-
Vulcan's Hammer
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $19.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The World Jones Made
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Floyd Jones has always been able to see exactly one year into his future, a gift and curse that began one year before he was even born. As a fortuneteller at a post-apocalyptic carnival, Jones is a powerful force, and may be able to free society from its paralyzing Relativism. If, that is, he can avoid the radioactively unstable government hit man on his tail.
-
-
Interesting and thought-provoking
- By Calliope on 02-27-13
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Dr. Futurity
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Dr. Jim Parsons awakens after a car accident, he finds himself in a future populated almost entirely by the young. But for the young to keep running the world, death is fetishized, and those who survive to old age are put down. In such a world, Parsons - with his innate desire to save lives - is a criminal and an outcast. For one revolutionary group, however, he may be just the savior they need to heal and revive their cryogenically frozen leader.
-
-
Time's Second Arrow
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The Cosmic Puppets
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following an inexplicable urge, Ted Barton returns to his idyllic Virginia hometown for a vacation, but when he gets there, he is shocked to discover that the town has utterly changed. The stores and houses are all different and he doesn't recognize anybody. The mystery deepens when he checks the town's historical records...and reads that he died nearly twenty years earlier.
-
-
A larger than life story with magical twists
- By Amazon Customer on 06-20-17
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Time Out of Joint
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ragle Gumm has a unique job: Every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn’t consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town, in 1959. At least, that’s what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he’s never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand".
-
-
Well ahead of his time even in 1959
- By Anniebligh on 01-15-13
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Clans of the Alphane Moon
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, the third moon in the Alphane system was used as a psychiatric hospital. But when war broke out between Earth and the Alphanes, the hospital was left unguarded and the inmates set up their own society, made up of competing factions based on their particular mental illnesses. When Earth sends a delegation to take back the colony, they find enclaves of depressives, schizophrenics, paranoiacs, and others uniting to repel what they see as a foreign invasion.
-
-
Timeless Phillip K. Dick Novel
- By Alwayswalkingmydog on 03-15-15
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Ubik
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business - deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time.
-
-
A great performance of an SF classic
- By Steve on 07-10-16
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The World Jones Made
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Floyd Jones has always been able to see exactly one year into his future, a gift and curse that began one year before he was even born. As a fortuneteller at a post-apocalyptic carnival, Jones is a powerful force, and may be able to free society from its paralyzing Relativism. If, that is, he can avoid the radioactively unstable government hit man on his tail.
-
-
Interesting and thought-provoking
- By Calliope on 02-27-13
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Dr. Futurity
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Dr. Jim Parsons awakens after a car accident, he finds himself in a future populated almost entirely by the young. But for the young to keep running the world, death is fetishized, and those who survive to old age are put down. In such a world, Parsons - with his innate desire to save lives - is a criminal and an outcast. For one revolutionary group, however, he may be just the savior they need to heal and revive their cryogenically frozen leader.
-
-
Time's Second Arrow
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The Cosmic Puppets
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following an inexplicable urge, Ted Barton returns to his idyllic Virginia hometown for a vacation, but when he gets there, he is shocked to discover that the town has utterly changed. The stores and houses are all different and he doesn't recognize anybody. The mystery deepens when he checks the town's historical records...and reads that he died nearly twenty years earlier.
-
-
A larger than life story with magical twists
- By Amazon Customer on 06-20-17
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Time Out of Joint
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ragle Gumm has a unique job: Every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn’t consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town, in 1959. At least, that’s what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he’s never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand".
-
-
Well ahead of his time even in 1959
- By Anniebligh on 01-15-13
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Clans of the Alphane Moon
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, the third moon in the Alphane system was used as a psychiatric hospital. But when war broke out between Earth and the Alphanes, the hospital was left unguarded and the inmates set up their own society, made up of competing factions based on their particular mental illnesses. When Earth sends a delegation to take back the colony, they find enclaves of depressives, schizophrenics, paranoiacs, and others uniting to repel what they see as a foreign invasion.
-
-
Timeless Phillip K. Dick Novel
- By Alwayswalkingmydog on 03-15-15
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Ubik
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business - deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time.
-
-
A great performance of an SF classic
- By Steve on 07-10-16
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The Penultimate Truth
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the future, most of humanity lives in massive underground bunkers, producing weapons for the nuclear war they’ve fled. Constantly bombarded by patriotic propaganda, the citizens of these industrial anthills believe they are waiting for the day when the war will be over and they can return above ground. But when Nick St. James, president of one anthill, makes an unauthorized trip to the surface, what he finds is more shocking than anything he could imagine.
-
-
Prescient and perfect for our times
- By jane on 04-05-19
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The Zap Gun
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this biting satire, the Cold War may have ended, but the eastern and western governments never told their citizens. Instead they created an elaborate ruse wherein each side comes up with increasingly outlandish doomsday weapons - weapons that don’t work. But when aliens invade, the top designers of both sides have to come together to make a real doomsday device - if they don’t kill each other first. With its combination of romance, espionage, and alien invasion, The Zap Gun skewers the military-industrial complex in a way that’s as relevant today as it was at the height of the Cold War.
-
-
Project Plowshare, or don't touch my Love Gun
- By Darwin8u on 01-29-15
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Now Wait for Last Year
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Earth is trapped in the crossfire of an unwinnable war between two alien civilizations. Its leader is perpetually on the verge of death. And on top of that, a new drug has just entered circulation - a drug that haphazardly sends its users traveling through time. In an attempt to escape his doomed marriage, Dr. Eric Sweetscent becomes caught up in all of it. But he has questions: Is Earth on the right side of the war? Is he supposed to heal Earth’s leader or keep him sick? And can he change the harrowing future that the drug has shown him?
-
-
Can you make the world right?
- By Red Eagle's Legacy on 12-16-15
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The Man Who Japed
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a devastating nuclear war, the Moral Reclamation government took over the world and forced its citizens to live by strictly puritanical rules - no premarital sex, drunkenness, or displaying of neon signs - all of which are reinforced through a constant barrage of public messages. The chief purveyor of these messages is Alan Purcell, next in line to become head of the propaganda bureau. But there is just one problem: a statue of the government’s founder has been vandalized.
-
-
An Enjoyable Trip Down the Rabbit Hole!
- By Richard on 08-04-12
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Counter-Clock World
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Counter-Clock World, time has begun moving backward. People greet each other with "goodbye", blow smoke into cigarettes, and rise from the dead. When one of those rising dead is the famous and powerful prophet Anarch Peak, a number of groups start a mad scramble to find him first - but their motives are not exactly benevolent, because Anarch Peak may just be worth more dead than alive, and these groups will do whatever they must to send him back to the grave.
-
-
Another great mindbender from PKD
- By Mr. J on 10-19-20
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Our Friends from Frolix 8
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Our Friends from Frolix 8, the world is run by an elite few. And what determines whether one is part of the elite isn’t wealth or privilege, but brains. As children, every citizen of Earth is tested; some are found to be super-smart New Men and some are Unusuals with various psychic powers. The vast majority are Undermen, performing menial jobs in an overpopulated world.
-
-
Unhatched eggs sat on by a cosmic chicken
- By Darwin8u on 03-30-17
By: Philip K. Dick
-
The Adjustment Team
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Al Kessel
- Length: 1 hr
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ed Fletcher is a real estate agent with a normal life, until one day he leaves the house for work a few minutes later than he should have. He arrives at a terrifying, grey, ash world. Ed rushes home and tells his wife, Ruth, who goes back to the office with him. When they return, everything is normal. But he soon realizes people and objects have subtly changed.
-
-
I wasted my time.
- By Jeff on 01-09-22
By: Philip K. Dick
-
A Scanner Darkly
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Paul Giamatti
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D, which Arctor takes in massive doses, gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself.
-
-
Drugs are bad
- By Randall on 04-25-09
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Minority Report and Other Stories (Unabridged Stories)
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Keir Dullea
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Viewed by many as the greatest science fiction writer on any planet, Philip K. Dick has written some of the most intriguing, original, and thought-provoking fiction of our time. This collection includes "The Minority Report," "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," "Paycheck," "Second Variety," and "The Eyes Have It."
-
-
Nice Collection of Four P.D.K. Short Stories
- By Travis on 05-12-11
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Martian Time-Slip
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On an arid Mars, local bigwigs compete with Earth-bound interlopers to buy up land before the Un develops it and its value skyrockets. Martian Union leader Arnie Kott has an ace up his sleeve, though: an autistic boy named Manfred who seems to have the ability to see the future. In the hopes of gaining an advantage on a Martian real estate deal, powerful people force Manfred to send them into the future, where they can learn about development plans.
-
-
best yet
- By Nate on 08-15-16
By: Philip K. Dick
-
Valis
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is VALIS? This question is at the heart of Philip K. Dick's groundbreaking novel, the first book in his defining trilogy. When a beam of pink light begins giving a schizophrenic man named Horselover Fat (who just might also be known as Philip K. Dick) visions of an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire still reigns, he must decide whether he is crazy or whether a godlike entity is showing him the true nature of the world.
-
-
Life changing
- By Michael on 03-16-16
By: Philip K. Dick
-
A Maze of Death
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Benjamin L. Darcie
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Delmak-O is a dangerous planet. Though there are only 14 citizens, no one can trust anyone else and death can strike at any moment. The planet is vast and largely unexplored, populated mostly by gelatinous cube-shaped beings that give cryptic advice in the form of anagrams. Deities can be spoken to directly via a series of prayer amplifiers and transmitters, but they may not be happy about it. And the mysterious building in the distance draws all the colonists to it, but when they get there each sees a different motto on the front.
-
-
JJ Abrams YOU are a book thief.
- By Darwin8u on 08-24-13
By: Philip K. Dick
Publisher's Summary
After the 20th century’s devastating series of wars, the world’s governments banded together into one globe-spanning entity, committed to peace at all costs. Ensuring that peace is the Vulcan supercomputer, responsible for all major decisions. But some people don’t like being taken out of the equation. And others resent the idea that the Vulcan is taking the place of God.
As the world grows ever closer to all-out war, one functionary frantically tries to prevent it. But the Vulcan computer has its own plans, plans that might not include humanity at all.
More from the same
What listeners say about Vulcan's Hammer
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Darwin8u
- 02-08-16
All Your Base Are Belong to Us!
I'm not threatening you. I'm pointing out the facts to you. If we're excluded from the ruling elite, why should we cooperate?"
-- Philip K. Dick, Vulcan's Hammer
PKD (1965), Kubrick & Clarke (1968) & I. J. Good (1965) were all publishing early warnings about an eventual technological singularity. Recently, we've seen Verner Vinge in a great essay in 1993, and such computer/science/business geeks last year (Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates) swing the hammer of warning about self computers, robots, and programs capable of recursive self-improvement:
“Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history,...unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. In the near term, world militaries are considering autonomous-weapon systems that can choose and eliminate targets.” and “humans, limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded by A.I.”
- Stephen Hawking, 2014 interviews.
Like with most of Dick's writing, he was there, near first in line looking over that technological event horizon with his unique blend of gallows humor, optimism, and ability to find the grit and the slime even in the slickest of futures.
One thing I did notice about this book, and I think it has been true in other of his books, but I never noticed in those, is how stripped down Dick can make some of his books. These are almost Beckett-level SciFi. I only have a handful of Dick left to read (not counting his monumental The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick and his many, many short stories, but I wouldn't be surprised if the next PKD I read had two robots, one named Vladimir and Estragon talking about God. That, in essence, is this book. It is Vulcan 2 and Vulcan 3 discussing, through man, the meaning of life, perhaps. Or perhaps, no.
But anyway, my point is in this books and several other Dick really trims the books down. Yes, there is a future, and yes, there are a variety of people and character, but what you notice, really is how spare the future is. 'Vulcan's Hammer' felt like it could easily have been produced in a community theatre with a couple actors, and two punchcard computers. That is an over-simplification, obviously, but it still feels close.
One other thought. I'm not sure the technological singularity is going to be a steep cliff. I think, personally, it feels more like the heat has been turned on and we are all sitting quietly in the water, waiting for Amazon to tell us what to buy or Google to tell us where to go. I'm no Luddite, and even if I were, I'm not sure I would know where to jump to.
13 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Phillip J. Fitzsimmons
- 05-23-21
A solid story
This has a solid story and an excellent performance. It is well done and I recommend it
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tony
- 08-19-16
Mel Foster's narration ruins a decent story.
The story is pretty good, if a bit predictable, but Mel Foster is so damn slow at reading that I had to speed up the playback.