Showing results by narrator "Mike Vendetti" in All Categories

Imagine being trapped in the millisecond between the past and the future. All Dave Miller wanted to do was commit suicide in peace, but here he was. Trapped.

Communication is the key to getting along. Space travel makes communication with alien races imperative, but before the language problem could be resolved the war started. A highly intelligent cat-like race able to communicate telepathically is discovered that offers to help. But wait how can you trust an alien or anyone that can hear your thoughts?

Philip K. Dick held a fascination for nuclear war and robots. In this excellent short story, robots have taken over the raising of children.

In short, Elmer is a drunken, womanizing hypocrite who becomes a Baptist minister, a position from which he is soon ejected. He then links up with star revivalist Sharon Falconer, who is heavily based on Aimee Semple McPherson. Throughout his career, Gantry moves through many settings and scenarios illustrating aspects of the American religion. With religion as entertainment and show business, both Elmer and Sharon are consummate performers. They are always on.

Back from his final deployment with the US Marines, Alan Carson is hiking across New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness to ponder his future and put the war in his past. When his best friend and squad leader, Sergeant Kurt Timms, took a Taliban bullet because of bad intel, Alan made a promise to his dying friend. He would come here to see the rugged mountains that were Kurt’s boyhood stomping grounds. But deep in a trackless canyon, miles from any trail, Alan finds something else: the body of a dead man at the foot of a cliff, an ancient cave…and a passageway too intriguing to ignore.

Eric Branson and his team have dealt their enemies a decisive blow, wiping out an entire unit of rogue soldiers and liberating refugees from the largest detention camp in the region.

"Behind the Curtain" is short, also simple, a tale of revenge in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe. The author even mentions Poe in her story, and her two characters, Santallos, the narrator, and Quentin, his guest, drink Amontillado. Santallos is a collector of Egyptian antiquities, including mummies and mummy cases. You might say he's wrapped up in his hobby, so much so that he neglects his wife. Naturally, she falls into the arms of the younger man, Quentin. Santallos concocts a fiendish kind of revenge.

Time travel may have its consequences. We can only speculate. Philip K. Dick takes us there.

Imagine a smartphone app that would expose the evil thoughts of people around you. In this story from 1919, a scientist stumbles across a membrane that does just that to his color photography. The images can't hurt one physically, but oh, what they do to the mind.

T.S. Elliot was likely the best read of any of his contemporaries. In his poetry, we often find an allusion to the works of other great writers. In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" he makes reference to Dante Shakespeare and "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvel. Prufrock, as the name implies, is an indecisive wimp, whereas Marvel in his seduction poem, has his eye on the prize, and makes no bones about it.

This clever and thought-provoking short story by Isaac Asimov, one of the masters of science fiction, suggests that a higher power can step in and steer us from our reckless ways. After all, we may be inhabitants of a universal barnyard overseen by a master farmer.

There were ten humanoid robots somewhere in the United States, each one carrying a fragment of a TC bomb. TC! The race for sheer horror in bomb-ery had ended there. TC! Total Conversion! The sun was no longer a synonym one could use. Total conversion made the sun a penny candle.

Roberta, AKA Robert is having identity issues since her sex change because Robert just won't go away.

A child goes into the garage and finds his father talking to himself. No, really talking to himself, as in two identical people. The boy; however, can sense the "thing" from his father. And then the thing comes to the dinner table...

Written as a sequel to Second Variety, this is an exciting and thought-provoking view into a different world than the one left in "Second Variety". We have a fascination with time travel. But what could go wrong? Give this a listen, and see what you think.

"Time Pawn" is a novelette by Philip K. Dick published in Thrilling Wonder Stories. Vol. 44, no. 1, summer 1954. Travel with award-winning audiobook narrator, Mike Vendetti, and Dr. Parsons to our world in the distant future where everyone and everything is perfect. But wait; there's more!