A review by itsmelaurenc
The Gun by Philip K. Dick, Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy by Philip K. Dick

fast-paced

3.0

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

These people see fission on the horizon from a nuclear blast on a different planet and they go to investigate. They think it’s all barren until they get shot at by a massive weapon and are forced to land on the planet to fix their ship. They send out a group to scout the area and it turns out there is no life left, just a gun that was built to shoot anything flying out of the sky. So they do down under the gun and find a bunker with all that world’s history, like photos and music and stuff. They go back up, beat the gun into submission and rip all its wires out, rendering it useless, then go back to their now fixed ship and take off. They’re excited to return to the planet and explore more now that the gun was dismantled and wouldn’t shoot them out of the sky anymore. BUT the scene cuts back to the planet where the gun tried and failed to shoot them out if the sky as they left then sent a warning signal to another bunker. From that bunker came a bunch of robots with all the materials necessary to fix the gun, because apparently that process was also automated. Oop

3 stars because although the concept was awesome, I found the character dialogue dry and annoying.