Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Zap Gun
    The Zap Gun
    The Zap Gun
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Zap Gun

    Written by Philip K. Dick

    Narrated by Mel Foster

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJun 26, 2012
    ISBN9781455881765
    Author

    Philip K. Dick

    Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

    More audiobooks from Philip K. Dick

    Related to The Zap Gun

    Related audiobooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Conspirasphere

      Feb 22, 2024

      The Conspirasphere
      3 min read

    • Article

      Tristram And The Tyrants

      Sep 30, 2021

      Tristram And The Tyrants
      5 min read

    • Article

      Keeping It Real

      Dec 11, 2022

      Keeping It Real
      2 min read

    • Article

      Down on Jollity Farm

      Dec 3, 2020

      I have long remarked that ufology tells you more about ufologists than it does about UFOs – whatever they may be – and reports of the last several weeks tend to bear out the observation. One thing ufologists can be depended upon to do is repeat one a

      4 min read

    • Article

      Mental Music

      Sep 1, 2021

      Mental Music
      7 min read

    • Article

      Old Fox

      Oct 6, 2018

      Q. Your dislike for technology is well known. What inspired you to write The Fox-a book about hackers? The idea came to me a year ago when I read in the paper that a British hacker was fighting a charge of extradition from Britain to America. He had

      1 min read

    • Article

      Heavy Weights And Hurty Words

      Mar 25, 2021

      IT IS MOST PECULIAR. If the counter-culture had a dominant theme, it was the right to criticise the establishment and to question orthodoxy of all kinds. Back in the Sixties, it was central to its mission to Expand your Consciousness, man. And it wor

      5 min read

    • Article

      Big Business, Books And Atom Bombs

      Apr 21, 2023

      Unshackled by Jeff van Rooyen (Bookstorm, R290) The soccer, music, movies and pavement gambling of Van Rooyen’s 1950s childhood in Alexandra and Riverlea, Johannesburg, are quite vividly sketched in this autobiography. The difference for Van Rooyen w

      2 min read

    • Article

      Send In The Spivs

      Apr 1, 2022

      IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW catastrophic, how terrible, how morally squalid, how globally imperilling the circumstances, there is nothing that cannot be shamelessly exploited by the descendants of Stanley Baldwin’s “hard-faced men who look as if they had d

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jul 15, 2021

      Regarding ‘Hunting Bigfoot’, in “Creatures on the Loose” [FT405:26]: adopting Justin Humphrey’s position on the reality of Bigfoot, surely one would be required to establish its nature before designating it a suitable subject for the huntsman. If it

      12 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jan 25, 2024

      Letters
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Il’ja Rákoš

      Dec 10, 2017

      One winter I came down with pneumonia twice in five months. The doctors, with my semi-conscious consent, were ready to try anything. One thing they did try was a technique “to warm up the lungs.” It involved a canvas corset that looked like it had be

      8 min read

    • Article

      Trump Derangement Syndrome

      Feb 23, 2023

      Just like stains, some ghosts can prove more stubborn to remove than others. Whereas a quick splash of Holy Water and prayer might suffice to see off most spooks, others require rather more obscure methods of banishment. Yet for sheer oddness, the ef

      6 min read

    • Article

      Hellbent and Hydebound

      Oct 19, 2022

      Where Stevenson’s contemporaries explored specific tensions within the Victorian psyche, 'Jekyll and Hyde' pinned the split personality of the era to the page. The post Hellbent and Hydebound appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Living Essayistically

      Jan 8, 2020

      Living Essayistically
      10 min read

    • Article

      Missing A Superhero

      Oct 11, 2020

      Missing A Superhero
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Recipe For Murder

      Oct 5, 2023

      A Recipe For Murder
      4 min read

    • Article

      Remastering The Mythos: Questions For Ruthanna Emrys

      May 4, 2017

      When Ruthanna Emrys first read H.P. Lovecraft's classic tale "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," her sympathies were squarely with the monsters — and that sympathy was the seed of her new book, Winter Tide.

      5 min read

    • Article

      As Everybody Knows…

      Nov 4, 2021

      From Mozart’s Murder to Cleopatra’s Asp Graeme Donald Michael O’Mara 2021 Pb, 256pp, £7.99, ISBN 9781789293623 Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World Otto English Wellbeck 2021 Hb, 320pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781787396395 You wait all day for a scepti

      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 7, 2021

      Nigel Watson reported on the suggestion that the ancient aliens thesis was inherently racist because it refused to acknowledge the ability of people of colour to construct impressive edifices [FT409:32]. Now, while I don’t deny that some aficionados

      9 min read

    • Article

      Thinking On Inking

      Nov 25, 2021

      IN THE EARLY 1960S, on Sundays at Speakers’ Corner, there was a man who would take off his shirt and reveal that every inch of his torso was covered in tattoos. He said not a word but had a knowing smile or smirk upon his face; the assembled audience

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Iľja Rákoš

      Dec 12, 2021

      As long as there are authors, translators, publishers large or small committed to the deliberate word deliberately committed to the page, and so many who still need those words on pages, legal or illegal, right, left, or center, we’ll find our feet a

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Zap Gun

    3.5/5

    171 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Cold-War paranoia fueled with Dick's intensive drive of science fiction, eccentric characters, and webs of alliances and partnerships. This book was a delightful surprise. I enjoyed the rapid pace of the plot and the way Dick maneuvers his characters with his story-line, slowly revealing more and more to entice the reader to continue the tale. Additionally, the dialogue in this book rang more true and I enjoyed all the little science fiction devices that Dick invented, and detailed, in this novel. Overall, a solid effort.

      3.25 stars: worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Weaponised empathy with all of the usual PKD bells and whistles.
    • 4/5
      Though a serialized novel, The Zap Gun isn't as dry and long-winded as one would expect. Set in the past-future of 2004, the Cold War still rages on between the West (Wes-Bloc) and the East (Peep-East). Rather than using nuclear warfare, because it's like people hitting themselves over the head with a hammer, the weapons of the Cold War have developed with certain specializations in mind - missiles that exploded, land, and at 10pm emit loud noises for days on end, for example.The story itself follows the premier weapons designers for both sides as they come together to figure out how to stop the invasion of an unknown alien force that seems to be arriving on Earth's doorstep. What is presented is a witty, quick-flowing novel full of humor and sarcasm directed at both the Cold War and, interestingly enough, our world today. Not just a novel of war-time humor, but a look at the way our world is run, from the Cogs (governments) to pursaps (pure saps - or, the average person), and from war toys to, well, toys.
    • 3/5
      My raw reactions on reading this book in 1990 -- spoilers follow:In a certain sense, Dick’s negative assessment of the novel’s first half being utterly unreadable is correct. The opening is boring and confusing. We never do get a coherent explanation of “plowsharing”. It seems to be conversion of mass produced weapons’ components -- which seem to work -- into civilian consumer goods hence giving the illusion of security and providing an economic boost and salvation from the cost of the arms race.Like The Penultimate Truth this is a fake Cold War perpetrated by the power elite of East and West for their benefit though it is unclear exactly what the populace believes to be true. Here the weapons are not those horrifying weapons of mass destruction of old but rather silly, if inventive weapons like the Garbage Can Banger that keeps the enemy awake, produce obnoxious odors, or merely mess up his bureaucratic records. That is a funny element. I thought Surley G. Febbs was totally unnecessary to the plot but occasionally funny in his arrogance. I thought the novel really only took off when Dick began to pile on the baroque, van Vogtian plot twists starting with the revelation that Powderdry and Lilo Topchev are not tapping into a mystical dimension with their trances but the mind of an obscure comic book artist. (Dick’s works of the period often seem to feature creative people in rather despised jobs). The book got really fun then. The toy designed to psychologically corrupt the enemy (here with “empathy”) is much like Dick’s “War Game” and a touch I liked along with that of the uncurious Sirians. I found the relationship between Powderdry and Topchev (as many of the relationships between man and women in Dick’s works) strange, troubling, and realistic. While not as disturbing and memorable as Norbert Steiner’s suicide in Martian Time-Slip, Maren Faine’s suicide was moving. There are plenty of usual Dick touches: authoritarian states, private police forces, troubled relationships, peculiar plot twists, appearances questioned, fakes proposed, fakes debunked, and fakes reaffirmed. Dick called it his null-null Y plots after critic Warrick’s observation), and humor.
    • 3/5
      When it comes to ideas, there’s almost nobody as bold as Philip K. Dick. How about this for a setup? In 2004, the world is divided into two major power blocks: the capitalist Wes-bloc (where even policing is private) and the communist Peep-East. Between these a secret agreement is made. The arms race, necessary to keep the citizens feeling calm on both sides, is to be just a charade. Thus Lars Powderdry’s , the weapons design medium for Wes-bloc (dreaming up his designs in a trance-like state), job is now to think up designs for weapons that seem massively lethal, but which are built from components that can all be used for peaceful, “plowshared” products for the consumer market. Like an ornamental owl/cigar case for instance. He has a counterpart in Peep-East, a young woman named Lilo Topchev, who he is fascinated by without ever having met, and who has the same odd double duty. The fragile balance works.Until the day the insectoid Slavers arrive from Sirius and start emptying cities, that is. Now the two designer-mediums are brought together to try and create a REAL weapon, to save the world. A task made all the more difficult by the fact that Powderdry falls in love, while Topchev turns out to be a depressed teenager who just wants the world to end anyway.It’s mind-boggling what Dick tosses together. But this is one of those instances (not entirely rare with this writer) where his execution isn’t as good as the set-up. As a reader I’m forced to accept many things, on an emotional level especially, that isn’t really grounded. It’s Dick telling me people are in love – I never really see it myself. Which makes the rather radical choices the characters make hard to relate to. Also, the plot is somewhat clunky and un-balanced, with a pretty bizarre deus ex machina element to it. Any Philip K.Dick novel is worth reading for the tidal wave of ideas alone, but this is far from his finest work.