Raeden Zen's Blog, page 423
June 21, 2013
June 20, 2013
Book Review: Second Variety (Novelette)
A Spind-Tingling, Post-Apocalyptic Novelette
“The claws were bad enough in the first place - nasty, crawling little death-robots. But when they began to imitate their creators, it was time for the human race to make peace - if it could!”
In “Second Variety,” a PKD post-apocalyptic tale, the world has been destroyed in a nuclear war. Humanity has been relegated to bunkers. But that doesn’t stop the fighting. The brilliant Americans have invented “claws,” robots capable of roaming and killing the Russians. Of course, the claws evolve on their own and so-called varieties, the “Davids” and “Wounded Soldiers,” trojan horses in human skin, conjure images congruent with Terminator and T2. Could this story have served as inspiration to James Cameron? Possibly. The prose is addictive, the world building is frightening and the protagonist, Major Hendricks, is drawn as well as could be in limited space.
The bottom line: I grew goose skin page after page of this tale and couldn’t imagine reading it during the Cold War (a time when global nuclear winter was a genuine possibility). (Note that the novelette is available for free on the Kindle and can be finished in about an hour.)
