the author traversing the same terrain as Do Androids...? However, there is a distinct lack of the usual wry humor Dick is so famous for having introduced to SF. The story is very bleak, in both its imagery and its ending. It's also a relatively weak offering, as in parts it devolves into a guessing game concerning which is the machine and which man. But what saves it from being another by the numbers science fiction tale involving artificial intelligence and its uncanny resemblance to man, is Dick's offhand flair for making you care for his characters. It is not easy to do this in a short story, mind, and especially one with the war as a backdrop, as there is usually a predisposition towards using stock characters, such as the grim, unflinching soldier. Dick has created his own stereotype, of a man stuck in a seemingly hopeless situation, and yet someone who finds in himself a well of courage. It is arguable that Dick repeats this in almost all of his novels, but it is a trick that works, and especially today, when heroes living it out in bleak, post-apocalyptic landscapes evoke an insincere thrill in all of us. Insincere, because we have no clue what it might actually be like living in such a world. I'm certain eating rodents and irradiated frogs won't be particularly fun; not for us, not for the rats and frogs. Dick denies us this thrill, but at the same time, he concerns himself with a larger canvas, that rises beyond the milieus that he had made his own.