A review by itsmelaurenc
Second Variety by Philip K. Dick

dark tense fast-paced

4.5

Leaving this for my reference later since I’m binging all Dick’s short stories:

So there are Americans in a bunker during nuclear war. They built these robots called “claws” that attack based on heat signatures so they’d immediately kill an enemy that didn’t have a special radiation thing embedded in them, which the Americans had obviously. They get a call that the Russians want someone at the UN policy level to go to their main bunker to talk about a truce, so the main character goes to do that. He encounters a young boy on his way that insists he not be left alone, so he goes too. They get to the bunker and 3 Russians immediately kill the boy because turns iut he was the Third Variety of the claws the Americans made. Turns out they built them with the ability to rebuild themselves and they started improving to make themselves better human hunters. The First Variety is a wounded soldier with a bandaged missing leg. The thing is, there’s hundreds of them. Identical. Imagine hundreds of the same little boy running at you to kill you. Side note, every boy had a teddy bear that could be sent to attack on its own and that was HILARIOUS to imagine. Anyway they hadn’t figured out what the Second Variety was yet. As they’re all down in the bunker they tell the UN dude that the Third Variety littlw boy was let into the main Russian bunker and killed everyone, they were the only 3 who escaped. Klaus, Redi, and a girl. Klaus freaks iut because he thinks Redi might be the Second Variety and shoots him, but finds out he was a human after all. Since the UN guy can’t reach his bunker thru telecom they decide to trek the 3-4 miles back over to where he came to see if they can be rescued. They get back to the bunker and everyone is dead, it’s actually full of First and Third Variety claws. Super cool action scene blahblah, only notable thing is that the girl throws a bomb at the last min that saves them all. After the dust clears Klaus limps toward then and the girl ends up shooting him - turns out Klauswas a robot, the Second Variety! The girl and the UN guy then travel to where the underground ship is that will take them safely off planet to the moon base, but there’s only one seat and the UN guy was injured enough that he wouldn’t make it. He told the girl all she needed to know about the controls, how to find the moon base on the moon, and the proper signaling for safe entry. She takes off and the UN remains. He goes over to inspect Klaus’ body and realizes it’s labeled as a Fourth Variety?? Not the Second?? So the First and Third variety robot killers (the wounded soldier and the little boy) come over the hill on their way to him and he sees the Second Variety following them, which was THE GIRL. WHO IS ON HER WAY TO THE MOON BASE NOW. Ends with him setting off a bomb that was kept on the Second Variety and that ends him.